{"id":132,"date":"2026-06-05T15:41:18","date_gmt":"2026-06-05T15:41:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/nationalconsumerreportss.com\/?p=132"},"modified":"2026-06-05T15:41:18","modified_gmt":"2026-06-05T15:41:18","slug":"inside-the-implementation-of-schedule-policy-career","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nationalconsumerreportss.com\/?p=132","title":{"rendered":"Inside the Implementation of Schedule Policy\/Career"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Immediately following his second inauguration, President Trump signed an executive order establishing \u201cSchedule Policy\/Career,\u201d which promised to strip approximately 50,000 employees in positions of a \u201cconfidential, policy-determining, policy-making, or policy-advocating\u201d character of their tenure protections. The order also authorized the removal of employees who failed to \u201cfaithfully implement administration policies to the best of their ability.\u201d Schedule Policy\/Career effectively revived and rebranded a similar policy\u2014Schedule F\u2014from the first administration. Scholars including Catherine Fisk, Don Moynihan, and I have warned that Schedule Policy\/Career threatens to politicize the federal workforce in ways not seen since the \u201cspoils system\u201d of the 19th century.<\/p>

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Since Schedule F was first created, the central question has been: Which positions will be transferred to it? Records obtained by the provided a glimpse into which positions the Office of Management and Budget sought to transfer to Schedule F during the first administration, but few other agencies submitted lists to the Office of Personnel Management (OPM). In February, OPM\u2019s final rule painted a broad picture of the kinds of positions that might qualify for Schedule Policy\/Career. Nevertheless, full implementation required President Trump to issue an executive order announcing which positions would be covered.<\/p>

On June 3, President Trump issued an executive order with an accompanying of positions transferred to Schedule Policy\/Career. The order transfers approximately 8,000 employees in over 4,800 positions to Schedule Policy\/Career. Many\u2014but not all\u2014of these positions have some supervisory role. Ultimately, the true effect of Schedule Policy\/Career will depend on the litigation currently working its way through the federal courts.<\/p>

Positions Transferred to Schedule Policy\/Career<\/strong><\/p>

For the most part, the latest Schedule Policy\/Career order repeats the standard arguments advanced in its favor. Legally, the order cites long-standing statutory authority of the president to exempt positions from portions of the civil service laws. Normatively, it argues that stripping these employees of tenure protections is \u201cessential to protecting democratic self-government by an elected President.\u201d The most important part of the order, however, is the 229-page appendix listing the positions that will be transferred to Schedule Policy\/Career.<\/p>

OPM Director Scott Kupor told reporters that the order transfers approximately 8,000 employees to Schedule Policy\/Career. According to Kupor, 97 percent of the positions are at or above the GS-15 level, the highest grade on the General Schedule pay scale. The order also transfers some GS-13 and GS-14 employees, mostly those working within the Office of Management and Budget. This initial order transfers significantly fewer employees to Schedule Policy\/Career than the 50,000 initially estimated.<\/p>

Which agencies and positions were most impacted by Schedule Policy\/Career? To answer this question, I created a dataset of the titles and position description numbers listed in the order\u2019s appendix. The appendix lists over 4,800positions within 54 major agencies. Note, the number of positions is not the same as the number of employees, because multiple employees may occupy the same position.<\/p>

Figure 1 illustrates the number of positions transferred to Schedule Policy\/Career by each agency. The five departments with the greatest number of transfers include Defense, Homeland Security, Health and Human Services, Treasury, and Commerce. The ordering of agencies roughly corresponds to the size of their overall workforces, but there are some notable exceptions. The Office of Management and Budget transferred 137 positions within its workforce of 518 employees. By contrast, the Department of Agriculture transferred only 81 positions within a workforce of over 74,000 employees. Consequently, some agencies appear to have transferred at least a quarter of their workforces while other agencies have transferred less than one percent of their workforce.<\/p>

Figure 1<\/em><\/p>