Trump reclassified ~8,000 senior career federal workers as at-will under Schedule Policy/Career

On June 3, 2026, President Trump signed an executive order implementing the "Schedule Policy/Career" classification in the federal excepted service, reclassifying roughly 8,000 senior career positions as at-will employment. The White House fact sheet states the affected roles—about 97% of them GS-15 or Senior Level, the highest-ranking career positions below the Senior Executive Service—include agency directors, deputy directors, chiefs of staff, senior advisers, policy analysts, and employees with significant involvement in drafting regulations or determining federal grant recipients. The order revives the concept of Executive Order 13957 ("Schedule F"), issued in Trump's first term and revoked by President Biden in 2021.

The reclassification removes the for-cause and appeal protections that the Civil Service Reform Act extends to career employees, allowing agencies to remove Schedule Policy/Career staff "without lengthy procedural hurdles." Among the enumerated grounds for removal is "subversion of Presidential directives"—a standard tied to alignment with the administration's policy agenda rather than to performance or misconduct adjudicated through normal process. The administration frames the change as restoring accountability over policy-influencing officials; the White House describes it as part of an effort to "dismantle the deep state."

Federal unions, good-government organizations, and the large majority of public commenters on OPM's 2025 rulemaking warned that converting nonpartisan career positions to at-will status politicizes the civil service and is accomplished by executive action outside the legislative process that built the merit system. The designation is the subject of multiple pending lawsuits. The order's reach—about 8,000 positions—is narrower than the roughly 50,000 OPM had earlier estimated could be covered.