As part of a flurry of measures after returning to the White House, President Trump issued executive orders and memos which affect the federal workforce. Jaclyn Piatak writes that these measures, which include a hiring freeze, politicizing the Senior Executive Service and dismantling diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility roles, will effectively remove the neutrality of much of the federal workforce and may have severe negative consequences for the morale and effectiveness of the US government workers.
Shortly after inauguration into his second term on January 20, 2025, President Donald Trump issued a series of executive orders and memos aimed at the federal workforce. These executive orders and memos instituted a hiring freeze, turned the Senior Executive Service into political positions, and took aim at dismantling diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility (DEIA) as well as environmental justice offices and positions. These actions have grave impacts on protections from political coercion, merit, and the representation of the federal workforce.
Ending Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Accessibility and “Environmental Justice”
Ending Radical and Wasteful Government DEI Programs and Preferencing (Executive Order 14151), directs the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) to “coordinate the termination of all discriminatory programs, including illegal DEI and ‘diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility’ (DEIA) mandates, policies, programs, preferences, and activities in the Federal Government, under whatever name they appear.” In addition, each federal government agency is required, within 60 days, to “terminate, to the maximum extent allowed by law, all DEI, DEIA, and ‘environmental justice’ offices and positions” and provide OMB with a list of all DEI, DEIA, and environmental justice programs, services, activities, budgets, and expenditures as well as federal contractors who provided training and any federal grantees who received funding to provide or advance DEI. Lastly, agencies are directed to assess the operational impact and cost, recommend actions, and inform and advise.
The cost of efficiency
The order Establishing and Implementing the President’s “Department of Government Efficiency,” creates the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), led by Elon Musk and sharing an acronym with the Shiba Inu dog meme and crypto currency, “to maximize governmental efficiency and productivity.” This was accompanied by a series of memos directed at the human resource management of the federal government.
The first, a hiring freeze, where “no Federal civilian position that is vacant at noon on January 20, 2025, may be filled, and no new position may be created except as otherwise provided for in this memorandum or other applicable law.” The memo directs OMB in consultation with DOGE to submit a plan to resize the federal government workforce within 90 days.
The second memo turned the Senior Executive Service (SES) – the US’ high level civil service leadership – into at-will political positions. As the memo states: “Because SES officials wield significant governmental authority, they must serve at the pleasure of the President.” We have not had this level of politicization of the federal government since the 1800s as the Pendleton Act was passed in 1883 following the assassination of President Garfield by a speech writer who expected a government position in return.
The third memo orders government leaders to terminate remote work. This directly conflicts with the Telework Enhancement Act of 2010 that requires government agencies to establish telework policies for eligible employees. Remote work also has numerous benefits from attracting more applications and qualified applicants for government positions to increasing job satisfaction, engagement, and productivity. Telework also reduces costs in terms of saving commute time and expenses in DC and across the nation.
Reforming the Federal Hiring Process and Restoring Merit to Government Service (Executive Order 14170), directs Vince Haley (Assistant to the President for Domestic Policy), Russell Vought (Director of the Office of Management and Budget), Scott Kupor (Director of the Office of Personnel Management), and Elon Musk (Administrator of DOGE) to develop a Federal Hiring Plan within 120 days. The Plan shall:
- Prioritize recruitment on those dedicated to improving efficiency
- “Prevent the hiring of individuals based on their race, sex, or religion, and prevent the hiring of individuals who are unwilling to defend the Constitution, or to faithfully serve the Executive Branch”;
- Implement technical assessments as required by Chance to Compete Act of 2024;
- Decrease the time-to-hire to less than 80 days;
- Improve communication with candidates;
- Integrate technology to support recruitment and selection;
- Ensure leaders are active participants in implementation;
- Specific agency plans to improve the allocation of senior executive service positions; and
- Best practices for human resource management for each agency that shall be implemented with recommendations from DOGE.
Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 prohibits employment discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex and national origin. In addition, Bostock v. Clayton County, GA (June 15, 2020) ruled that these protections include sexual orientation and gender identity. US Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch wrote, in part, in the majority opinion: “An employer who fired an individual for being homosexual or transgender fires that person for traits or actions it would not have questioned in members of a different sex. Sex plays a necessary and undisguisable role in the decision; exactly what Title VII forbids. Those who adopted the Civil Rights Act might not have anticipated their work would lead to this particular result. But the limits of the drafters’ imagination supply no reason to ignore the law’s demands. Only the written word is the law, and all persons are entitled to its benefit.”
“Theodore Roosevelt Building Signage – 19” (CC BY 2.0) by Tony Webster
On January 28, 2025, the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) emailed all federal government employees encouraging deferred resignation (Figure 1). However, the legality of the offer is questionable and the similarities to actions taken at Twitter, now X, by Elon Musk are glaring.
Figure 1- OPM’s “Fork in the Road” and Elon Musk’s emails
Source: Can We Still Govern?
The orders undo years of progress for the federal workforce
Leading the federal government and working in public service is different from leading a for-profit company and working in business. The role of government is distinct. For example, government provides services, ensures safety, and fills the gaps where the market fails to provide. Core public values like equity, effectiveness, and representation need to be considered and balanced with efficiency to ensure accountability.
The federal civil service, dating back to the Pendleton Act of 1883, centers on merit rather than political patronage. Politically motivated reforms to at-will employment decrease employee morale and lead to higher resignations. Yet leadership appointments and now the SES are political; the executive orders have language of clear political coercion like prohibiting hiring anyone who is unwilling to “faithfully serve the Executive Branch,” and these actions remove federal employees with knowledge, skills, experience, and expertise in favor of those in political alignment with the new Trump administration. The federal government workforce should continue to have neutral competence, protection from political pressures, and not fear for their jobs without just cause.
President Trump’s executive orders undo years of progress from President Lyndon B. Johnson’s executive orders in 1965 prohibiting federal contractors from discriminating and requiring affirmative action to President Obama requiring each agency to develop Diversity and Inclusion Strategic Plans in 2011. As President Obama’s Executive Order 13583 states: “As the Nation’s largest employer, the Federal Government has a special obligation to lead by example. Attaining a diverse, qualified workforce is one of the cornerstones of the merit-based civil service.” Diversity management fosters inclusion, increases work group performance and job satisfaction, and improves organizational performance.
The latest executive orders and actions not only remove federal employees at a time when governments across the nation are under-staffed, face difficulty recruiting and pending retirements, and confront growing needs, but also sends a strong message about how the workforce is valued – or not – that could deeply impact employee engagement and morale as well as organizational capacity and performance.
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Note: This article gives the views of the author, and not the position of USAPP – American Politics and Policy, nor the London School of Economics.
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This is an excellent and important article. It clarifies and challenges management and personnel policies that threaten to bring back the days of Boss Tweed, Tammany Hall and “The Godfather “. Will The President become The CEO, and Federal Agencies become “Profit Centers “? These are largel steps toward the “privatization and profitization of everything “. We need more analyses such as this one. Thanks.