The New and Improved Schedule F is Now Schedule P/C
Keith’s note: A final rule by the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) titled “Improving Performance, Accountability and Responsiveness in the Civil Service” (preview text) has dropped and will appear in the Federal Register tomorrow. Update: 91 FR 5580 – Improving Performance, Accountability and Responsiveness in the Civil Service is now formally posted in the Federal Register As implemented, it will lead to tens of thousands of nonpartisan career civil servants being moved to Schedule Policy/Career (Schedule P/C, a revived Schedule F) and being stripped of their civil service protections. The rule says that the President can fire anyone in the new Schedule P/C who disagrees with whatever the Administration says or does. Protect Democracy filed a suit a year ago and will be filing an amended complaint soon. [Earlier NASAWatch posts] Here’s the summary of what this all means according to OPM:
- “The Office of Personnel Management (OPM) is issuing a rule to increase career employee accountability. Agency supervisors report great difficulty removing employees for poor performance or misconduct. The final rule authorizes agencies to move policy-influencing positions into Schedule Policy/Career. These positions will remain career jobs filled on a nonpartisan basis. Yet they will be at-will positions excepted from adverse action procedures or appeals. This 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. The rule requires agencies to establish internal policies protecting employees from prohibited personnel practices.”
7 responses to “The New and Improved Schedule F is Now Schedule P/C”
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If this is implemented to include all supervisory positions it will be the final nail in the coffin of an independent civil service. NASA has a management that is not nearly as politicized as other agencies over the last year but this will be used by OMB to force out any manager who has a “disloyal” bumper sticker or who has openly expressed dissatisfaction with the cuts over the last year.
I’m still holding out hope that they’d fail at applying it that broadly.
I know for a fact they wouldn’t hesitate to just make every single employee at-will if they could (they tried and failed to strip civil service protections in the OBBBA), so the “policy-influencing” detail is a fig leaf they think they need to get away with it.
People have claimed they’ll stretch this to any GS 15, 14, or 13, but it’s going to be impossible to argue in court that a random low-level supervisor is somehow influencing administration policy.
Schedule F was a better name, since you’re “getting F-ed” when they put you on it.
But Schedule PC works too, since it will demand you be Politically Correct in the eyes of the administration.
This is not about accountability in terms of competence or qualifications. It is only a test of loyalty to a corrupt political regime, and it is likely to remove or drive away some of the most productive and creative employees. NASA has needed real reforms for a long time, and it has often been too difficult to remove employees that were truly under-performing. Accountability has been a problem not just with civil servants but with the contractor companies too. This change will not address those real problems. NASA has always had relatively few political appointees and that has been one of the great strengths of the agency. If implemented, this change will further damage NASA and other federal agencies and it should be resisted in every way possible.
As per this article in yesterday’s Wall Street Journal (https://www.wsj.com/politics/policy/trump-federal-employees-new-category-1051bc29?mod=politics_feat2_policy_pos5) the description provided here is erroneous and the comments are off the mark. What this change does is put in place a mechanism by which career senior, non-political appointed employees can no longer take actions to block or thwart the implementations of policies of a given administration that they disagree with. As a career Federal employees their responsibility and job is to implement the policies of the administration/President who is in office. If they so disagree with those policies the appropriate action is to “lay their badge on the table” and resign. If instead, they become a behind the scenes impediment to an administration reaching its goals, they deserve to be let go. This has nothing to do with Trump or Democrats or Republicans, it is how the government should operate. As noted, while NASA is not as politicized as other agencies, I observed this phenomena to some extent in my time at the agency. I think this furor has more to do with union concerns rather than the reality that the duty of the Executive branch is to implement the policies of the administration that is in power.
NASA is probably not the best Agency to use as an example, but the intent of civil service protections was to end the wholesale revamping of the civil service by each administration to reward cronies who will further it’s desires regardless of the law. It is also intended to prevent reprisal for activities unrelated to the employees job function , such as political activities. The purpose of this change is clearly aimed to ensure a compliant civil service that will serve the whims of the administration, even if it conflicts with their oath to defend the constitution.
And yes, these employees do have the choice to resign. The Justice Department and other agencies are hemorrhaging people who will not follow illegal orders.
I agree that this has nothing to do with Democrats or Republicans, but it absolutely has everything to do with Trump. No other republican or democratic administration has attempted to impose something like Schedule P/C, except for Trump’s. The non-partisan civil service system was created years ago for good reasons. Schedule P/C is a tool to strip away civil service protections from a vaguely defined group of career civil servants. This is not a way to address competence or efficiency any more than was the indiscriminate DOGE purge of 2025. This is about intimidation and silencing dissent and that is dangerous in spaceflight and just about everything else the government does. It is not how government should operate.