"Department of Government Efficiency" (DOGE) co-leaders Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy have floated a number of plans targeting federal workers, including plans to end telework.
GOP lawmakers in Congress’s two "DOGE" caucuses have also pushed for relocating government agencies outside of Washington and codifying Trump’s prior Schedule F order.
And that rhetoric is escalating fears among federal employees over how they may be targeted.
“What we’ve seen in the private sector over the past year is that return to office mandates and even relocations are nothing more than layoffs — they’re thinly veiled by the guise of efficiency,” said Laura Dodson, vice president of an AFGE union representing Economic Research Service (ERS), a research wing at the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
“And I think that that’s what’s happening here is they don’t want to go through the process of initiating a reduction in force … instead doing this forced return to office or relocations to basically have layoffs without any oversight.”
In some circles, public employees have been preparing for possible backlash.
The Hill's Rebecca Beitsch has it all here.
