The Lawfare Podcast Lawfare Archive: Nick Bednar on Trump's Civil Service Executive Orders
Feb 22, 2026
Nick Bednar, University of Minnesota law professor who analyzes civil service rules, breaks down Trump’s Day 1 civil service orders. He explains Schedule F, hiring and firing changes, who decides classifications, and likely legal fights. They also cover DOGE, telework and DEI rollbacks, revoked offers, and how these moves could politicize and reshape the federal workforce.
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Schedule F Broadly Reclassifies Career Employees
- Schedule F reinstatement targets policymaking roles to shift many career employees into an excepted service.
- The order defines policymaking as viewing or circulating policy documents, potentially sweeping in tens of thousands of staff beyond traditional political appointees.
Legal Hook Relies On A Loaded Phrase
- Schedule F uses the phrase confidential policy determining policymaking or policy advocating character to remove competitive-hire and tenure protections.
- That phrase appears elsewhere to exempt noncareer political appointees from due process and anti-partisanship protections, so expansion could erase firing safeguards.
OPM Rules Create A Defensible Barrier
- Biden-era OPM regulations narrowly defined policymaking as noncareer political appointments and preserved tenure when reclassified.
- Trump's EO tries to declare those regulations inoperative, raising a likely Administrative Procedure Act repeal challenge.
