President Trump signed nine binders of executive orders in front of an arena full of supporters on Monday night, with actions ranging from a regulatory freeze to requiring all federal workers to return to the office full-time. While the full implications of Trump’s Day One actions for energy and climate are still unfolding, one of the most consequential executive orders so far — a sweeping rollback of 80 of former President Joe Biden’s executive orders — quietly paved the way for the return of Schedule F, which converts at least 50,000 career civil servants to “at-will” political employees. He later formally reinstated Schedule F during a signing in the White House.
Trump first signed an executive order creating the new employment category in October 2020, though Biden reversed it shortly after taking office via Executive Order 14003 — Protecting the Federal Workforce. While Trump didn’t have much time to implement the policy last time around, he revoked Executive Order 14003 in his omnibus executive order targeting Biden’s policies just hours into his second shot at the presidency. The move cued up his formal reinstatement of Schedule F Monday evening. “Most of those bureaucrats are being fired,” Trump boasted during a speech at the Capital One Arena in Washington, D.C., ahead of the signing on Monday night. “They’re gone. Should be all of them but some sneak through; we have to live with a couple, I guess.”
As I’ve written before, the reclassification is designed to “make it easier to replace ‘rogue’ or ‘woke’ civil servants and would-be whistleblowers, a.k.a. ‘the deep state,’ with party-line faithful.” The Trump administration has characterized it as giving him “full control of the government,” with the Schedule F-specific Executive Order issued under the title “Restoring Accountability to Policy-Influencing Positions Within the Federal Workforce.” Russ Vought, Trump’s controversial pick to lead the Office of Management and Budget and the mind behind Schedule F, has further said that it is the aim of the policy to give a “whole-of-government unwinding” to the “climate fanaticism” of the Biden years.
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The most concerning part of the Schedule F policy is the anticipated loss of institutional knowledge. “What we’re going to end up with is an executive branch that’s just uninformed,” Daniel Farber, the director of the Center for Law, Energy, and the Environment at the University of California, Berkeley, previously told me. Climate-related experts, in particular, could face replacement by “spoils system” hires.
Democratic Senator Andy Kim of New Jersey drilled Vought on Schedule F during the OMB nominee’s confirmation hearing last week, during which Vought insisted the goal of the policy “was not to fire anyone” but rather to ensure federal employees “do a good job or they may not be in those positions for longer.” He additionally told Democratic Senator Richard Blumenthal that he did not believe it would be unconstitutional for Trump to impound funds appropriated by Congress — including, potentially, unspent funds in the Inflation Reduction Act or the CHIPS for America Act.
Editor’s note: This story has been updated to reflect Trump’s signing of an executive order reinstating Schedule F.
