"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."
President Donald Trump is on the verge of fully implementing an order that will make it easier to fire tens of thousands of federal workers.
In his first term, Trump issued an executive order creating a federal job classification known as Schedule F, which would make it easier for federal officials to fire employees with that classification. But it was rescinded by his successor, President Joe Biden.
After Trump returned to the White House in January 2025, Trump issued a similar executive order, instructing the Office of Personnel Management — the federal agency that handles human resource issues for the government — to change the federal hiring process to focus on "merit" and eliminate diversity, equity and inclusion policies.
On Feb. 5, the Office of Personnel Management issued a final rule on the new employment category, called Schedule/Policy Career.
This rule, set to take effect March 9, will classify those employees' roles as "at-will positions," which means the employees can be terminated at any time and without specific reason, and make it more difficult for federal workers to fight their firing
The category covers policy-focused employees who are not presidential appointees. Traditionally, these positions have been considered nonpolitical and have had civil service protections, meaning that they could not be fired for political reasons and they could challenge their termination. But the new rule would remove these protections for an estimated 50,000 workers, OPM said. The president will decide which federal workers will be classified under the Schedule Policy/Career rules, with OPM recommending positions for inclusion.
Under the rule, the president would issue an executive order to label a federal position in the new employment category, according to a memo. No such executive order has been issued yet.
OPM says the new job category is part of a broader effort to implement a "merit hiring plan," focusing on recruiting less from what the federal government called "elite" universities and more from state schools, "religious colleges and universities, community colleges, high schools, trade and technical schools, homeschooling groups, faith-based groups, American Legion, 4-H youth programs, and the military, veterans, and law enforcement communities."
The new merit hiring plan also would ask applicants how they would "help advance the President's Executive Orders and policy priorities," a break from the government's longstanding practice of nonpartisanship in hiring.
This class of employees would lose protections, including notice of a firing beforehand, an opportunity to respond to a firing and the right to appeal a removal to the Merit Systems Protection Board, a federal agency tasked with considering challenges to firings of civil servants.
OPM says the new rule "will allow agencies to quickly remove employees from critical positions who engage in misconduct, perform poorly, or obstruct the democratic process."
Supporters of traditional civil service protections have criticized the changes.
"They're creating a system that in much more nefarious consequence will be enabling a loyalist regime, removing merit as the primary criteria for hiring or for performance review, and instituting a huge change that loyalty to the current president takes precedent over everything else, including the law and constitution," said Max Stier, the chief executive officer of the Partnership for Public Service, a nonprofit focused on improving government through democracy.
Stier's group published a study that found government at-will employment systems do not improve worker performance; to the contrary, the study found the systems can result in an increased risk of politicized firings unrelated to an employees' job performance.
A federal district court judge put on hold a lawsuit filed by Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility and allied groups shortly after Trump issued his original executive order, saying the challenge could resume once the final rule published. That has now happened, and one of the groups has signaled it will continue the legal fight.
The final rule is set to take effect March 9, and a legal challenge is uncertain. For now, we rate this Promise Kept.
Staff researcher Caryn Baird contributed to this report.
A proposed rule will make it easier for President Donald Trump's administration to fire workers.
The April 18 proposal would revise civil service regulations by reclassifying some employees in policy-related roles, stripping them of protections from being fired. Trump took similar action near the end of his first term, but Joe Biden revoked the order after taking office.
"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," Trump said April 18 on Truth Social. "This is common sense, and will allow the federal government to finally be 'run like a business.' We must root out corruption and implement accountability in our Federal Workforce!"
About 50,000 positions will be reclassified and moved into the Schedule Policy/Career category, approximately 2% of the federal workforce, a White House fact sheet said. (Trump had previously labeled these jobs "Schedule F.") Certain employees are exempt, including border patrol agents.
The federal government has shed more than double that amount in Trump's first three months in office. The New York Times confirmed at least 56,230 cuts through April 14, though some had been ordered for reinstatement. About 76,100 employees took buyouts. More cuts are expected, affecting about 12% of the 2.4 million civilian workforce, the Times reported.
The Office of Personnel Management's proposed rule is in line with Trump's Jan. 20 executive order that reinstated his first-term effort to more easily fire employees. Federal employee unions' lawsuits challenging Trump's order are pending.
The proposed rule doesn't directly move positions into the new classification — that will be done by a subsequent executive order after a final rule.
The proposed rule change is subject to a 30-day public comment period, said Joe Spielberger, Project on Government Oversight senior policy counsel. Depending on how many written comments are received and how quickly the administration wants to act, it could still take a couple of months to become reality.
Trump's promise is one of 75 Trump campaign promises PolitiFact is tracking on the MAGA-Meter. Over the next four years, we will periodically evaluate the administration's progress on Trump's 2024 campaign promises, just as we did with Barack Obama, Trump during his first term and Joe Biden.
The final outcome of Trump's promise to remove workers through Schedule F is not yet known. We rate this promise In the Works.
RELATED: Yes, Bill Clinton offered mass federal employee buyouts. Here's why Trump's program is different.
President Donald Trump issued an order to grant himself and his appointees more power to fire federal employees, but to be fully applied, it must survive multiple lawsuits.
Trump said on his presidential campaign website in 2023 that he would reissue an order he signed shortly before leaving office, "restoring the President's authority to remove rogue bureaucrats." In 2021, then-President Joe Biden overturned that Trump order from October 2020 almost immediately.
Hours after Trump was sworn in Jan. 20, he resurrected the order.
The order reclassifies certain federal employees as "Schedule F" employees, stripping them of protections from being fired. (Generally, administration documents including the order now refer to this as "Schedule Policy/Career," although the new order also used the term "Schedule F" once.)
"A critical aspect of this executive function is the responsibility to maintain professionalism and accountability within the civil service," Trump's order states. "This accountability is sorely lacking today."
The order marked the first step in Trump advancing his campaign promise on federal employment, which is one of 75 Trump campaign promises PolitiFact is tracking on the MAGA-Meter. Over the next four years, we will periodically evaluate the administration's progress on Trump's 2024 campaign promises, just as we did with Barack Obama, Trump during his first term and Joe Biden.
It is unclear how many thousands of workers could be placed under Schedule F or Schedule Policy/Career. Government Executive, a publication that covers federal workforce issues, said Schedule F "could strip tens of thousands of federal employees of their civil service protections and make them vulnerable to political loyalty tests."
The Project on Government Oversight, an advocacy group that has criticized Trump's order, wrote that "it was commonly estimated that the president's 2020 Schedule F policy would impact up to 100,000 or more federal employees, but (the 2025) Schedule Policy/Career gives the administration far more discretion to reclassify workers."
Multiple organizations have filed lawsuits challenging Trump's order, including worker advocacy groups and unions such as the AFL-CIO and the National Treasury Employees Union.
A Jan. 27 memo by Office of Personnel Management Acting Director Charles Ezell stated that agencies have 90 days to submit interim recommendations on positions to be placed into "Policy/Career." They can do that on a rolling basis.
The White House press office told PolitiFact in a statement that, as of Feb. 5, no workers have been placed into Schedule Policy/Career.
On Feb. 6, the Senate confirmed Russ Vought as Office of Management and Budget director. Vought directed the office in 2020 and is considered a key architect and backer of the plan to make more federal workers politically appointed.
During his January 2025 confirmation hearing, Vought praised Schedule F.
"It is to ensure that the president who has policy setting responsibility has individuals who are also confidential policymaking positions, are responding to his views, his agenda, and it works under the same basis that most Americans work on, which is they have to do a good job or they may not be in those positions for longer," Vought said.
This Trump order is one of several actions by his administration to shrink and reorganize the federal government workforce:
The Office of Personnel Management offered about 2 million workers the option to quit and be paid through Sept. 30, though that effort has been paused by the court. A White House official told the The Associated Press in an article published Feb. 7 that 65,000 people had accepted the offer. Other news outlets including ABC and USA Today reported the same number. Trump also signed an order to revoke federal diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives, known as DEI, which led to workers being placed on paid leave in several departments and agencies.
The Justice Department fired more than a dozen prosecutors involved in Trump-related investigations. FBI employees were asked to complete a survey about their involvement in cases related to the Jan. 6, 2021, assault on the U.S. Capitol, raising questions about their future employment.
Trump named billionaire Elon Musk to oversee a federal cost-cutting commission.
As promise trackers, our task is to evaluate Trump's progress without placing a value judgment on his promise. His order about Schedule F is the first step toward enacting his promise to reshape federal employment, though it remains uncertain whether courts will uphold it.
For now, we rate this promise In the Works.
RELATED: Yes, Bill Clinton offered mass federal employee buyouts. Here's why Trump's program is different.