Trump Reinstates Schedule F in the Excepted Service
Published by The Lawfare Institute
in Cooperation With
On Jan. 20, President Donald Trump issued an executive order reinstating Schedule F in the Excepted Service, which strips employment protections for federal workers in “positions of a confidential, policy-determining, policy-making, or policy-advocating character.”
The order, entitled “Restoring Accountability to Policy-Influencing Positions Within the Federal Workforce,” amends and reinstates Trump’s Executive Order 13957, which is intended to provide agencies with the “flexibility to expeditiously remove poorly performing employees from [their] positions without facing extensive delays or litigation.”
Trump’s order notes that accountability for civil servants is “sorely lacking,” and inserts a new subsection, which reads:
Employees in or applicants for Schedule Policy/Career positions are not required to personally or politically support the current President or the policies of the current administration. They are required to faithfully implement administration policies to the best of their ability, consistent with their constitutional oath and the vesting of executive authority solely in the President. Failure to do so is grounds for dismissal.
The order also revokes former President Joe Biden’s Executive Order 14003, entitled “Protecting the Federal Workforce.”
Read the executive order here or below:
