Some 8,000 career federal workers were stripped of civil-service protections on Wednesday when the president ordered their positions converted into at-will jobs, a move that re-establishes a long-sought category of policy-focused appointments now called Schedule Policy/Career.
The president’s order and Schedule Policy/Career
The directive converts roughly 8,000 competitive-service positions into a new job category that removes long-standing procedural safeguards. The change revives a concept first ordered in October 2020 — initially labeled Schedule F — and implements it under the name Schedule Policy/Career after the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) completed a formal rulemaking process. OPM’s final rule implementing the new category took effect in March.
Who was affected and what protections change
About 97 percent of the employees moved into Schedule Policy/Career are GS-15s or senior leaders, a senior administration official said. The White House list of affected positions includes offices at the departments of Defense, State, and Homeland Security. Job types named by officials include agency office and division heads; C-suite leaders such as chief information officers; regional officers and their deputies and chiefs of staff; program managers; people who help write federal regulations; attorneys who craft agency or internal policies; advisors, senior human-resources officials; and grantmaking posts.
Employees in the new category lose the right to challenge adverse personnel actions before the Merit Systems Protection Board, and their whistleblower complaints will be investigated by their own agency rather than the Office of Special Counsel, according to the administration’s description of the change.
OPM’s rulemaking and the path to rollback
The policy follows a multi-step administrative arc laid out in the source reporting. After President Trump first issued conversions in October 2020, the order went unimplemented following his 2020 re-election loss and was rescinded by President Biden. In 2024, OPM issued new regulations intended to make it more difficult to revive the Schedule F concept. This administration proposed new regulations to unwind those Biden-era protections and, after following the notice-and-comment process, issued a final rule that took effect in March. A senior administration official told reporters the initial plan had considered converting as many as 50,000 federal jobs, but that the president chose to focus on "the most senior-level career policy officials," an OPM spokesperson said.
What OPM officials say and what critics warn
OPM chief Scott Kupor and another OPM official rejected characterizations that the move would produce a new spoils system. Kupor framed the change as a tool to ensure "people in these senior positions willing and capable of carrying out those directives," saying, "All this does is basically say: it doesn’t matter what your political views are—and you can have any political views—but if you allow them to interfere in your willingness to carry out lawful orders and directives, this is a mechanism for you to be removed, effectively at-will...There are zero loyalty tests in this."
Opponents have already put legal pressure on the policy. Federal employee unions have filed multiple lawsuits alleging violations of the Constitution, the 1978 Civil Service Reform Act, and the Administrative Procedure Act. Good-government groups cautioned that at-will employment of public employees in state government has sometimes reduced productivity while increasing reports of political and personal favoritism in the workplace. The OPM officials rebutted such warnings, asserting that hiring processes would remain unchanged and without political litmus tests. The officials did not address reporting that OPM added politicized essay questions to the federal hiring process more than a year ago.
How Defense, State, and DHS — and their senior leaders — are implicated
The White House’s list specifically names positions at the departments of Defense, State, and Homeland Security among those eligible for conversion. For senior policy officials at those agencies, the change means new employment status: the right to appeal adverse actions to the Merit Systems Protection Board is removed, and whistleblower complaints move from the Office of Special Counsel to agency investigatory control — a shift the administration says will allow more direct enforcement of presidential priorities and critics say will concentrate prosecutorial and disciplinary discretion within agencies.
Immediate effects and the near-term legal road
- Implementation: OPM’s final rule took effect in March, and the president’s conversion order acted on that regulatory framework to change roughly 8,000 positions on Wednesday.
- Litigation: The policy is already the subject of multiple lawsuits by federal-employee unions alleging statutory and constitutional violations.
- Watchpoints: Agencies named on the White House list — including Defense, State, and DHS — and the affected senior career officials will be where the practical consequences of the new status are first observed.
The administration argues the change is necessary to ensure senior career policy officials will carry out lawful directives; opponents have turned to the courts and warned of potential politicization and workplace harms. With the final rule in place and litigation underway, courts and agency practices will determine whether the new Schedule Policy/Career becomes a durable feature of the federal personnel landscape or a temporary, contested experiment.
