Schedule F Would Turn Its Back on Rural Communities

Rural America is essential to making our country thrive, and a foundation of our economy. Rural areas make up approximately 97% of U.S. land — from port towns to mountain towns to prairie townships — and are home to approximately 20% of our population. And rural America is diverse. While common narratives often portray rural as being synonymous with white, approximately one quarter of rural Americans are people of color, from Black farmers in South Carolina, to Latino crop workers in California, to indigenous communities from the Navajo Nation in the Southwest, to Iñupiat and Yup’ik villages in Alaska. The work of rural Americans is as diverse as its population. Lumber workers in Washington state to shrimpers in Louisiana. Nurses, educators, military service members. Neighbors and friends who work at the hospital, community college, or state park. People who pick, produce, and process the food we eat, harness the energy and resources we depend on, and manage the small businesses that help fuel our local and national economies.

All of us — wherever we reside — depend on rural Americans and their contributions. However, despite the importance of these communities’ contributions to sustaining a healthy and thriving nation, federal policy has too often neglected rural Americans, leaving many people behind. And plans to dismantle the federal civil service will only compound this issue by replacing knowledgeable and committed agency workers with partisan lackeys.

Rural communities have faced decades of federal disinvestment. Over 30% of rural hospitals are at risk of closing. Many people lost their jobs during the COVID-19 pandemic, and it has been harder for rural areas to regain their pre-pandemic employment levels. The digital divide — limited access to affordable broadband internet — and less access to reliable public transportation also disproportionately impact rural communities, making it difficult for a lot of people to go to school, work, or medical appointments.

Misunderstanding and undervaluing rural communities can have dire consequences for our democracy and the future of our country. Unfortunately, key figures in Washington would rather reinforce divisions and play politics with federal agencies that provide support to rural Americans despite the consequences it has on the lives of people living in rural areas across the country. A looming policy directive, previously called Schedule F, would gut federal agencies of the experienced, nonpartisan people we need to deliver services to rural communities.

In late 2020, then-President Donald Trump established Schedule F, a new type of category for federal workers. Schedule F would allow a president to remake the federal government by stripping certain workers’ rights and protections so it would be easier to fire them, especially if they did not demonstrate enough personal loyalty to the president. His term ended before the policy could be fully implemented, and if the Biden administration had left it in place, any administration could use it to completely gut key agencies or departments. The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) or Department of the Interior, for example, could have purged its nonpartisan experts and replaced them with people committed above all to advancing a partisan political agenda. This would increase exponentially the number of civil servants hired primarily because of their political beliefs rather than their qualifications. It was estimated that this policy would have impacted up to 100,000 employees or more from across the federal government. 

While some Americans may not feel like the USDA impacts their everyday lives, it not only oversees agricultural policy but is also responsible for food, nutrition programs such as SNAP and the school lunch program, natural resources, and rural housing, jobs, infrastructure, and development. Its Business Cooperative Programs partner with local communities and the private sector to create jobs and to train workers in order to strengthen local economic development. USDA’s Rural Utilities Service provides funding and assistance for foundational infrastructure like water and electricity. USDA’s Rural Housing Service helps families buy or rent affordable homes or apartments in rural communities.

All of these programs help rural Americans — and indeed all Americans — to build safe, productive, and fulfilling lives. But it is complicated to properly administer the programs so that people get the tools and resources they actually need. It requires complex policymaking and close coordination between federal agencies, states, local governments, communities, and stakeholders. All these entities play essential roles in ensuring that federal funds get to intended communities and that they’re used efficiently to address local needs. That is why it is so critical that agencies are staffed with qualified people who have the knowledge and experience to manage these processes and to ensure they serve people fairly and effectively.

In a foreshadowing of the impacts a full-scale attack on the civil service would have, the Trump administration rashly relocated two USDA agencies in 2019 — the Economic Research Service and the National Institute of Food and Agriculture — allegedly in retaliation for government employees publishing objective reports that the administration felt hurt them politically. Then-Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney even acknowledged that this move was a veiled attempt to fire the federal workers because many would simply quit rather than uproot and move to a different part of the country.

And it worked. This move led to an exodus of scientists and researchers, decimating the agencies’ workforce by more than half and reducing what the agencies could accomplish. By 2021, the Economic Research Service, which produces reports that are critical to rural America — on everything from farm households’ well-being and economic impacts on rural communities to global hunger and food safety — had cut their number of reports in half.

USDA eventually recovered from this turnover in terms of numbers of employees but not in demographic makeup, especially among Black employees. Between fiscal year 2018 to fiscal year 2021, the percentage of Black staff in the research service dropped from 22% to 9%, while white staff increased from 63% to 75%. At the food and agriculture institute, Black staff dropped from 47% to 19%, while white staff increased from 38% to 65%.  

Thus, the administration lost critical expertise, institutional knowledge, and diversity at a time when the rural American population was becoming more diverse and its needs were shifting. Losing that expertise and diversity made the agency less representative of the nation’s population and less able to deliver quality services that meet the local needs of the communities the agency serves. 

For as much as we benefit from the work and contributions of rural Americans, our government doesn’t live up to its responsibility to adequately invest in the future of rural Americans, to make expert policy decisions in their best interests, or to ensure that opportunities support hardworking people as they strive to provide for their families and live good lives. Federal workers support rural communities in many different ways, by building and maintaining roads, bridges, and highways; helping families access affordable housing, health care, and other services; and investing in local infrastructure projects that grow communities and boost local economies.

What is most concerning about playing partisan politics with important government agencies and services is not the impact it has on those agencies but the impact it has on the people in the communities those agencies serve. Under a partisan civil service, a president could weaponize services and benefits against perceived political enemies, wherever they live — rural communities in red states or blue states. They could reroute or deny federal funding to benefit their allies and to punish their opponents, even ordinary people who happen to be registered with one political party instead of another. What’s worse is that by choosing winners and losers, those advocating for increased partisanship would fuel increased resentment and misunderstanding to strengthen their hold on political power, regardless of the consequences.

Rural families and communities who make our country strong deserve a federal government that serves them fairly and efficiently and ensures they have the tools and resources they need to provide for themselves, their families, and their futures. A federal government that implements policies like Schedule F would be turning its back on rural Americans by putting in charge people who pledged their loyalty to a president, not to serving the American people.