Joe Biden spent four years building a wall around the federal bureaucracy.
Trump just took a wrecking ball to it.
Now the senior federal employees who spent years blocking Republican presidents just lost the one thing protecting their jobs.
Schedule F Is Back and Civil Service Protections Are Gone
For decades, Washington's permanent class operated behind a near-impenetrable wall of civil service protections.
Senior policy advisers, agency directors, chiefs of staff, grant-makers, regulatory drafters – the people who actually run the federal government day to day – could not be removed without months of procedural battles, formal appeals, and litigation.
Civil service protections stretch back to 1883, when Congress passed the Pendleton Act to end the political spoils system – the idea that every new president could replace the entire federal workforce with loyalists.
What it actually created over the next 140 years was a class of unaccountable career officials who answered to no one – certainly not the American voter.
Trump called it the Deep State. Washington insiders called it "workforce stability."
James Sherk of the Domestic Policy Council called it what it is: "It's been a long-standing problem that it's almost impossible to fire a federal employee, even in cases of serious misconduct."
The executive order Trump signed June 3 changes that. It reclassifies roughly 8,000 senior policy-influencing positions into a new category called Schedule Policy/Career. Directors. Deputy directors.
Senior advisers. Policy analysts. Public affairs chiefs. Anyone with a hand in drafting regulations or deciding who receives federal grant money.
They are now at-will employees. They can be removed for poor performance, misconduct, corruption – or for actively working to undermine the president's agenda.
How Biden Buried Schedule F and What Trump Just Did About It
This fight started in October 2020, when Trump first tried to reclassify these positions with an executive order establishing Schedule F.
Biden killed it on his first day in office. Then his administration did something more calculated – it buried it.
The Biden team issued regulations specifically designed to prevent any future president from reviving the accountability measure. A legal moat around the permanent bureaucracy.
Trump promised voters on the campaign trail he would tear it down. He reinstated Schedule F on day one of his second term.
The Office of Personnel Management spent the next year finalizing the regulations, beating back 40,000 public comments – 94 percent opposed – and fighting off union lawsuits.
The June 3 executive order is the final step. After OPM finalized its rules in February, agencies needed a presidential order before conversions could begin. That order is now signed.
The White House confirmed all removal decisions will be made "without respect to political affiliation." Office of Personnel Management chief Scott Kupor said these positions must be filled by people "willing to and capable of carrying out" the president's directives.
The Federal Workers Earning 200000 a Year Who Can Now Be Fired
The federal workforce now stands at its lowest level since 1966. That reflects buyouts, voluntary departures, and the restructuring Trump launched in his first days back in office.
The employees targeted by the order are a different problem entirely. Nearly all of them sit at GS-15 – the highest level on the federal pay scale – pulling paychecks approaching $200,000 a year.
These are not administrators processing paperwork. They shape regulations, direct grant money, and draft the guidance documents that determine how laws actually reach the American people.
Before Trump’s executive order, removing one of them required written notice, a formal response period, an appeals process, and often years of litigation. Career bureaucrats learned long ago that the process itself was the protection. Drag it out long enough and the administration changes.
Trump's White House watched this play out in real time. Career officials blocked immigration enforcement, defied personnel directives, and – in the White House's own words – engaged in "subversion of Presidential directives." Those are now listed as explicit grounds for removal in the executive order.
The 8,000 positions covered by the order are a fraction of the 50,000 OPM originally estimated could eventually be reclassified. The administration has not ruled out expanding that pool.
What Democrat politicians built over four years to insulate their people inside the permanent government is coming apart. Eight thousand names at a time.
Sources:
- Misty Severi, "Trump signs executive order moving career federal workers into 'at will' roles," Just the News, June 3, 2026.
- "Fact Sheet: President Donald J. Trump Increases Accountability in the Federal Workforce," White House, June 3, 2026.
- Brie Stimson, "Trump says career gov employees working on policy will be fired if they don't adhere to his agenda," Fox News, April 18, 2025.