Schedule F and rebranded “Schedule Career/Policy” plans move thousands of policy-adjacent civil servants out of competitive service protections into excepted service, enabling rapid removals and politicized hiring. The shift concentrates personnel power in the White House and OPM and raises due process concerns for career staff.
In 2025–2026 drafts, agencies were told to identify up to 700,000 roles for possible conversion; unions and courts flagged the risk of mass at-will conversions similar to the late-2020 Schedule F order that was paused after legal and political pushback.