On Wednesday the White House moved to strip civil service protections from about 8,000 federal workers, including many working at public health agencies.
The executive order effectively transforms these jobs—which include “epidemiologist,” “health scientist” and “toxicologist”—into “at-will” positions, meaning people in such roles can be readily fired without cause. The job category, initially called Schedule F and now called Schedule Policy/Career, strips these federal workers of protections meant to prevent political interference.
According to the order, “policy-influencing positions” must be transferred to the new status, thereby “ensuring that such employees can be removed for misconduct or poor performance is essential to protecting democratic self-government by an elected President.” This largely affects senior management roles at agencies that are spread widely across the federal government. The move reflects President Donald Trump’s long-standing claim that there is a “deep state” of federal workers who are resistant to his policies, and he has for years called for the schedule change in order to fire civil servants he has viewed as impediments to his policies. The move already faces at least three legal challenges from federal employees.
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Notably, these jobs also include positions that don’t involve policy work, such as “human resources officer,” “customer experience strategist” and “data management specialist,” as well as for some scientist roles. The administration also instituted a political loyalty questionnaire for new federal hires in 2025. On Wednesday U.S. Office of Personnel Management director Scott Kupor said that the new directive would not lead to a political “litmus test” for civil servants, according to Government Executive.
A Union of Concerned Scientists analysis of the affected positions suggest up to 816 involve "independent federal science and STEM related activities," at agencies. "These career experts shouldn’t have to go to work each day fearful that they could be fired simply for sharing scientific truths and evidence with their bosses and the public," said Kristie Ellickson, a senior scientist with the Center for Science and Democracy at UCS.
“Just what I wanted for health scientists at the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry, fewer employment protections!” legal writer Chris Geidner posted on Bluesky. Mark Histed, a National Institutes of Health neuroscientist who has been critical of the administration, also voiced concern, posting on social media that people in certain jobs at science agencies, such as officials who oversee the peer review of scientific grant proposals, may be affected by the order.
Editor’s Note (6/4/26): This story has been updated with data and a statement from Kristie Ellickson of the Union of Concerned Scientists.