Name: Trump’s Reforms Could Radically Overhaul, Consolidate Federal Workforce
Uploaded: 2025-01-24T05:54:20.000Z
Description: WASHINGTON–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.

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WASHINGTON–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 <a href="https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/01/return-to-in-person-work/" target="_blank" rel="nofollow noopener">ordered</a> 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 <a href="https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/01/hiring-freeze/" target="_blank" rel="nofollow noopener">directed</a> 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, a monthly average of 126,327, according to <a href="https://www.fedscope.opm.gov/ibmcognos/bi/v1/disp?b_action=powerPlayService&m_encoding=UTF-8&BZ=1AAABuwvODpp42pVOwW6DMAz9mZi2h1WOEyY4cEgIqBwGXeGy08RoOlVjMBH_X1NAW7fd9p4s2c%7EPTw7qal831SkrTOLmcbKF2QLRVcsoirlOBXKUEQpleIYm5CKWRut7CUS7wN9m6pQejqo5JEB5Nw6zHWag%7EDL2ZztBqEHi0L5bEGZzbLu39tW6Z9V11rnrOLgNhAYo%7E1g3v_03FxA2kx3OQLjNn4DQEwjvgPBrljufFZg63adVWWZpU1RlqR6y5L85gX5MLoiMIyLnyBhDFiIjZJ6MfeeBP%7EZhqu8BY9PO9o%7EEgCIggUCWA70AxavAbwJbACS8%7EQf4wqVbf1lq%7EWDFJ1yrbck%3D" target="_blank" rel="nofollow noopener">FedScope</a>.

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 <a href="https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/01/restoring-accountability-to-policy-influencing-positions-within-the-federal-workforce/" target="_blank" rel="nofollow noopener">measure</a> 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.

The Schedule Policy/Career reforms concern the approximately 7,000 members of the Senior Executive Service (SES), who earn between $180,000 and $246,000 annually. These positions are the top policy-making jobs that career service employees can occupy. The order could cover additional positions below the SES in the future.

The fourth order complemented the third because it <a href="https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/01/restoring-accountability-for-career-senior-executives/" target="_blank" rel="nofollow noopener">established</a> a direct line of accountability from SES managers through their respective agency heads to the president. The order directs that all SES managers must implement the president’s and the administration’s agenda and policies.

The order also abolished the current Executive Resources Boards (ERB), which oversee the SES managers in particular departments and agencies, and replaces them with new panels with majorities made up of politically appointed officials.

The fifth order <a href="https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/01/reforming-the-federal-hiring-process-and-restoring-merit-to-government-service/" target="_blank" rel="nofollow noopener">barred</a> federal agencies from hiring employees on the basis of race, sex, or religion and requires hiring decisions to “prioritize recruitment of individuals committed to improving the efficiency of the federal government, passionate about the ideals of our American republic, and committed to upholding the rule of law and the United States Constitution.”

The sixth Trump order is aimed at two specific groups and seeks to discourage federal workers from abusing their access to classified information. One of these two orders <a href="https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/01/holding-former-government-officials-accountablefor-election-interference-and-improper-disclosure-of-sensitive-governmental-information/" target="_blank" rel="nofollow noopener">withdrew</a> the national security clearances of the 51 intelligence community officials who signed an <a href="https://www.theepochtimes.com/us/conservative-group-files-fec-complaint-alleging-coordinated-election-influence-for-biden-5524768" target="_blank" rel="nofollow noopener">October 2020 letter</a> claiming the Hunter Biden laptop computer had “all the classic earmarks of Russian disinformation.”
<figure id="attachment_5167494" class="wp-caption aligncenter" style="width: 640px;" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-5167494">

Former National Security Adviser John Bolton speaks to reporters after a panel discussion hosted by the National Council of Resistance of Iran–U.S. Representative Office at the Willard InterContinental Hotel in Washington on Aug. 17, 2022. (Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images)

</figure>
The order also withdrew the clearance of John Bolton, who was Trump’s national security adviser for a period in 2019. The order said Bolton’s 2019 memoir posed “a grave risk” of leaking classified information.

The last of the seven orders <a href="https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/01/regulatory-freeze-pending-review/" target="_blank" rel="nofollow noopener">directed</a> a 60-day freeze of all proposed regulations that have not been published in the Federal Register for public comment and prevents the issuance of any new proposed rules not previously reviewed by a Trump appointee.

Even before Trump officially issued these seven executive orders, Rep. Gerry Connolly (D-Va.) and three House colleagues introduced legislation designed to block the Schedule F/Schedule Policy Career order.

The largest federal worker union, the American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE), criticized Trump’s proposed reforms, especially the Schedule Policy/Career order.

“President Trump’s order is a blatant attempt to corrupt the federal government by eliminating employees’ due process rights so they can be fired for political reasons. It will remove hundreds of thousands of federal jobs from the nonpartisan, professional civil service and make them answerable to the will of one man,” AFGE President Everett Kelley said in a <a href="https://www.afge.org/publication/trump-order-politicizing-federal-workers-threatens-integrity-of-government-work-union-leader-says/" target="_blank" rel="nofollow noopener">statement</a>.

<span style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">National Treasury Employees Union officials <a href="https://www.nteu.org/media-center/news-releases/2025/01/21/skedflawsuit" target="_blank" rel="noopener">filed suit</a> on Jan. 21 against the order.</span>

<em>From <a href="https://www.theepochtimes.com/us/trump-reforms-could-radically-overhaul-consolidate-federal-workforce-5796375">The Epoch Times</a></em>

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