Trump Administration Initiates Federal Hiring Freeze, Return-to-office Mandate

As he has promised for months, President Donald Trump spent his first day back in the Oval Office signing a flurry of executive orders. These are designed to roll back Biden administration orders and policies, and to change the federal government’s stance on several overarching issues that reflect the priorities of the new administration.

Two key actions implemented by Trump on his first day in office related to the federal workforce. These include a freeze on hiring new federal employees and a return-to-the-office mandate, the latter of which could cause an exodus of federal government workers.

“I hereby order a freeze on the hiring of Federal civilian employees, to be applied throughout the executive branch,” Trump’s order stated. “As part of this freeze, no Federal civilian position that is vacant at noon on Jan. 20, 2025, may be filled, and no new position may be created except as otherwise provided for in this memorandum or other applicable law.”

Returning to the office

The return-to-office mandate, while brief, has many potential implications for the 2.3 million workers currently employed by the federal government.

“Heads of all departments and agencies in the executive branch of government shall, as soon as practicable, 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, provided that the department and agency heads shall make exemptions they deem necessary,” Trump’s order stated.

HousingWire reached out to relevant federal housing agencies and regulators — including the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) and the Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA).

A CFPB spokesperson said the bureau did not have any comments to share on the matter at this time. This story will be updated if other agencies reply to the inquiry.

The order is not likely to encompass workers at the government-sponsored enterprises (GSEs), since Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are not federal agencies but private corporations that currently operate under federal conservatorships. But the order would likely apply to workers at the FHFA, the GSEs’ chief regulator.

In terms of the practice at HUD, the implementation of the order will likely fall to Scott Turner, Trump’s nominee to serve as HUD secretary. In written and oral testimony from his Senate confirmation hearing last week, Turner signaled that he is aligned with the president on mandating the return of HUD employees to the office on a full-time basis.

“The reports I’ve read [say] that HUD is at the bottom when it comes to employees returning to work,” Turner said during the hearing. “I’ve been on many teams in my career, and I believe we need to bring the HUD staff back to work, back to the office, to do the job and empower them to serve the American people.”

But the likelihood of a confrontation with federal worker unions remains high, according to reporting from The Washington Post.

“The return-to-office order is likely to run into stiff resistance from federal unions, many of which have telework guaranteed as part of their contracts — including some agreements extended in the final weeks of Biden’s administration,” the reporting explained.

‘Schedule F’ returns?

Trump also moved to make it easier to fire career government officials “to maintain professionalism and accountability within the civil service.”

In its executive order, the White House said that such accountability is lacking, and that “only 41% of civil service supervisors are confident that they can remove an employee who engaged in insubordination or serious misconduct,” the order stated. “Even fewer supervisors — 26% — are confident that they can remove an employee for poor performance.”

To that end, Trump is moving to reinstate a federal employee classification known as “Schedule F,” which aims to recategorize certain civil servants to something more akin to political appointments. Many of these employees serve in “high-ranking policy roles,” the Post reported, and Schedule F would allow them to be fired at will.

Schedule F was handed down at the end of Trump’s first presidential term, but work on its implementation was immediately halted when Joe Biden took office. In the spring of 2024, the Biden administration aimed to implement civil service protections designed to curb the potential for Trump to reimplement Schedule F. This went through the federal rulemaking process and was published in the Federal Register.

The Office of Personnel Management (OPM) announced the move at the time, but all Biden-era press releases have been scrubbed from the agency’s website. The original announcement remains available through the Internet Archive. If reimplemented, Schedule F could impact as many as 50,000 federal workers, according to 2022 reporting by Axios.

If the Trump administration sought to roll this back, it would likely have to reengage the federal rulemaking process or seek a legislative remedy that would offer a more permanent solution. The president’s allies on Capitol Hill could be receptive to such a bill, but narrow majorities in Congress would not allow much room for opposition if legislation were to make it to Trump’s desk.

The Heritage Foundation’s policy playbook, “Project 2025,” explicitly called for the reimplementation of Schedule F and the reclassification of many positions currently held by career officials to those that would be held by political appointees. This is highlighted in the playbook’s section dedicated to HUD, although there could be some legal and institutional roadblocks to getting this done immediately.