The Rule
OPM finalized a new Schedule Policy/Career rule in February 2026. It revives the core idea behind Schedule F: move policy-related career jobs into a category with fewer protections.
At the same time, agencies are still dealing with layoffs, buyouts, reassignments, and reports of new workplace surveillance. This goes beyond Washington staffing. The federal workforce touches food inspections, veterans’ benefits, workplace safety, weather forecasting, environmental enforcement, and the records that let people see what government is doing.
What Happens Without Oversight
This brief is part of the Federal Workforce hub, which tracks layoffs, reclassifications, and the broader dismantling of career civil service protections.
Authoritarian projects start by hollowing out the institutions that slow down abuse, preserve records, and enforce rules evenly.
If career staff are pushed out and replaced with loyalists, bad orders meet less resistance. Public harm becomes easier to hide.
What You Can Do
- Write your representative about federal worker protections →
- Call your House representative at (202) 224-3121 and ask whether they support turning career civil service jobs into political loyalty tests. A voicemail still counts.
- Ask one local civic group or union contact to circulate the same action.
Update, June 17, 2026: The Trump administration finalized Schedule Policy/Career, moving approximately 8,000 career federal employees out of civil service protections and making them dismissible at will. OPM Director Scott Kupor issued accompanying guidance on June 8 stating that positions under the new classification must still be filled based on merit, not political affiliation.
Ronald Sanders, a NAPA Fellow and former OPM associate director who resigned over the original Schedule F in October 2020, published a commentary in Federal News Network arguing that the June 8 OPM guidance prevents the new schedule from functioning as a partisan tool. Sanders noted that the final scope of 8,000 reclassified positions is far below the 50,000 positions that earlier projections anticipated.
New research from the Partnership for Public Service, drawn from a nationally representative poll of 1,000 adults conducted in March and April 2026, found that 76% of Americans consider a nonpartisan civil service important for democracy, a 10-percentage-point increase from 2025. Among Republicans, that figure rose from 66% to 78% in one year. The poll carries a 3.1% margin of error.