President Donald Trump wasted no time following his Jan. 20 swearing-in to sign dozens of executive orders, including seven specifically aimed at fundamentally changing the culture, costs, and size of the federal workforce.
Most immediately, Trump ordered the 2.3 million career civil service government employees to report for work at their official duty stations, thus ending the teleworking started in 2020 because of the COVID-19 pandemic.
A second order directed federal officials to freeze all hiring for positions vacant as of Jan. 20 and bar the creation of new jobs. The federal government hired 631,639 new civilian workers from 2020 to 2024, an annual average of 126,327, according to FedScope.
The same order also directed the directors of the White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB) and the U.S. Office of Personnel Management (OPM) to work with the newly created Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) to “submit a plan to reduce the size of the federal government’s workforce through efficiency improvements and attrition.” The order did not specify how many jobs are to be eliminated.
Several of the remaining five orders on the civil service are already hotly contested by congressional Democrats with large numbers of federal employees in their districts and states, as well as by professional associations and labor unions.
The most controversial is the return of Schedule F, an executive order that Trump signed in 2020 only weeks before losing his reelection campaign to Biden. Now renamed as the “Schedule Policy/Career,” the measure is needed, according to the Trump White House, because removing an incompetent government worker typically takes at least 18 months and can go much longer.
“Only 41 percent of civil service supervisors are confident that they can remove an employee who engaged in insubordination or serious misconduct. Even fewer supervisors—26 percent—are confident that they can remove an employee for poor performance,” the order stated.
Nice work, keep up the great job Trump. Maybe in a year or two our taxes will decrease
It needs a complete review and overhaul.
Get rid of the USAJobs hiring system – it has built-in AA and DEI loopholes!
Get rid of the internal civil service transfer advantage – the lower performing use it to move around to hide their incompetence while getting promoted!
Get rid of Government Employee Unions – there is already a pay-scale in place and unions hide underperformers!