Trump signs order stripping civil-service protections from ~8,000 senior federal workers

On June 3, 2026, President Trump signed an executive order finalizing "Schedule Policy/Career," a new excepted-service employment category that strips civil-service protections from roughly 8,000 senior career federal positions. The order is the last step in reviving the first-term "Schedule F" initiative: the Office of Personnel Management issued the governing regulation earlier in 2026, and agencies were directed to identify affected positions before the President's signature made the conversions effective. According to the administration, about 97% of the targeted positions are at or above the GS-15 level — agency division and field-office leaders, chiefs of staff, senior program managers, high-level attorneys, and senior policy, budget, grantmaking, and public-affairs officials — with a smaller number of GS-13 and GS-14 roles, mostly at the Office of Management and Budget, also converted. Agencies were given seven days to conform affected employees' personnel records.

Reclassified employees become removable at will: they lose for-cause protections and the ability to appeal adverse actions to the Merit Systems Protection Board, and cannot challenge the reclassification itself. OPM Director Scott Kupor framed the change as an accountability measure ensuring career staff "carry out lawful orders and policy directives," while federal unions, good-government groups, and roughly 94% of the more than 40,000 public commenters on the 2026 rule argued it would politicize the nonpartisan civil service. Converting career positions to at-will status removes the structural insulation that lets program staff administer spending, grants, and regulation without political loyalty tests, which is the basis for mapping the action to dismantling-agency-capacity; the unilateral restructuring of the merit system by executive order, rescinding a 2024 rule that had sought to lock in those protections, also reflects executive-overreach.

The 8,000-position figure is far below OPM's earlier estimate that up to 50,000 employees could lose protections, and below outside projections of as many as 200,000; OPM has not ruled out expanding the pool, signaling this may be a first tranche. The designation is already the subject of litigation, including a suit alleging it violates due process, exceeds presidential authority, and contradicts federal statute. A nearly identical 2020 order late in Trump's first term went largely unimplemented and was rescinded under President Biden, whose administration later issued a rule attempting to bar Schedule F's return; the current administration rescinded that rule before issuing its own.