President Donald Trump issued a sweeping executive order to reduce the size of the federal workforce, citing the need to increase efficiency, eliminate waste, and restore accountability in government operations.
The order, titled Reforming the Federal Workforce to Maximize Efficiency and Productivity, mandates that federal agencies significantly cut down on hiring, implement large-scale reductions in force, and streamline operations. Under Tuesday’s directive, agencies are limited to hiring one new employee for every four who depart. However, exceptions have been made for positions related to public safety, immigration enforcement, and law enforcement.
“To restore accountability to the American public, this order commences a critical transformation of the Federal bureaucracy,” the order states. “By eliminating waste, bloat, and insularity, my Administration will empower American families, workers, taxpayers, and our system of Government itself.”
There are an estimated two million federal workers, and about 6% of them work full time in the office. About 200,000 are expected to take buyouts by the Trump Administration already, per an earlier order to reduce the size of the workforce through buyouts.
This is the same one-to-four ratio that the first Trump Administration ordered to reduce regulations — only one new regulation could be approved for every four eliminated.
The new executive order enforces a strict hiring ratio across federal agencies. The Office of Management and Budget (OMB) is required to submit a workforce reduction plan, ensuring agencies adhere to the new hiring constraints. The hiring freeze currently in place for the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) remains unaffected.
Each agency will be required to consult with a Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) Team Lead to assess and approve hiring decisions. Agencies must also submit monthly hiring reports to the United States DOGE Service (USDS) Administrator.
The order directs agencies to prepare for major layoffs, targeting temporary employees and reemployed annuitants. Programs not mandated by law—such as diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives—are prioritized for elimination.
Agency heads must also submit reports within 30 days identifying statutory requirements for their operations and assessing whether departments or subcomponents should be consolidated or eliminated.
The Office of Personnel Management has been tasked with revising suitability criteria for federal employment. New standards include disqualifications for failure to comply with tax obligations, citizenship requirements, nondisclosure agreements, and government resource misuse.
Although the order mandates aggressive workforce reductions, military personnel are explicitly excluded. Agency heads retain discretion to exempt positions deemed necessary for national security, homeland security, or public safety. The OPM Director may also grant exemptions where necessary.
Transformational as to federal bureaucratic power. I love it. Turn the screws on left-wing Democrats, who have been sucking off the big teet of government for their entire lives.
I guess todays inflation report might remind us that tariffs are inflationary! If only Donald would have exercised some business fundamentals in his opening month we might have been leaning towards a rate cut. So much for that! At least we can get the name back to McKinley, I know that’s why the majority of Alaskans voted for him, certainly not for the price of eggs or unleaded.
C-Bass,
You of course realize that inflation reports are backwards looking and the tariffs that haven’t been put in place or taken effect in no way contributed to inflation, right? Even if you wish to saddle Trump with the inflation seen in January he took office on January 20th so you can attribute 1/3 of the month to him, but that would just show a ridiculous understanding of how the economy works.
Funny how you never post a similar screed when minimum wage hikes push inflation.
I would highly recommend reviewing the processes and procedures within the “last mile” of government logistics and work its way backwards to do less harm to the communities, organizations, contractors, etc that also have been overwhelmed by government red tape.
A knee jerk reaction of cutting employees in the government only exhausts and damages the Americans further.
I agree there needs to be a reduction of force, but cut through the red tape – crazy processes and ridiculous reporting requirements made for the purpose of creating and maintaining silos of control within divisions and departments.
The good work of Americans should not continue to be the last straw or thought – the end result without foresight – over and over again.
Find the bottleneck of government – and do it concurrently with reducing federal employees.
Do not short-sightedly reduce the federal workforce and choke out the American companies and organizations because all the red tape is left in place and the remaining workers point their finger at the new government leadership.
Build trust, demonstrate turn-around expertise.
Blah, blah, blah, …, blah.
Actually some good points as indeed there are lots of entwined relationships. Albeit, overall pruning hurts and there is no way to make it painless. Our federal
government needs serious pruning. Yes, that pruning may also affect other sectors but it has to happen. I have been laid off from a government position myself and I just pulled up the big girl panties and updated my resume. Move forward. Hopefully those affected have enough mettle to move forward proactively as well.
The preferred term is “Use a scalpel instead of a chainsaw.”
This tripe has been spewed by entrenched politicos for decades to prevent any real reductions or targeting of wastefulness and inefficiencies.
If you want to defend the status quo I will listen. You will have a difficult time convincing me, but I will listen and consider your argument.
However, America is done with folks that admit waste and fraud exists yet still throw up obstacles to rooting it out and destroying it.
Murkowski is a perfect example of the latter. Please Trudy, don’t be a Murkowski.
Definitely chainsaw. It’s working for Milei in Brazil.
That’s right! Cut the other guy’s budget!
Whidbey, as long as we all agree that cutting the other guy’s budget is the way to gett’er done we will start making some progress!
Yes, cut all the garbage out, just like Javier Melei did in Argentina. Look at a country who took a Chainsaw to the socialist grift. It’s called Winning. We are done with the participation trophy nonsense.
Dawg, ” you will never understand bureaucracies untill you understand that for bureaucrats procedure is everything and outcomes are nothing”
I hope that Thomas Sowell quoted above helps clear things up for ya…
Rip the band aid off, dont fool around with trying to peel it off slowly.
I am pleased with all the winning.
Now let’s disband whole departments, reform the IC top to bottom with a new mission, purpose and limitations and then cut the pentagon budget by 50%. No more empire. We defend our home and trade lanes ruthlessly.
The vision to is push agency and power down as much as we can to individuals and families and to once again become the economic, culteral and agricultural powerhouse God has destined us to be.
So “God” thinks America is special? Has he further selected a favored State or city? Way too much Kool Aid, Micah.
Your words are meaningless like a plastic tarp flapping in the wind.
Also, God, God, God, God, God. Everything we write of, think of, and create has its foundation in God. Deal with it.
Ziz? Zizian??
Well, at least you used the correct pronoun for God.
Yes, sir.
.
God does think the United States of America is special.
“We defend our home and trade lanes ruthlessly” Who is going to defend the homeland and trade lanes if you cut the military down? Sure, not going to be almost half of the Americans who are scared of the big bad black gun. You cannot defend the homeland with citizens who are complacent and afraid to even defend their own home.
Why do you equate cutting the fraud and bloat from the defense budget with not having a strong and capable warfighting military?
It is the capability, not the amount in the budget that matters. As we have a bloat of armchair generals and political officers we have many defense contracters feeding from the trough delivering little.
Hopefully that will eliminate a lot of the federal jobs in Alaska and hopefully after they are fired they will leave our state and take their communist ideology with them.
Bingo!
Now if we can just convince the School District and the Municipality of Anchorage to do the same thing we may be able to right size our local budgets.
Excellent. So now you get to retire four air traffic controllers and hire one in return. Smart move, President Musk!
So you didn’t notice the exceptions that include ‘public safety.’
Dog has chased one too many parked cars.
Air Traffic Controllers are part of the public safety so you insinuating that these positions are part of the 1 to 4 ration is prepositus.
Is that the new leftist talking point for NPCs?
That President Trump is going to go after the safety parts of the Federal government first. Sort of how he was going to ignore the violent criminals in this country illegally and go straight to breaking up families?
.
It would be funny if it were not so predictable.
Lovin’ it
I do believe in rooting out the government fraud-waste-abuse.
I appreciated Trump bypassing departments and moving money directly from Treasury to local entities to get in the hands of citizens in a way I don’t think ever has happened before. (During COVID)
So I know it can be done.
I’ve delved into the details of government spending by researching companies, industries, states, etc that spark my interest.
usaspending.gov is an excellent resource if you enjoy going down rabbit holes of government spending.
You will find grants, cooperative agreements, contracts. You will see red flags when contracts were discontinued abruptly and can cross reference to federal debarment lists.
You can find anomalies of funds awarded for Naics codes that have nothing to do with the line of work the awardee does.
You can see how new technology like Tesla got funded by the Department of Energy in 2010, then turned around and brought the company public, paid back the government and soon after Musk invested for the first time his ‘personal skin in the game’ money into the Tesla company.
If you want to unravel things, learn to analyze 10K reports – the footnotes.
It’s only fraud waste and abuse when violating a written rule. Where the regulations are silent is free game.
Aka loophole.
It wasn’t so long ago when Newt Gingrich proposed eliminating two regulations from the federal register for every new one. He was right that Americans were overburdened by regulation. And Trump is right that the federal government is overburdened by extra employees who cannot match the results of private industry. I know because I’ve heard constantly over the past 30 years from my .gov friends and relatives about their work and their output – and ask me why my nose is always to the grindstone when I could work for the government and have. much easier life without fear of downsizing and a pension gold ring at the end of the carousel ride.
Leave no stone unturned Mr. President.
??
When President Musk speaks, Donald Trump listens.
That is last week’s NPC talking point. This week’s is this will result in no air traffic controllers keeping the skies safe.
Perhaps you should check in with the dog before posting. Make sure both of you are on the same page.
Comments are closed.