We write in strong opposition to the Office of Personnel Management’s proposed rule titled “Improving Performance, Accountability and Responsiveness in the Civil Service,” published on April 23, 2025. Contrary to its stated intentions, this proposed rule would severely undermine the integrity and professionalism of the federal civil service by
reviving and expanding upon the discredited “Schedule F” policy from the first Trump administration—rebranded as “Schedule Policy/Career.”

If enacted, this rule would obliterate longstanding protections for career federal employees by wholesale reclassifying “policy-influencing” roles into a newly created excepted service category lacking merit system safeguards. This would effectively transform tens or even hundreds of thousands of nonpartisan public servants into at-will employees who could be terminated for political or ideological reasons. Such a shift represents the most extreme attempt in modern history to politicize the career federal workforce.

Read our full comments in the document below.

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