"President Trump's pledge to upend the federal workforce began rippling through Washington after he moved to force government employees back to the office five days a week, weakened their job protections and froze diversity efforts across the government.
Beginning at 5 p.m. Wednesday afternoon, all federal diversity, equity and inclusion staff were to be placed on paid leave because their offices were being shut down in accordance with an executive order halting DEI programs.
Inside a number of federal offices, a sense of anxiety and confusion permeated the atmosphere as employees parsed a flurry of executive orders and memos handed down by the new administration. Federal workers' unions rushed to shield employees from the changes, with one filing a lawsuit over an executive order aimed at peeling back civil-service protections.
"It's leaving a lot of uncertainty that folks have never really had to feel," said Michael Gibbons, 43 years old, a product-support manager for the Navy, adding that the environment undermined one of the key selling points to working in the federal government -- stability. "It seems like there is a level of distrust with how things are working."
Human-resources managers across the government had to call recent hires with start dates after Feb. 8 to inform them their offers had been rescinded. Managers fielded panicked inquiries from staff over returning to the office and from transgender employees about whether gender-neutral bathrooms would be eliminated from federal offices. Employees expressed concern over whether the Department of Government Efficiency teams dispatched to agencies would have the security clearances to review sensitive information.
Members of the Cyber Safety Review Board, which had been probing the Chinese hacking of U.S. telecommunications networks that ensnared Trump's own phone calls, were informed they had been dismissed pursuant to a Department of Homeland Security order disbanding all advisory committees, according to people familiar with the matter. Their review is now in limbo and might be terminated. DHS, which oversees the board, declined to comment.
Meetings on diversity, equity and inclusion issues were canceled, some quietly and some with large pronouncements.
At the Federal Communications Commission, Chairman Brendan Carr said he was shutting down the agency's diversity, equity and inclusion advisory group, rescinding an action plan promoting DEI, and eliminating the topic from the agency's strategic plan and budget, among other steps.
At the Food and Drug Administration, employees wondered who was actually in charge of the agency, people familiar with the matter said. Biden's FDA commissioner, Dr. Robert Califf, was gone, but there had been no official word from the White House or the transition team on who was supposed to run the show until Trump's pick, Dr. Marty Makary, could be confirmed.
Employees there felt nervous about the details of a return to the office five days a week because the agency was already short on desk and parking space at its White Oak, Md., headquarters even before the pandemic. "I guess we will all be sitting cross-legged on the floor," said a federal employee at another agency.
At DHS, acting Secretary Benjamine Huffman issued a memo ordering employees to work in person, calling remote work an "important tool" but one that is "subject to significant abuse." Last year, he said, nearly a quarter of total hours worked by Coast Guard personnel was done remotely.
DHS employees were waiting on additional directions on when they would be required to return and whether there would be exceptions -- for employees who have moved out of the Washington area, for example.
An employee at the Energy Department's Loan Programs Office, which disburses funds to clean-energy projects, estimated that about half of the office's staff work remotely. Many of those people will likely quit or be forced out, the employee said.
In a late-night post on Truth Social, Trump said the presidential personnel office was "actively in the process of identifying and removing over a thousand Presidential Appointees" and singled out four in particular.
Among them was the celebrity chef Jose Andres, whom then-President Joe Biden had appointed to serve on the President's Council on Sports, Fitness and Nutrition. Andres shot back that his two-year term had already expired and that he had resigned.
At the Justice Department, several top career officials in the criminal and national-security divisions were removed or reassigned, people familiar with the matter said, the first part of a larger planned shake-up at the agency with which Trump, a Republican, has long sparred.
Employees there have been increasingly on edge as Trump and his nominees have attacked the department, with many leaving on their own for law firms and other private-sector jobs.
More than 15 people have so far moved, one person said. In addition to national security, some of the employees worked in areas such as international affairs.
The changes are meant to align the department with the Trump administration's priority of increased immigration enforcement, one person said.
The Justice Department declined to comment.
Some employees saw wiggle room in the wording of some executive actions. The one on returning to the office includes the words "consistent with applicable law" -- which some employees took to mean in accordance with the collective-bargaining agreements some agencies have signed, outlining their return-to-office policies. The order says the change must be implemented "as soon as practicable."
Unions representing federal workers vowed to protect them, arguing there isn't a legitimate reason to slash the workforce, which has remained relatively stable in size in recent decades.
The unions take issue with several orders pertaining to the federal workforce, including Monday's reinstatement of a plan Trump issued in October 2020 to eliminate job protections for federal workers, known as Schedule F. It was blocked at the start of the Biden administration in 2021.
The National Treasury Employees Union, which represents 150,000 workers at 37 federal agencies and departments, sued the Trump administration late Monday in federal district court for the District of Columbia, saying the order undermined merit-based civil service and took away due-process rights from career civil servants.
Doreen Greenwald, the union's national president, said the executive order was a "dangerous step backward to a political spoils system that Congress expressly rejected 142 years ago."
Another executive order signed by Trump imposes a hiring freeze and requires the Office of Management and Budget to submit a plan by mid-April "to reduce the size of the Federal Government's workforce through efficiency improvements and attrition."" [1]
1. President Begins to Dismantle And Reshape Federal Workforce. Thomas, Ken; Ballhaus, Rebecca;
Ellis, Lindsay. Wall Street Journal, Eastern edition; New York, N.Y.. 23 Jan 2025: A1.
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