Notes from the Field — Dispatch, June 4, 2026
The civil service protections that cover most federal employees were not created to protect the employees. They were created to protect the government’s work from the employees’ employers.
The Pendleton Civil Service Reform Act of 1883 ended the spoils system that had governed federal employment since Andrew Jackson — the practice of replacing government workers wholesale with the new president’s political allies after each election. The spoils system had produced a federal workforce that changed with every administration, staffed by people whose primary qualification was loyalty to the winning party and whose tenure depended on the next election’s outcome. Pendleton established competitive examinations, merit-based hiring, and protection from removal for reasons other than performance and misconduct. The principle was not that federal employees deserved job security. The principle was that the government’s functions — tax collection, border control, currency management, disease surveillance, military procurement — required institutional knowledge and continuity that a rotation of political loyalists would destroy.
On June 3, 2026, President Trump signed an executive order formally placing approximately 8,000 senior career federal positions into a new employment classification called Schedule Policy/Career. These employees — senior officials in positions characterized as “confidential, policy-determining, policy-making, or policy-advocating” — were converted to at-will status. They can now be removed for any reason, with no right of appeal to the Merit Systems Protection Board. Their whistleblower complaints, if any, will be investigated by their own agency rather than by an independent body. The administration has not ruled out expanding the pool beyond 8,000. The Office of Personnel Management originally estimated 50,000 positions could be reclassified; the current order is a first installment.
The positions affected are not clerical. The appendix to the executive order lists chief information officers, chief information security officers, chief technology officers, and senior officials across regulatory and national security agencies. These are the career officials who maintain institutional continuity across administrations — who know where the data systems are, how the compliance frameworks were built, what the legal constraints on agency action are, and why specific policies were designed the way they were. They are, in the administration’s framing, the people who impede the efficient execution of presidential directives. They are, in the framing of the 1883 reformers, the people the spoils system was replaced to protect.
The administration’s stated justification is accountability. OPM Director Scott Kupor said at a press briefing that the president is elected by the American people, that the executive branch implements the president’s policy agenda, and that therefore the people in policy-influencing positions must be willing to carry out presidential directives or be removable if they won’t. He also said there would be no political loyalty tests — that reclassified employees could not be fired based on political affiliation, and that those who were fired could still seek protection under whistleblower statutes. The federal law prohibiting removal based on political affiliation, he noted, would remain in place. What he did not say is that the employees would no longer have the independent appeal mechanism that currently enforces that law. It would now be up to agencies to enforce it themselves — the same agencies whose leadership is appointed by the president whose directives these employees are now required to implement.
The White House fact sheet framing this action cites a survey showing that a plurality of senior federal employees in Washington would ignore a lawful presidential order they considered bad policy. It does not identify the survey, its methodology, its sample size, or when it was conducted. It presents this finding as justification for removing due process protections from 8,000 people.
The order is facing multiple lawsuits. Democracy Forward argues it violates the Constitution and the 1978 Civil Service Reform Act. Protect Democracy has filed an amended complaint describing Schedule Policy/Career as a return to a spoils system staffed by political loyalists rather than neutral professionals. The conservative Supreme Court majority has signaled openness to the theory underlying the order — that Article II gives the president full control over the executive branch, including positions Congress designed to be insulated from White House control. A decision on that question is expected.
The Pendleton Act took forty-six years to build after Jackson’s spoils system began. The system it replaced was not abolished because it was corrupt in the criminal sense. It was abolished because it was structurally incompatible with a government that needed to function consistently across administrations. What the June 3 order does — incrementally, with 8,000 positions and an announced intention to expand — is begin to reconstruct the structural conditions the 1883 reformers spent their careers correcting.
The silence won’t feel like silence. It will just feel like the way things are.
Essay 3 — The People in the Room
(See also: Essay 12 — The Converging Frames)
Broken Frames — Block 9: The Darkened Room (not yet published — thebrokenframes.substack.com/s/broken-frames)
Copyright 2026 — Steve Sagnotti
Sources:
NPR, “Trump Strips Job Protections from 8,000 Federal Workers,” June 3, 2026.
Federal News Network, “Trump Moves About 8,000 Federal Positions to Schedule Policy/Career,” June 3, 2026.
CNN, “Trump Makes It Easier to Fire 8,000 Federal Workers by Making Them At-Will Employees,” June 3, 2026.
Government Executive, “Trump Signs Order Moving Thousands of Federal Employees into Schedule F,” June 3, 2026.
FedScoop, “Nearly 8,000 Federal Positions Lose Workforce Protections Under Trump Order,” June 4, 2026.
White House, “Fact Sheet: President Donald J. Trump Increases Accountability in the Federal Workforce,” June 3, 2026.
White House, “Implementing Schedule Policy/Career in the Excepted Service” (Executive Order text), June 3, 2026.
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