Trump Executive Orders End Federal Work From Home Ahead of Potential Fire Sale

Newly sworn-in President Donald Trump has signed an executive order mandating many civil service employees to return to the office full time, alongside several other orders aimed at influencing the federal workforce. The move could be a precursor to the federal government selling most of the office buildings it owns around the U.S. and cutting a majority of its office leases around Washington, D.C.

The new policies will help to fulfill a long-held stance of the president and his advisers, not to mention those of Washington, D.C., Mayor Muriel Bowser, among others, that most federal workers should return to their offices for work. Of the nearly 2.3 million civilian federal workers, 1.1 million are currently eligible for telework, while 228,000 work entirely remote, according to an August report by the U.S. Office of Management and Budget (OMB).

The order requires heads of all departments and agencies within the executive branch to “take all necessary steps to terminate remote work arrangements and require employees to return to work in-person at their respective duty stations on a full-time basis.” It is not immediately clear if the mandate extends to all federal employees, nor how many workers within the executive branch are fully remote or eligible for remote work. 

In a separate executive action on Monday, Trump also largely reinstated a policy known as “Schedule F,” enacted in his first term though rescinded by the Biden administration, intended to weaken job protections for civil service employees and make them easier to dismiss from their roles. 

The move, if upheld by the courts following expected legal challenges, is intended to “maintain professionalism and accountability within the civil service,” according to the White House’s website. The new administration claims that just 41 percent of civil service supervisors are “confident” that they could dismiss insubordinate employees or those accused of “serious misconduct,” while just 26 percent are confident that they could dismiss employees for “poor performance.”

Trump also on Monday ordered a hiring freeze for federal workers within the executive branch, though the freeze does not apply to the armed forces or jobs relating to immigration enforcement, public safety or national security, per the White House. The order also calls upon the OMB, in conjunction with the U.S. Office of Personnel Management and the non-governmental consulting body Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), to submit a plan to “reduce the size of the federal government’s workforce through efficiency improvements and attrition” within 90 days.

Representatives for the White House could not immediately be reached for comment.

The moves are at least partially the result of influence from entrepreneurs and Trump advisors Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy, who have long advocated for return-to-office mandates and were tapped by the administration to lead DOGE. (Ramaswamy has since announced he will not be joining DOGE in order to run for governor of Ohio.)

Yet, Musk and Ramaswamy have not made shy the true intentions of such a mandate — namely, to entice many federal workers to quit their posts rather than fully return to the office.

“Requiring federal employees to come to the office five days a week would result in a wave of voluntary terminations that we welcome,” the pair wrote in an op-ed for the Wall Street Journal on Nov. 20.

Federal work habits aside, Trump is also reportedly considering a drastic change to the federal government’s real estate portfolio. The administration is contemplating selling two-thirds of the government’s office stock, along with canceling three-quarters of the rented space in D.C. that the government leases from private landlords, according to the Wall Street Journal, citing sources familiar with the matter. The federal government is the largest owner and operator of real estate in the U.S., having some 360 million square feet under its wing managed by the General Services Administration. 

If pursued, the move would be a dramatic upscaling of the GSA’s policy of downsizing the government’s real estate footprint, which since 2015 has resulted in the shedding of over 1,000 buildings totaling about 24 million square feet. If government offices are sold and leases terminated outright, it would also be a noticeably less selective approach to the GSA’s method of cutting space, which outgoing GSA Public Buildings Commissioner Elliot Doomes discussed with Commercial Observer last week. Doomes indicated at the time that he didn’t expect there to be a change in how aggressively the new administration would pursue the GSA’s downsizing policy. 

Representatives for the GSA did not immediately respond to a request for further comment. 

Nick Trombola can be reached at ntrombola@commercialobserver.com.