Connolly demands rescission of regulations reviving Schedule F

A top House Democrat on Thursday demanded that the Office of Personnel Management rescind proposed regulations reviving Schedule F, President Trump’s plan to strip tens of thousands of federal workers of their civil service protections.

The proposed rule, published earlier this month and open for public comment until May 23, reestablishes the since-renamed Schedule Policy/Career, a new job category within the excepted service for jobs that the administration deems to be “policy-related,” and outlines the process by which agencies should move to reclassify jobs within the federal government’s competitive service into the new category. Employees converted to Schedule Policy/Career would effectively become at-will employees.

OPM estimates that around 50,000 federal employees will be placed in the new job category, or around 2% of the civilian workforce.

In a letter to acting OPM Director Charles Ezell Thursday, Rep. Gerry Connolly, D-Va., ranking member of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, decried the proposal as an effort to “purge and politicize” the federal workforce and called for its rescission.

“The administration’s proposed rule has bipartisan opposition in Congress, because of the devastation it would inflict on the expertise and performance of our federal workforce, which would in turn hurt our constituents and the life-saving services they need and deserve,” he wrote. “I strongly urge the administration to rescind the proposed rule and cease its political assault on our federal workforce.”

Connolly argued that given the litany of scandals involving “incompetent” Trump appointees across government, including officials’ use of Signal to share classified information and the mistaken firings of nuclear security staffers by Department of Government Efficiency operatives, the government needs fewer political loyalists, not more.

“Nonpartisan civil servants, 30% of whom are veterans, help families in the wake of hurricanes and deadly fires, facilitate access to lifesaving payments like Social Security and unemployment insurance, and protect our national security,” Connolly wrote. “This rule would allow the Trump administration to summarily terminate a veteran who devoted their post-service career to the federal government and replace them with a 20-something political operative whose primary qualification is unquestioned fealty to the MAGA movement.”

Though the rule is not yet finalized, information has begun to trickle out regarding how agencies plan to use the new job classification. While the acting head of the Social Security Administration has ordered the application of Schedule Policy/Career to entire agency subcomponents and offices, the Federal Election Commission named just four positions that qualify as policy-related in a Federal Register filing this month. And the Defense Nuclear Safety Board briefly said that it would classify just one job into Schedule Policy/Career, though it quickly withdrew that determination.