Schedule F appointment

A Schedule F appointment was a job classification in the excepted service of the United States federal civil service that existed briefly at the end of the Trump administration during 2020–2021. It would have contained policy-related positions, removing their civil service protections and making them easy to fire. It was never fully implemented, and no one was appointed to it before it was repealed at the beginning of the Biden administration. The purpose of the provision was to increase the President's control over the federal career civil service. While proponents stated this would increase flexibility and accountability, it was widely criticized as providing means to retaliate against federal officials for political reasons. It was estimated that tens or hundreds of thousands of career employees could have lost their civil service protections, increasing the number of political appointments by a factor of ten. Since mid-2022, the 2024 Trump campaign's plan to reinstate the provision has 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, the repeal of which by a future administration would delay implementation by several months.