On June 3, Trump signed an executive order that transferred about 10,000 career federal officials into Schedule Policy/Career, formerly known as Schedule F. This removes their civil service protections.
Schedule Policy/Career was designed to make it easier to terminate the positions of officials that worked on “policy-related” jobs. The reschedule limits accountability in the federal workforce. Whistleblower complaints filed by workers in this arrangement will be investigated by the agency they are in, as opposed to the Office of Special Counsel. Adverse personnel actions can no longer be brought to the Merit Systems Protection Board.
The implementation of Schedule Policy/Career, resurrected after former President Joe Biden removed it, may be illegal, potentially running afoul of “the Constitution, 1978 Civil Service Reform Act [sic] and the Administrative Procedures Act.”
Schedule Policy/Center has been reported to increase “political and personal favoritism in the workplace.” Wrongly dismissing this problem, Director of the United States Office of Personnel Management Scott Kupor and another unnamed official stated that the schedule does not feature a political litmus test. While this in and of itself is true, any federal job that ranks GS-5 or above has prospective employees has a politicized test that encourages loyalty to Trump himself.
