Schedule F appointment

Schedule Policy/Career, commonly known by its former name Schedule F, is a job classification for appointments in the excepted service of the United States federal civil service for permanent policy-related positions. The purpose of the provision is to increase the president's control over the federal career civil service by removing their civil service protections and making them easy to dismiss, which proponents stated would increase flexibility and accountability to elected officials. It was widely criticized as providing means to retaliate against federal officials for political reasons, impede the effective functioning of government, and providing risk to democracy. It has been estimated that tens or hundreds of thousands of career employees could be reclassified, increasing the number of political appointments by a factor of ten.

The classification, then known as Schedule F, existed briefly at the end of the first Trump administration during 2020 and 2021, but was never fully implemented and no one was appointed to it before it was repealed at the beginning of the Biden administration. Since mid-2022, the 2024 Trump campaign's plan to reinstate the provision attracted attention and commentary. In April 2024, the Biden administration adopted a regulation that would prevent most of the effects of a reinstatement of Schedule F, which was expected to take a future administration several months to repeal. It was reinstated as Schedule Policy/Career at the beginning of the second Trump administration in 2025.