A Schedule F appointment was a job classification in the excepted service of the United States federal civil service that existed briefly at the end of the Trump administration during 2020 and 2021. It would have contained policy-related positions, removing their civil service protections and making them easy to fire. It was never fully implemented, and no one was appointed to it before it was repealed at the beginning of the Biden administration.
The purpose of the provision was to increase the president's control over the federal career civil service. While proponents stated this would increase flexibility and accountability, it was widely criticized as providing means to retaliate against federal officials for political reasons. It was estimated that tens or hundreds of thousands of career employees could have been reclassified, increasing the number of political appointments by a factor of ten.
Since mid-2022, the 2024 Trump campaign's plan to reinstate the provision has attracted attention and commentary. Common critiques of the measure include the functioning of government and the risk to democracy. In April 2024, the Biden administration adopted a regulation that would prevent most of the effects of a reinstatement of Schedule F, the repeal of which by a future administration would delay implementation by several months.
The legal basis for the Schedule F appointment was a section of the Civil Service Reform Act of 1978 ( ), which exempts from civil service protections federal employees "whose position has been determined to be of a confidential, policy-determining, policy-making or policy-advocating character". The provision had been little noticed and unused before its application by the Schedule F order. [1]
The stated purpose of the order was to increase flexibility in hiring and firing to improve performance management [2] and accountability. [3] The Civil Service Rules and Regulations would not have covered employees within the Schedule F classification, [2] including due process and possibly collective bargaining rights. [3] However, appointees could not have been fired based on certain protected statuses, such as whistleblower status, partisan affiliation, or for claiming discrimination or harassment. [3] [4] It would also have streamlined hiring for these positions, since a competitive examination would not be required. [5] : 2
The executive order also provided transition procedures for transferring covered positions out of the competitive service into Schedule F, by which executive agency heads must petition the director of the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) with a list of positions to be converted with a written rationale. The OPM director had the sole power to decide whether to grant the petition. [2] [6] [7]
The Schedule F classification included "positions of a confidential, policy-determining, policy-making, or policy-advocating character not normally subject to change as a result of a Presidential transition". [2] They are distinguished from Schedule C appointments, which cover policy-making positions that do change with the presidential transition. [5] : 5–6 The executive order listed several characteristics of jobs that may fall under the Schedule F classification: [2]
According to OPM, these provisions were guidelines, as not all positions covered by them were required to be converted to Schedule F, and positions not covered by them may have been converted. [3] [8] The provisions were broad enough to include many scientists, attorneys, regulators, public health experts, and others in senior roles. The estimated number of employees they covered ranged from tens of thousands to hundreds of thousands. [3]
According to reporting by Axios, the idea for the Schedule F appointment was devised by James Sherk, a member of the advisory Domestic Policy Council who was seeking ways to prevent career civil service employees from resisting President Trump's agenda. In January 2019, while searching through Title 5 of the United States Code, which contains provisions on civil service protections, he came across 5 U.S.C. § 7511, and brought it to the attention of the White House Counsel's Office. [1]
The executive order was drafted secretly over the following months and was completed by late spring of 2019. However, due to large agency workloads, it was decided to delay issuing it until 2020, which was further delayed by the COVID-19 pandemic. Trump was reportedly motivated by a desire to get even with recalcitrant officials after his first impeachment trial, which concluded in February 2020. [1]
Schedule F was created by Executive Order 13957 on October 21, 2020. [2] Heads of all federal agencies were ordered to submit a preliminary list of positions that could be reclassified as Schedule F by January 19, 2021, the day before the next presidential inauguration, to John D. McEntee, the director of the Presidential Personnel Office, [9] [5] : 8 with the final list to be submitted on May 19, 2021. [5] : 8
By the January 19 deadline, two agencies had submitted their petitions to reclassify employees. The Office of Management and Budget submitted a list of 140 position types, of which 136 were approved by OPM, excluding four Presidential Management Fellow positions. These 136 position types would have applied to 415 employees out of the agency's total of 610 employees. Most of the affected employees were in program examination, digital services, and policy analysis positions. [5] : 13–16 Some positions, such as administrative assistants, office managers, and IT workers, were potentially not clearly policy-making positions. [10] The necessary human resource processing steps were not taken prior to the change in administration, and no one was actually reclassified. The International Boundary and Water Commission submitted a petition to reclassify five of its 234 employees, but the executive order was revoked before OPM could approve them. [5] : 13–16
Seven other agencies stated to OPM that they needed more time to finalize their lists, but five of these had made draft lists that they were still reviewing. The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission determined more than half of its positions met the criteria for reclassification, while the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, Environmental Protection Agency, Federal Trade Commission, and OPM itself each had draft lists that would have reclassified around or less than 10% of their employees. Six agencies determined that they would not reclassify any positions: the Federal Maritime Commission, Federal Retirement Thrift Investment Board, National Archives and Records Administration, National Transportation Safety Board, National Labor Relations Board, and AmeriCorps. [5] : 17–18
It was repealed by President Biden through Executive Order 14003 on January 22, 2021, the third day of his administration. [11] [12] No employees had been moved to the new classification. [13] [14]
In mid-2022, it was reported that Trump and his allies planned to reinstate the Schedule F provisions if he were elected to a second term, [1] including identifying around 50,000 workers who could be reclassified. [15] In March 2023, reinstatement of Schedule F was included at a top of a list of proposals from the Trump 2024 presidential campaign, [16] while Ron DeSantis had written approvingly of it in his book The Courage to Be Free . [17] [18] The next month, it was reported that Project 2025, a coalition led by The Heritage Foundation, was preparing a personnel database that could be used to fill up to 20,000 potential Schedule F appointments in a future Republican administration. [19]
The Preventing a Patronage System Act was introduced at the beginning of the 117th Congress by Democrat Gerry Connolly of Virginia. [20] [13] It was passed by the House in July 2022 as part of its version of the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2023. [21] [22] [23] [24] However, it was removed from the final bill passed in December 2022. [15] [25] A similar bill, the Saving the Civil Service Act, was introduced in the 118th United States Congress. [26]
In September 2023, the Biden administration proposed a regulation that would allow employees to keep existing job protections even if their positions were reclassified, preventing most of the effects of a reinstatement of Schedule F. While the regulation could be repealed by a future administration, it would delay any implementation by several months. [27] [28] The rules were put into effect in April 2024. [10]
In February 2024, a Freedom of Information Act request revealed that Russell Vought planned to replace 'far more' than the 50,000 or so previously-identified workers including an estimated 68% of the Office of Management and Budget that he oversaw. [29]
The creation of Schedule F was controversial. Critics feared a transition from a non-partisan government of subject-matter experts to one where partisan or presidential loyalty tests had a role in the hiring process. [3] At the time, it was estimated that tens or hundreds of thousands of career employees could lose their civil service protections including union representation, [3] [30] and that it would increase the number of political appointments by a factor of ten. [31] Conversely, there was concern that political appointees of Trump, whose appointments are supposed to expire at the end of his term, could "burrow in" by being converted to positions with that are harder to fire. [32] [30]
Rebecca Beitsch, writing for The Hill , wrote that unions were criticizing Trump's executive order as "the biggest change to federal workforce protections in a century, converting many federal workers to 'at will' employment." [33] The National Treasury Employees Union sued the administration in the United States District Court for the District of Columbia over the executive order, arguing that the administration did not properly justify it satisfied the legal requirement that the changes are "necessary" and as "conditions of good administration warrant." [34] [35] [ needs update ]
An official statement from Infectious Diseases Society of America (IDSA) further stated that the executive order was "alarming". [33] The six authors, all infectious disease specialists, and epidemiologists, wrote:
We rely on the judgment of civil service experts to lead responses against the pandemic, inform the public, drive research, update guidance and review data supporting the use and distribution of vaccines and treatments to address the impacts of COVID-19. Replacing our scientists and public health experts with politically motivated staff will reduce our ability to respond, and reduce public confidence in our response, to COVID-19 and other public health crises. [36]
On October 26, 2020, Ronald Sanders, the chair of the Federal Salary Council, resigned. Writing that he was a "lifelong Republican" who prided himself on having "served three Democratic and three Republican presidents," [37] Sanders sent a letter to John D. McEntee, Presidential Personnel Office director, characterizing Executive Order 13957, which had purported to hold federal employees more accountable, as a transparent attempt to fill the government with those loyal to the presidents at the expense of experts who are loyal to the Constitution and the rule of law. [38] [39]
Rachel Greszler, a fellow at The Heritage Foundation, said: "I really think that the order is unlikely to affect many of those workers because the overwhelming majority of federal employees are upstanding individuals, they're providing valuable knowledge and experience that the managers in the agency heads don't want to lose. It's only those bad apples who are derelict in their duties, or they're outright trying to thwart their agency’s actions that would need to worry about their job security." [4]
House Democrats introduced a bill in the 116th Congress, the Saving the Civil Service Act, that would halt the executive order's implementation and restore any converted or fired Schedule F appointees back into competitive service positions. [34] There was also discussion of adding the same provisions to either the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2021 or a continuing resolution for fiscal year 2021 appropriations. [40] A coalition of 28 labor unions supported these provisions. [41] However, no provision regarding Schedule F was included in the Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2021. [32]
House Democrats also requested documents about the creation of the executive order. [34]
Representative Don Beyer (D-VA) said, "it's an attempt to redefine the civil service as a political arm of the presidency rather than public servants who work for the American people", leading to "open cronyism that does not benefit the country, but the president." [3] Former federal human resources executive Jeff Neal called the order "the most direct assault on the career civil service since the passage of the Pendleton Act in 1883," which had created the merit-based federal civil service. [40]
Representative James Comer (R-KY) supported the change, saying that “our founding fathers never envisioned a massive unelected, unaccountable federal government with the power to create policies that impact Americans' everyday lives... President Trump has long pledged to take on this bureaucracy and restore power to the people by draining the swamp." [31]
Much of Project 2025 or Agenda 47 relies on Donald Trump reenacting Schedule F, which he stated his intent to do. [42] [43]
Some legal experts have argued that it would create chaos in the civil service, which was overhauled in the Carter administration to have a more professional workforce and end political bias and the corruption of the spoils system. [42] [44] [45] Other critics, such as Mary Guy, have argued it threatens American democracy. [43] [46] [47] [45] Dean Obeidallah goes further by arguing that requiring government workers to swear loyalty oaths to the president and not the Constitution is a common authoritarian tactic. [48]
As for the constitutionality, proponents subscribe to the unitary executive theory, a theory that is not long-established or widely accepted, but rather controversial. [49] [50] [51] Beyond disputing its constitutionality, [52] [53] [54] [55] common criticisms include the idea that the theory is reckless, [56] leads to poor outcomes [57] [52] [58] and undermines democracy. [51] [59] [60] [61] David Driesen points to other countries where similar ideas of a more unitary executive have resulted in democratic backsliding. [60] The vast majority of democracies (including US states and local governments) purposefully diffuse executive power more widely than the President of the United States. [62] [63] [60]
The Pendleton Civil Service Reform Act is a United States federal law passed by the 47th United States Congress and signed into law by President Chester A. Arthur on January 16, 1883. The act mandates that most positions within the federal government should be awarded on the basis of merit instead of political patronage.
The Heritage Foundation, sometimes referred to simply as "Heritage", is an activist American conservative think tank based in Washington, D.C. Founded in 1973, it took a leading role in the conservative movement in the 1980s during the presidency of Ronald Reagan, whose policies were taken from Heritage Foundation studies, including its Mandate for Leadership.
The Hatch Act of 1939, An Act to Prevent Pernicious Political Activities, is a United States federal law. Its main provision prohibits civil-service employees in the executive branch of the federal government, except the president and vice president, from engaging in some forms of political activity. It became law on August 2, 1939. The law was named for Senator Carl Hatch of New Mexico. It was most recently amended in 2012.
The United States Office of Personnel Management (OPM) is an independent agency of the United States government that manages the United States federal civil service. The agency provides federal human resources policy, oversight, and support, and tends to healthcare (FEHB), life insurance (FEGLI), and retirement benefits for federal government employees, retirees, and their dependents.
The excepted service is the part of the United States federal civil service that is not part of either the competitive service or the Senior Executive Service. It allows streamlined hiring processes to be used under certain circumstances.
The Combined Federal Campaign (CFC) is the workplace giving program of the federal government of the United States. The program is authorized by executive order 12353 of March 23, 1982, and is overseen by the United States Office of Personnel Management (OPM). Issued by President Reagan, the order states that a CFC objective is "to lessen the burdens of government and of local communities in meeting needs of human health and welfare ..." According to OPM's website, the mission of the CFC "is to promote and support philanthropy through a program that is employee focused, cost-efficient, and effective in providing all federal employees the opportunity to improve the quality of life for all".
The Senior Executive Service (SES) is a position classification in the United States federal civil service equivalent to general officer or flag officer rank in the U.S. Armed Forces. It was created in 1979 when the Civil Service Reform Act of 1978 went into effect under President Jimmy Carter.
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In American law, unitary executive theory is "an expansive interpretation of presidential power that aims to centralize greater control over the government in the White House." The concept often comes up in jurisprudential disagreements about the president's ability to remove employees within the executive branch; transparency and access to information; discretion over the implementation of new laws; and the ability to influence agencies' rule-making. There is disagreement about the doctrine's strength and scope, with more expansive versions of the theory becoming the focus of modern political debate. These expansive versions are controversial for both constitutional and practical reasons.
The Civil Service Reform Act of 1978, (CSRA), reformed the civil service of the United States federal government, partly in response to the Watergate scandal. The Act abolished the U.S. Civil Service Commission and distributed its functions primarily among three new agencies: the Office of Personnel Management (OPM), the Merit Systems Protection Board (MSPB), and the Federal Labor Relations Authority (FLRA).
The United States federal civil service is the civilian workforce of the United States federal government's departments and agencies. The federal civil service was established in 1871. U.S. state and local government entities often have comparable civil service systems that are modeled on the national system to varying degrees.
The Federal Salary Council (FSC) is an advisory body of the executive branch of the United States government. Established under the provisions of Title 5, section 5304(e) of the United States Code, the FSC provides recommendations on the locality pay program, created by the Federal Employees Pay Comparability Act of 1990 (FEPCA). The locality pay program provides for localized pay differentials, also known as "comparability payments," for federal employees paid under the pay scale of the United States federal civil service who work in the United States and its territories and possessions. Section 1911 of Public Law 111-84, the Non-Foreign Area Retirement Equity Assurance Act of 2009, phased in locality pay for employees in the non-foreign areas as identified in Title 5 of the Code of Federal Regulations (5 C.F.R. 591.205). Alaska and Hawaii are separate locality-pay areas with separate pay tables. Other non-foreign areas are included as part of the "Rest of U.S." locality pay area.
Civil service reform in the United States was a major issue in the late 19th century at the national level, and in the early 20th century at the state level. Proponents denounced the distribution of government offices—the "spoils"—by the winners of elections to their supporters as corrupt and inefficient. They demanded nonpartisan scientific methods and credential be used to select civil servants. The five important civil service reforms were the two Tenure of Office Acts of 1820 and 1867, Pendleton Civil Service Reform Act of 1883, the Hatch Acts and the CSRA of 1978. In addition, the Civil Service Act of 1888 drastically expanded the civil service system.
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A Schedule C appointment is a type of political appointment in the United States for confidential or policy roles immediately subordinate to other appointees. As of 2016, there were 1,403 Schedule C appointees. Most of these are confidential assistants, policy experts, special counsels, and schedulers, although about 500 of them are non-policy support roles. Schedule C appointments were created in 1956 and are part of the excepted service.
The 2017 United States federal hiring freeze was instituted by the Presidential Memorandum signed by President Donald Trump on January 23, 2017. Trump and Office of Management and Budget Director Mick Mulvaney ordered the hiring freeze lifted on April 12, 2017.
George Nesterczuk is an American political advisor, consultant, and government official. He was nominated by President Donald Trump in June 2017 to become the Director of the United States Office of Personnel Management, but he later withdrew his candidacy over potential delays in the confirmation process.
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Project 2025, also known as the 2025 Presidential Transition Project, is a political initiative published by the Heritage Foundation that aims to promote conservative and right-wing policies to reshape the United States federal government and consolidate executive power if Donald Trump wins the 2024 presidential election. The Project asserts that the entire executive branch is under the direct control of the president under unitary executive theory. It proposes reclassifying tens of thousands of federal civil service workers as political appointees in order to replace them with people loyal to the president. Proponents of the project argue it would dismantle what they view as a vast, unaccountable, and mostly liberal government bureaucracy. The Project seeks to infuse the government and society with conservative Christian values. Critics have characterized Project 2025 as an authoritarian, Christian nationalist plan to steer the U.S. toward autocracy. Legal experts have said it would undermine the rule of law, separation of powers, separation of church and state, and civil liberties.
Agenda 47 is the manifesto of the Republican Party presidential candidate Donald Trump, which details policies that would be implemented upon his election as the 47th president of the United States. Agenda 47 is a collection of formal policy plans of Donald Trump, many of which would rely on executive orders and significantly expanded executive power.
First, I will immediately re-issue my 2020 Executive Order restoring the President's authority to remove rogue bureaucrats. And I will wield that power very aggressively.
'We have a democracy that is at risk of suicide. Schedule F is just one more bullet in the gun,' Guy said.
Opponents of the plan say stripping employment protections from civil servants would be a step toward autocracy and an effort by Trump to politicize the federal bureaucracy to carry out his policy agenda.
'Under the previous regime, often referred to as the spoils system, both political parties were giving out government jobs on the basis of patronage,' Manners said. 'They would reward loyal party members with cushy government jobs and we ended up with a situation where you had not only corruption, but you just had a wasteful, ineffective government with people on the payroll who didn't have particular expertise in the role.' Manner, who has examined the legal structure of independent agencies, said she finds it somewhat ironic that those who now want to get rid of these agencies are using the same language, describing them as wasteful, inefficient and intrusive.
...a controversial idea known as 'unitary executive theory'
Turning devoted public servants into mere servants of their master and by privileging presidential desires over institutional expertise and independence, the theory risks turning the chief executive into an absolute monarch. Moreover, by enlarging the already considerable powers of the presidency, it threatens to upset the country's delicate inter-branch balance by relegating Congress and the judiciary to inferior status...Trump showed us what happens when you support the use of such power with a person who appears to care little about the institution, the Constitution, or America's democracy....Thus the United States could see the unitary executive theory employed to significantly erode basic democratic principles.
'That's what happens in authoritarian states – there is a semblance of a legal system, but it becomes useless,' she said. 'If that happens here it would be extremely troubling. We're not there yet. But I do think a second term could cause significant damage that may or may not be permanent.'
there are those who would argue that the 'unitary executive' must have effective control over all Article II functions, in which case the superintendence guaranteed by the Commander in Chief Clause would not appear to do any additional work with respect to superintendence.
But the American system gets sticky when you contemplate vesting the executive power in one person who cannot be easily removed when that person is as mercurial and peculiar as Trump. In such situations, the structure can start to seem downright reckless. In concentrating power so that this person directs the federal government to do things—and in making this person exceptionally difficult to depose for a protracted period of time—one has to have a certain amount of confidence in that person's intentions and abilities.
UPDATE: I perhaps should have mentioned the oft-made argument that maintaining a unitary executive—even when it comes to powers beyond the scope of the original meaning of the Constitution—is desirable because it enhances political accountability. Even if true, this claim is about what is pragmatically desirable, not about the text and original meaning of the Constitution. But the claim is dubious even on its own terms. The greater the scope of executive power, the harder it is for rationally ignorant voters to keep track of more than a small fraction of it. Moreover, it becomes difficult to figure out how to weigh the president's performance in one area against what he does in others (assuming there is variation in quality, as will often be the case). It is therefore unlikely that concentrating a vast range of power in the hands of one person does much to enhance accountability.
One reason for the professionalisation of the bureaucracy in the 19th century was to provide the ship of state with enough ballast to keep sailing from one administration to the next...The vain and tyrannical whims of an emperor-president would emerge from the rubble.
The unitary executive theory provides a veneer of legal authority for an authoritarian-inclined president to engage in a range of anti-democratic behaviors. By the time George W. Bush had shown what the unitary executive could justify — torturing prisoners, surveilling ordinary citizens, ignoring congressional statutes — constitutional scholars were already pointing to presidents as the chief threat to American democracy. With the rise of right-wing populism and the election of Trump in 2016, this threat was magnified by the accompanying transformation of the Republican Party itself, with its elites in Washington and around the country abetting Trump's authoritarian behavior in office...The Republican Party is now an anti-democracy party, and its future presidents — empowered by the unitary executive theory — threaten the fundamentals of the U.S. democratic system...Democrats have been complicit, but Republicans have pushed the trajectory beyond democratic bounds.
But implementing what critics call 'unitary executive theory'—i.e., putting all aspects of the federal government under the control of the president—is a prescription for authoritarianism and abuse.
Indeed, partial unbundling of executive authority is the norm rather than an exception in virtually all levels of non-national government units in the United States, of which there are more than 80,000. Authority that the governor or mayor would otherwise exercise is frequently given to a specific state or local officer. Often these officers are directly elected by the public. Other times they are elected by the legislature; other times still, they are appointed by another state official. These arrangements are only approximations of the unbundled executive ideal because they there is residual responsibility or authority for the policy in the general purpose executive...The average number of elected executive offices per state was 6.7 in 2002...