President Donald Trump has revived a familiar executive order aiming to remove civil service protections for a large portion of the federal workforce, in effect making many career federal employees at-will and easier to fire.

The executive order essentially reinstates the original 2020 executive order on Schedule F. It was one of more than two dozen directives Trump signed on his first day in office, many of which called for major restructuring of the federal workforce.

The new Schedule F order changes the name of the “F” classification to a “policy/career” classification of federal employees. Trump said his action will “restore accountability” to the federal workforce.

“A critical aspect of this executive function is the responsibility to maintain professionalism and accountability within the civil service. This accountability is sorely lacking today,” Trump wrote in the executive order. “Accountability is essential for all federal employees, but it is especially important for those who are in policy-influencing positions.”

Trump’s revived Schedule F order aims to reclassify tens of thousands of federal employees in “policy-influencing” roles. If implemented, the directive would place feds in those roles outside merit system principles, making it easier for agencies to remove them from their positions.

In 2020, the initial Schedule F order went largely unimplemented since it came at the end of the Trump administration and former President Joe Biden rescinded it in January 2021.

Trump said in the new executive order that the action is needed “due to numerous and well-documented cases of career federal employees resisting and undermining the policies and directives of their executive leadership.”

Federal unions and some lawmakers, however, pushed back against Trump’s latest efforts. The National Treasury Employees Union quickly filed a lawsuit against Trump officials. The union argued that converting career federal jobs into political positions is unlawful. The lawsuit alleges that Trump’s order goes against established federal hiring principles, due process rights of federal employees and Office of Personnel Management regulations.

“The American people deserve to have day-to-day government services in the hands of qualified professionals who are committed to public service and stay on the job regardless of which political party holds the White House,” NTEU National President Doreen Greenwald said in a statement. “The employees we represent staff the federal agencies that secure the nation, safeguard the public health, promote economic growth and protect consumers from fraud. Their jobs require training and expertise in their chosen field so as to provide the best possible service to all Americans, not passing a political loyalty test.”

The American Federation of Government Employees similarly said efforts to remove civil service protections are a thinly veiled attempt to politicize the career federal workforce.

“America’s civil service is a merit system protected from corruption by due process rights for federal employees,” AFGE National President Everett Kelley said in a statement. “Corrupting the civil service by reclassifying professional jobs into Schedule F is against the interests of American citizens who expect that federal employees be hired solely based on their ability to carry out the duties of their position.”

Just ahead of Trump’s executive order Monday, a group of lawmakers also reintroduced the bicameral Saving the Civil Service Act last week. The bill aims to codify civil service protections for the federal workforce by banning agencies from reclassifying career federal employees without congressional approval.

“Trump’s executive order is designed to starve and undermine the federal workforce,” Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Va.) said in a statement. “We appreciate the steps the Biden administration took to complicate Trump’s ability to put this order into motion and will continue to push for our legislation to halt it altogether.”

The actual implementation of Trump’s new executive order is unclear. Max Stier, president and CEO of the nonprofit Partnership for Public Service, said because of the Biden administration’s 2024 final rule reinforcing civil service protections for career feds in policy-related roles, the Trump administration would have to go through the same rulemaking process before agencies would be able to take any further steps to reclassify workers.

“In order for that to really drive real change, it would require undoing a rule, and that requires quite an intricate process to make happen,” Stier told reporters during a press conference Tuesday. Stier added that most of Trump’s executive actions “will require a lot of follow-on actions before you see any substantial change.”

“The attention being paid to government management is actually quite fundamental and important in delivery to the American people,” Stier said. “The underlying effort to undermine the professionalism and the apolitical nature of the civil service is the worst way to get there.”

Jenny Mattingley, the Partnership’s vice president of governmental affairs, said the wording of the new executive order is similar to the original Schedule F, but has a few revisions. For example, a provision from the 2020 order on federal hiring without merit system principles was removed from the new executive order.

“I think our question on this is how it will be implemented — it’s got a pretty broad definition still of who it applies to,” Mattingley told reporters. “This is yet another one where we’re going to continue to watch the implementation … It may be more of a signal to where they want to go to than, in fact, achieving the outcome that’s described there.”

More broadly than the one executive order on Schedule F, Stier cautioned that the implementation side of Trump’s slew of executive actions will be important to watch.

“Executive orders are often used more as performative exercises than substantive governance exercises,” Stier said. “And it’s certainly true with the volume and diversity of EOs that we have here — many of them, frankly, require a lot of implementation before they affect any real change in the federal workforce or beyond.”

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