The US Office of Personnel Management (OPM) announced that it finalized a new rule establishing a new category of federal employee, designated “Schedule Policy/Career,” for high-ranking career employees in confidential, policy-determining, policy-making, or policy-advocating positions. Employees in the new category will be career employees in what is known as the “excepted service,” which makes them at-will employees who are not subject to certain removal procedures and protections. Under the rule, agencies will work to designate qualifying policy positions as Schedule Policy/Career which “will allow agencies to quickly remove employees from critical positions who engage in misconduct, perform poorly, or obstruct the democratic process by intentionally subverting Presidential directives.”
OPM’s final rule implements Executive Order 14171, signed by President Trump on the first day of his second term. EO 14171 directed OPM to ensure that career employees in key policy-influencing decisions could be subject to greater executive branch control through at-will removal. The final rule is scheduled to be published in the Federal Register on February 6, 2026 and will take effect on March 8, 2026.
The new rule has its origins in Executive Order 13957, signed by President Trump on October 21, 2020, during his first term, which established “Schedule F” to reclassify policy-oriented career employees as part of the “excepted service.” Upon taking office, President Biden almost immediately rescinded EO 13957 through Executive Order 14003, which revoked the creation of Schedule F and restored career service protections to those employees.
The final rule specifies that in the coming months, federal “agencies will assess their workforces and petition OPM to recommend that the President move specific positions into Schedule Policy/Career.” The President will determine which positions to reclassify and issue an Executive Order to implement the reclassification. A fact sheet published by The White House estimated that approximately 50,000 federal government employees, out of a total 2.1 million federal employees, would be moved to the new Schedule.