Trump to invoke Schedule F to make it easier to fire some U.S. federal workers

U.S. President Donald Trump is seen in the Oval Office of the White House, Friday, April 18, 2025, in Washington. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)

WASHINGTON — U.S. President Donald Trump has begun making one of the controversial personnel changes for government employees that was spelled out in the conservative Project 2025 blueprint for his second term.

He’s starting the process of reclassifying 50,000 federal employees under what’s known as Schedule F, which can make civil servants into political appointees or other at-will workers, who are more easily dismissed from their jobs. That means they’ll have less civil service protection.

Remaking the federal workforce is part of a larger Trump administration push to dramatically shrink the size of government and exert more control over it.

The proposal follows an executive order Trump signed shortly after retaking the presidency, and was being published in the Federal Register. Trump announced the latest move online.

“If these government workers refuse to advance the policy interests of the President, or are engaging in corrupt behavior, they should no longer have a job,” he wrote on his social media site. “This is common sense, and will allow the federal government to finally be `run like a business.”’

Everett Kelley, president of the American Federation of Government Employees, said the move could ultimately undermine the federal government’s effectiveness.

“President Trump’s action to politicize the work of tens of thousands of career federal employees will erode the government’s merit-based hiring system and undermine the professional civil service that Americans rely on,” he said in a statement.

Administration officials argue that it’s necessary to increase accountability in the governmental workforce. The change is expected to make it easier to replace career employees who have “important policy-determining, policy-making, policy-advocating, or confidential duties,” according to a White House fact sheet.

The fact sheet said the plan “empowers federal agencies to swiftly remove employees in policy-influencing roles for poor performance, misconduct, corruption, or subversion of presidential directives, without lengthy procedural hurdles.”

Once the rule is finalized, the president plans to sign another executive order to conclude the process.

The Office of Personnel Management said the change “aims to strengthen accountability among career federal employees while streamlining removals for misconduct or poor performance.”

“Policy-making federal employees have a tremendous amount of influence over our laws and our lives,” the agency’s acting director, Chuck Ezell, said in a statement. “Such employees must be held to the highest standards of conduct. Americans deserve a government that is both effective and accountable.”

It’s the latest step in Trump’s battle against what he describes as “the deep state,” which frustrated his goals in his first term. Now he’s moving more swiftly to fire people and reshape the government bureaucracy -- steps that have alarmed labor unions, good-government advocates and political opponents, who worry about him consolidating power and violating worker rights.

Bringing back Schedule F was a key component of Project 2025, which was led by the Heritage Foundation think tank and fueled by former Trump administration officials. It was a nearly 1,000-page handbook designed to commandeer, reshape and do away with what Republicans deride as a bureaucracy opposed to Trump’s key governing goals.

A key part of that plan was firing as many as 50,000 federal workers and replacing them with conservatives ideologically aligned with Trump and eager to ensure his approach to governing comes to fruition.

Kevin Owen, a lawyer who represents federal employees, further warned that reclassified workers would lose whistleblower rights.

“It’s going to have a complete chilling effect,” Owen said.

During his first term, Trump issued a Schedule F order in 2020 that sought to reclassify tens of thousands of federal employees. President Joe Biden issued his own order upon taking office that nullified Trump’s original action.

Then, last year, the Office of Personnel Management -- which acts as the government’s human resources arm -- issued a new rule designed to make it harder to reclassify and dismiss thousands of federal employees in an attempt to essentially “Trump-proof” career positions.

The Biden-era rule barred career civil servants from being reclassified as political appointees or as other at-will workers.

Advocates said at the time that the rule would slow Trump’s ability to reinstate Schedule F should he win the 2024 election. But Trump signed another executive order on Inauguration Day in January reinstating his 2020 order -- and clearing the way for Friday’s action.

OPM said newly reclassified roles “will remain career positions filled on a nonpartisan, merit basis but will be classified as at-will positions.” It said that will exempt them “from the standard, often burdensome adverse action and appeals procedures that currently make it difficult to address poor performance or misconduct.”

Chris Megerian, The Associated Press