# Schedule F **Schedule F** (formally, the Schedule F category created by Executive Order 13957, October 21, 2020, and rebranded as "Schedule Policy/Career" on Day One of [[Trump 2.0]], January 2025) is a **new excepted-service classification** that allows the federal government to **strip civil-service protections from career employees in "policy-determining, policy-making, or policy-advocating" positions** — making them effectively at-will. The original 2020 EO was rescinded by Biden in January 2021 before any positions were reclassified. The reissued Trump 2.0 version stopped being hypothetical on **June 3, 2026**, when [[Executive Order 14410]] transferred roughly **8,000 named positions** — about 97% of them at or above GS-15 — into Schedule Policy/Career by presidential determination. OPM's rulemaking had estimated ~50,000 eligible positions and nothing in the order caps future additions. → **[[Federal Workforce Structure Tree]]** — the ASCII map that places Schedule Policy/Career inside the whole federal personnel structure: the competitive service it draws from, the six other excepted-service schedules beside it, the [[Senior Executive Service]] above it, and the enforcement layer that is supposed to hear the appeals it eliminates. ## The Pendleton Act: What Schedule F Dismantles The federal civil service system that Schedule F targets was created by the **[[Pendleton Act of 1883]]** of 1883, passed in response to the assassination of President **James Garfield** in 1881 by Charles Guiteau, a disgruntled office-seeker who believed Garfield had denied him a patronage appointment. Before Pendleton, the federal government ran on the **spoils system** — patronage appointments awarded for political loyalty rather than merit, dominant since [[Andrew Jackson]]'s era. Every change of administration meant wholesale replacement of federal employees. Pendleton created: merit-based federal hiring through competitive examinations, prohibition on firing or demoting employees for political reasons, and the Civil Service Commission to administer the system. It initially covered only ~10% of federal positions but expanded to cover ~90%+ over subsequent decades. The system's premise is that a functioning government requires institutional expertise and continuity that transcends any single presidency. Schedule F's architects explicitly reject this premise. The final OPM rule characterizes existing civil-service protections as **"unconstitutional overcorrections"** — framing the 140-year-old merit system not as a safeguard but as an obstacle to democratic accountability. ## Why Schedule F is the Linchpin of the Project 2025 Agenda Civil-service neutrality is the **structural precondition** for an apolitical federal bureaucracy. Schedule F is, by design, the mechanism for **collapsing that neutrality**. Project 2025 architects (especially [[Russell Vought]] and the [[Center for Renewing America]]) treat Schedule F as the **foundational reform** because every other Project 2025 agenda item — [[Department of Education]] abolition, DOJ restructuring, HHS reform, regulatory rollback — runs through career civil servants who can otherwise slow-walk, leak, or institutionally resist directives. Reclassifying those employees as at-will firable reduces that friction to near zero. The logic is circular by design: reclassify career employees → fire those who resist → replace with loyalists → implement the rest of the agenda without institutional friction → the replacement staff have no institutional memory or independent professional judgment to constrain future directives. ## Russell Vought: The Architect [[Russell Vought]] is the principal architect of Schedule F in both incarnations. As OMB Director in Trump's first term, he designed the original 2020 EO and sought to designate **88% of OMB staff** as Schedule F-eligible — a number that reveals the intended scope. After Trump's 2020 loss, Vought founded the [[Center for Renewing America]] specifically to preserve and advance the Schedule F concept through the interregnum, and authored the "[[Executive Office of the President Hub]]" chapter in Project 2025's *[[Mandate for Leadership]]*. Vought was confirmed as OMB Director for the second term on February 6, 2025 (53-47). He has been blunt about the objective: "There certainly is going to be mass layoffs and firings, particularly at some of the agencies that we don't even think should exist." He spent approximately 80% of his time between administrations planning how to "take control of these bureaucracies," producing roughly 350 regulatory documents for the transition. ## Implementation Timeline | Date | Development | |------|------------| | **Oct 21, 2020** | Original EO 13957 creating "Schedule F" signed by Trump | | **Jan 20, 2021** | Biden rescinds EO 13957 via EO 14003 before any positions reclassified | | **2021–2024** | Vought's Center for Renewing America preserves and refines the concept; Heritage Foundation incorporates it into Project 2025 | | **Mar 21, 2023** | Trump's own platform commits to it: the [[Agenda 47]] video "President Trump's Plan to Dismantle the Deep State and Return Power to the American People" promises to reissue the 2020 order so the president can remove "rogue bureaucrats." This is the campaign's version of the plank, separate from Heritage's | | **Jan 20, 2025** | Trump signs **EO 14171** on Inauguration Day, reinstating Schedule F as **"Schedule Policy/Career"**; key change: final reclassification authority moved from OPM Director to the **President himself** | | **Apr 2025** | OPM publishes proposed rule (91 FR 5580); estimates ~50,000 positions affected (~2% of civilian federal workforce); comment period draws 40,000+ comments, **94% opposed** | | **Feb 6, 2026** | **Final rule published** in the Federal Register (public inspection Feb 5); characterizes civil-service protections as "unconstitutional overcorrections" | | **Mar 9, 2026** | **Final rule takes effect**; agencies begin compiling position lists for reclassification | | **Apr 2026** | NOAA (Commerce Dept.) notifies employees they're on preliminary conversion lists — most GS-15s and many GS-14s included | | **May 2026** | Process in **agency-recommendation phase**; no positions formally reclassified by presidential executive order yet | | **Jun 3, 2026** | **[[Executive Order 14410]]** — "Implementing Schedule Policy/Career in the Excepted Service." A 229-page appendix places **≈8,000 positions** (~97% at or above GS-15; the GS-13/14 exceptions concentrated at OMB) into Schedule Policy/Career. Agencies get **7 days** to notify employees and conform records. The designation flow is reversed: an agency head now *petitions* the OPM Director to recommend a position to the President. Employees keep competitive status and the positions keep merit hiring and veterans' preference — they simply lose adverse-action procedure and MSPB appeal, cannot challenge the reclassification itself, and generally lose student-loan repayment and recruitment/retention/relocation incentives. The order also adds a severance-pay denial ground and directs a separate bonus pool. | | **Jun 8, 2026** | OPM issues implementation guidance | | **Jun 29, 2026** | **[[Trump v. Slaughter]]** overrules [[Humphrey's Executor v. United States]] 6–3 — the for-cause tenure of the MSPB, OSC, and FLRA members who adjudicate what remains of these protections is now itself constitutionally suspect | ## What Reclassification Means Employees in positions reclassified as Schedule Policy/Career lose: - **Merit Systems Protection Board (MSPB) appeal rights** — the independent board that adjudicates wrongful termination claims - **Standard adverse-action protections** — the "cause" requirement and due-process procedures for discipline and removal - **Competitive service status** — they become effectively at-will employees They retain basic constitutional protections (can't be fired for race, sex, etc.) but lose the institutional mechanisms that enforce those protections in practice. ## Litigation Multiple legal challenges are active, with mixed early results: **PEER v. Trump** — The primary constitutional challenge, filed by AFGE, AFSCME, AFL-CIO, PEER, and [[Democracy Forward]]. Second Amended Complaint filed March 4, 2026, targeting EO 14171, the final rule, and the entire reclassification framework. Still pending. **AFGE v. Trump (9th Circuit)** — A three-judge panel on February 26, 2026 **vacated a lower court's preliminary injunction** against a related EO restricting collective bargaining — a significant early win for the administration. The panel confirmed federal courts have jurisdiction to hear such challenges (a procedural union win) but found AFGE hadn't shown likelihood of success on retaliation claims. **NTEU v. OPM** — A FOIA lawsuit filed November 14, 2025 after OPM refused to disclose which agencies have submitted position lists for reclassification. Amended complaint filed April 1, 2026. Primarily a transparency case — the union is trying to force disclosure of which employees are being targeted before reclassification orders are issued. **AFGE v. VA** — Judge Melissa Dubose granted a preliminary injunction March 13, 2026, ordering the VA to reinstate AFGE's master collective bargaining agreement — a narrower union-contract victory. **Overall legal posture:** The administration has the upper hand on Schedule Policy/Career itself. No court has issued an injunction blocking the reclassification framework. The broader PEER challenge remains the unions' best hope for a systemic ruling. ## State-Level Precedents No state has passed a Schedule F analogue in 2025–2026, but several existing state models inform the debate: **Texas** — Abolished its Merit Council and civil service system in **1985**; state employees have been at-will ever since. Texas is the most-cited precedent by Schedule F advocates and the most-cited warning by opponents. **Georgia** — Eliminated civil-service protections for new state hires in the early 2000s. Researchers studying Schedule F have used Georgia as a case study of what happens when at-will employment is introduced in government: increased turnover, loss of institutional expertise, difficulty recruiting experienced professionals. **Arizona, Indiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Utah** — OPM's own final rule notes that civil servants from these states submitted comments saying job conditions worsened after similar state-level reforms — a remarkable detail buried in the rulemaking record. ## The Spoils System Parallel Schedule F's critics argue it is a return to the **pre-Pendleton spoils system** in modern dress. The structural parallel is exact: positions currently filled by merit-based competitive hiring would be converted to at-will positions where the primary hiring and retention criterion is political alignment with the current administration. The difference is that the spoils system was overt patronage; Schedule F is administered through bureaucratic reclassification, which gives it a procedural legitimacy the spoils system lacked. Defenders reject the comparison, arguing that Schedule F targets only "policy-influencing" positions — not the entire civil service — and that political accountability for policy decisions requires the ability to remove employees who obstruct the elected president's agenda. The tension between these framings (political accountability vs. political patronage) is the central contested question. ## Long-Term Institutional Consequences If fully implemented, Schedule F would: 1. **Eliminate institutional memory**: At-will employees leave when administrations change, taking expertise with them. Functions like pandemic response, financial regulation, and nuclear safety depend on decades of accumulated institutional knowledge. 2. **Create a loyalty filter**: Career officials who survive reclassification will self-censor — the chilling effect on internal dissent, whistleblowing, and independent professional judgment is the mechanism, not the side effect. 3. **Enable the rest of the agenda**: Every other Project 2025 initiative — from [[NSPM-7 Domestic Terrorism Framework]] implementation to regulatory rollback to DOJ weaponization — becomes easier to execute when the career staff who would otherwise resist have been replaced with at-will appointees. 4. **Make reversal difficult**: Once institutional expertise is lost and experienced career staff have left government, rebuilding the civil service becomes a generational project even if a future president rescinds the order. ## KB Significance Schedule F is the **enabling infrastructure** for the [[Trump Retribution Doctrine]]. Where the [[Grand Conspiracy Probe]] targets specific individuals, Schedule F targets the **institutional capacity for independent professional judgment** across the entire executive branch. It is the difference between punishing individual dissenters and eliminating the structural conditions that make dissent possible. The concept also illustrates the KB's recurring pattern: the most consequential power grabs are procedural, not dramatic. Schedule F is a personnel classification change — bureaucratic, technical, hard to explain in a headline. But its effect is to reverse 140 years of civil-service reform and convert the federal government from a merit-based institution into a patronage apparatus responsive to presidential will. The assassination of James Garfield created the system; a regulatory reclassification may end it. ## See Also - [[Project 2025]] — The blueprint that treats Schedule F as foundational - [[Agenda 47]] — Trump's own 2024 platform, which promised Schedule F in his voice (March 2023) - [[Center for Renewing America]] — Vought's organization; preserved Schedule F through the interregnum - [[Russell Vought]] — Principal architect; OMB Director - [[Heritage Foundation]] — Project 2025 publisher - [[Trump Retribution Doctrine]] — The doctrine Schedule F enables - [[Trump Retribution Ecosystem]] — The operational network - [[NSPM-7 Domestic Terrorism Framework]] — Implementation depends on Schedule F-enabled personnel - [[Federal Agencies]] — the executive-branch apparatus Schedule F reclassifies - [[Administrative State]] — what Schedule F is designed to dismantle - [[Unitary Executive Theory]] — the constitutional theory Schedule F operationalizes