Good morning!
A new executive order just dropped. This time, the Trump administration is exploring a new avenue to massively cut down on the federal workforce, in an effort led by none other than the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE).
On Tuesday night, President Donald Trump released a missive laying out some new rules for the government. Each agency head must prepare to make major reductions in force, also known as a “RIF.” They can no longer hire more than one employee for every four who depart, with some exceptions for public safety workers and those in immigration enforcement or law enforcement. And all hiring decisions must be run by and accepted by a DOGE team lead.
At its core, the order gives DOGE additional power to conduct staffing decisions across the federal government, says Mark Goldstein, a partner at law firm Reed Smith. “To me, it seems as though the DOGE team lead will be effectively running the RIF process.”
RIFs are common in the private sector, and often happen annually, according to Goldstein. It’s much more rare in the public sector—federal employees have several rights, and many are part of unions that have separate bargaining contracts with the government. But the move points to an emerging theme for this presidency: using private sector tactics on public sector workers.
“We’ve seen with a lot of these early executive orders from the new Trump administration, [they] seem to be extending concepts from the private workplace to the federal,” says Goldstein.
Another example was the mass email resignation offer sent to federal workers by the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) just a few weeks ago. Titled “Fork in the Road,” the government used the same language as Elon Musk when he conducted mass layoffs at Twitter back in 2022. And while a mass email may work at a private company, it’s totally unprecedented in government; no wonder workers were bewildered.
In a FAQ follow up to the mass resignation offer, the OPM wrote to federal workers: “We encourage you to find a job in the private sector as soon as you would like to do so. The way to greater American prosperity is encouraging people to move from lower productivity jobs in the public sector to higher productivity jobs in the private sector.”
The legality of Trump’s latest executive order will almost certainly be battled out in court, just like his other moves over the past few weeks. But if there’s one thing we know about this administration, according to Joe Schmitt, a labor attorney at law firm Nilan Johnson Lewis, it’s the executive branch’s willing to go to court.
“They don’t care about the lawsuits,” he says.
You can read more about Trump’s latest executive order targeting the federal workforce here.
Brit Morse
brit.morse@fortune.com
Around the Table
A round-up of the most important HR headlines.
A judge ruled on Wednesday that Trump’s mass resignation offer to federal workers can proceed. The Trump administrator is no longer accepting resignations. New York Times
Here’s a look into where Elon Musk and President Trump have made major cuts to the federal workforce thus far. New York Times
Federal workers say they now distrust popular social media platforms and are moving their communications to encrypted chats. The Verge
Watercooler
Everything you need to know from Fortune.
Admitting failure. After being questioned about whether DOGE had mistaken Hamas-controlled Gaza for the region of Gaza in Mozambique, Elon Musk admitted to sometimes being wrong. —Eleanor Pringle
Slashing the budgets while asking for more. Elon Musk’s DOGE has doubled its budget from $6.75 million to about $14.4 million just weeks after its inception. —Sasha Rogelberg
Asking the wrong question. The head of the Fortune 500 Europe lithography group, Christophe Fouquet, says that young professionals spend too much time wondering how to become CEOs. —Ryan Hogg
