Free Consultation 516-280-3008
On January 25, 2025, President Trump told a crowd of supporters that he was considering firing roughly 88,000 Internal Revenue Service (IRS) employees. Alternatively, he proposed sending these employees to the border. As reported by Newsweek, Trump told the crowd: “On Day 1, I immediately halted the hiring of any new IRS agents.
On his first two days back in office, President Trump signed two executive orders targeting federal diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) initiatives. A Fact Sheet issued by the White House the next day sums up the effect of these orders as follows: “Federal hiring, promotions, and performance reviews will reward individual initiative, skills, performance, and hard work and not, under any circumstances, DEI-related factors, goals, policies, mandates, or requirements.” While much of the focus of Trump’s campaign and his first week in office was on rolling back Biden-era initiatives, his executive orders on DEI reverse measures intended to promote a diverse and federal workforce dating back to Lyndon B. Johnson’s tenure as president in the 1960s.
On his first day back in office, President Trump ordered a freeze on hiring across the federal government. The freeze applies to “the hiring of Federal civilian employees . .
On January 20, 2025, President Trump’s first day in office during his second term, he issued a memorandum that states, in full: “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. “This memorandum shall be implemented consistent with applicable law.” With these two sentences, President Trump upended normal life for approximately 10 percent of the federal workforce. While affected federal employees may have hoped that the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) would take a measured approach to requiring in-person work, any such hopes were dashed when the OPM issued a memorandum of its own providing guidance on President Trump’s memorandum two days later.
When President Trump took office for the start of his second term on January 20, 2025, one of his first orders of business was to sign 100 executive orders that seek to implement sweeping changes throughout the federal government and beyond. Several of these executive orders directly impact federal employees. One example is the executive order titled, Restoring Accountability to Policy-Influencing Positions Within the Federal Workforce.
When federal employees face adverse personnel actions—such as demotion, suspension, or removal—and decide to appeal to the Merit Systems Protection Board (MSPB), one of the most critical decisions they’ll need to make is whether to depose agency witnesses. Depositions can be powerful tools in MSPB cases, allowing appellants to gather crucial testimony and clarify facts before a hearing. However, they also come with potential risks and costs.