One of Trump’s Day One executive fiats was to order all federal employees back to the office five days a week, which seems more like an attempt to manufacture excuses to fire career civil servants who are not Trump loyalists.

Remember back in the summer of 2023 when all employees at the Speaker Nancy Pelosi Federal Building at Seventh and Mission street were told to work from home because of the terrible conditions outside the building? That is apparently no longer applicable under Trump. Among the large number of executive orders Trump signed on Monday was an end to remote work for federal employees, according to CBS News. Those workers are ordered back to the office five days a week, and this apparently also applies to that SF federal building.  

On its face, that doesn’t really sound new, Biden already pushed federal employees to return to the office in August 2023. But the details of this order also include a hiring freeze on additional employees, changes in hiring rules, and adding new maneuvers that would make it easier to fire career civil service employees.

And it sounds like this all has little to do with the merits of remote work, and more to do with installing Trump lackeys under the guise of some notion that the administration is eliminating the “deep state.”

"There have been numerous and well-documented cases of career Federal employees resisting and undermining the policies and directives of their executive leadership," says the executive order that Trump signed Monday night. "Principles of good administration, therefore, necessitate action to restore accountability to the career civil service."

But the federal government employee unions are likely to push back, and some have remote work written into their contracts. And they see a ruse where employees will be hired not on merit, but for their fealty to Trump and his agenda.

"Every American has a stake in ensuring that federal employees remain free to carry out the mission of the agencies that employ them without fear of political interference," American Federation of Government Employees national president Everett Kelly told CBS News. He called this “a blatant attempt to corrupt the federal government by eliminating employees' due process rights so they can be fired for political reasons."

So this one may be a fight that heads to the courts. For perspective, there are an estimated 2.3 million employees in the federal workforce.

Related: SF's Much Loved/Hated Federal Building Getting Fenced-In Plaza Makeover [SFist]

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