Public Management for Populists: Trump's Schedule F Executive Order and the Future of the Civil Service

• Published date: 01 January 2022
• Author: Donald P. Moynihan
• Date: 01 January 2022
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/puar.13433

174 Public Administration Review • January | Fe bruary 20 22

Donald P. Moynihan

McCourt School of Public Policy, Georgetown University

Public Management for Populists: Trump’s Schedule F

Executive Order and the Future of the Civil Service

Abstract: For over a century, the value of employee protections and limits on direct political control has been the

sine qua non of a merit-based bureaucracy for the US public service. Such assumptions are at odds with the desire

of populist governments to exert control over institutions of governance. This tension emerged during the Trump

administration. Trump’s Schedule F Executive Order sought to transform much of the career public service into

political appointees, allowing them to be removed if they were not performing according to the president’s goals. In the

chaotic last days of the Trump administration, the order was not implemented, but Schedule F offers both a glimpse of

an alternative process for public management policymaking that excludes the field of public administration, as well as

a potential harbinger for the future of the US civil service.

Evidence for Practice

• Schedule F would have allowed political appointees to turn any career official with a policy advisory role into

a political appointee, removing job protection for tens or even hundreds or thousands of public servants.

• The Trump administration developed the most significant proposed change to the federal civil service since

its inception in relative secrecy, via executive order rather than legislation, relying on a view of administration

emerging from conservative think-tanks and legal theory rather than public administration scholarship or

practice.

• While proposed as a means to improve political responsiveness and performance-based accountability, the

effort invited a politicization akin to both the US spoils systems and populist regimes that seek to capture

control of independent institutions of governance.

• Congress needs to establish clear limits in its delegation of personnel power to the executive branch to

prevent wholesale politicization.

On October 21st 2020, President Trump

signed Executive Order 13957: Creating

Schedule F in the Excepted Service. Its

innocuous title belied its import. Schedule F would

have represented the most substantive change to the

US civil service system since its creation in 1883. In

addition to allowing the president to hire a new class

of political appointees, it allowed agencies to convert

existing career officials with policymaking roles

into political positions, removing their employment

protections. In other words, it gave the president or

his appointees the power to fire potentially hundreds

or thousands of career officials at will.

Schedule F was a surprise, the product of a secretive

process. The federal employees who would be most

affected, members of Congress with oversight of

government, and the broader public administration

community did not see it coming. The surprise was

by design. Stakeholders were deliberately kept in the

dark. Schedule F represented a late effort by Trump to

leave a lasting governmentwide impact on the federal

service he alleged was full of enemies, while bypassing

Congress.

In the chaotic last days of the Trump administration,

Schedule F fell apart. Most agencies did not submit

lists of names of career officials to be converted

to appointee status, and the paperwork was not

completed for those that did. Two days after being

inaugurated, President Biden reversed the order.

However, alumni of the Trump administration

are promoting Schedule F as a civil service reform

(Sherk 2021). Tr ump’s Domestic Policy Council

Chief suggested that “there is a marker around

this” for future administrations (Rein, Dawsey, and

Olorunnipa 2020).

For the good government and public administration

community, Schedule F offers three sobering insights.

First, there is no longer a broad consensus about the

role and standing of public servants. For much of the

Public Administration Review,

Vol. 82, Iss. 1, pp. 174–178. © 2021 by

The American Society for Public Administration.

DOI: 10.1111/puar.13433.

Donald P. Moynihan is the inaugural

McCourt Chair at the McCourt School

of Public Policy. His research examines

executive government management

reforms, performance management, and the

administrative burdens people encounter in

their interactions with government.

Email: donald.moynihan@georgetown.edu

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