Federal News Network: “President-elect Donald Trump led policies during his first term in the White House that made it easier to fire large swaths of the federal workforce. On the campaign trail, Trump and his supporters have promised to revisit these policies if reelected — especially an 11th-hour executive order that would have reclassified thousands of federal employees as “Schedule F” positions exempt from civil service protections. President Joe Biden rescinded Trump’s Schedule F executive order during his first week in office. Earlier this year, the Office of Personnel Management finalized a regulation that would make it harder for any subsequent administration to resurrect it. Federal workforce experts, however, warn these are not durable barriers, and that a second Trump administration can still implement Schedule F without facing many hurdles. OPM’s final regulation, at best, may set up legal and administrative challenges that could delay, but not stop, the return of Schedule F. Don Kettl, professor of public management and public policy at the University of Texas at Austin, said the Biden administration’s efforts to prevent the return of Schedule F amount to a “speed bump, at best.” The Biden administration tried to put up roadblocks, but they’re the kinds of things that you always see in the old police movies, where the speeding car comes up the roadblock and just crashes right through,” Kettl said. Even if the Trump administration is stalled in implementing Schedule F, experts say the Trump administration has other levers to pull, when it comes to putting punitive measures on individual federal employees or agencies. Among them, OPM has yet to finalize guidance that would keep agencies from putting federal employees on indefinite paid administrative leave…”