Trump’s ‘DOGE’ commission promises mass federal layoffs, ending telework

President-elect Trump’s forthcoming government efficiency commission is hoping to institute large-scale layoffs of federal employees and force civil servants to work in their offices five days per week, according to one of the business executives Trump has tapped to lead it. 

The Department of Government Efficiency—a non-government panel that Trump has vowed to stand up—will be able to move swiftly to implement the changes without congressional approval, Vivek Ramaswamy told Fox News on Sunday, saying the president-elect can act through executive action. The entrepreneur and former presidential candidate added that recent Supreme Court precedent and its conservative makeup would provide legal backing to the ideas he and his co-lead, Elon Musk, will put forward. 

“We expect mass reductions,” Ramaswamy said. “We expect certain agencies to be deleted outright. We expect mass reductions-in-force in areas of the federal government that are bloated.” 

Reductions-in-force, or RIFs, is how the government refers to layoffs. Ramaswamy, who during his presidential campaign vowed to lay off 75% of the federal workforce, said the Trump administration will take a "different view” than “many scholars" who note that career civil servants are statutorily entitled to protections that prevent their arbitrary firing. 

Recent Supreme Court decisions, Ramaswamy said, gives his new commission “the industrial logic to then downsize the size of that administrative state.” He did not specify to which decisions he was referring, but said the court has struck down many of the regulations federal agencies have propagated under President Biden. He was perhaps then referring to its overturning of the Chevron deference and the creation of the “major questions doctrine,” which revoked the broad latitude agencies have for decades enjoyed to interpret federal law in areas where Congress was unclear. 

Ramaswamy suggested without those authorities to interpret and enforce federal law, the Trump administration would have the grounds to eliminate federal jobs en masse. He also said the administration would be making significant cuts to federal contracting. 

“If we don't downsize the federal government now, it's never going to happen in the future as well,” he said, referring to the six-three conservative majority on the high court. “So this is a historic opportunity. We're not actually going to squander this.”

He added that reductions to telework and relocating agencies would help motivate employees to leave government voluntarily. He called it a “dirty little secret” that most federal workers “don’t even show up to work.” 

About 80% of the federal work hours are currently spent in-person, according to a recent Office of Management and Budget review, and more than half of federal employees do not telework at all because their jobs are not conducive to it. Of those who do telework, employees on average spent about three-fifths of their time on site. 

“If you require most of those federal bureaucrats to just say, like normal working Americans, you come to work five days a week, a lot of them won't want to do that,” Ramaswamy said. “If you have many voluntary reductions in force of the workforce in the federal government along the way, great. That's a good side effect of those policies as well.”

While Ramaswamy appears to be relying on faulty data, his team will likely run into roadblocks if it attempts to pursue the changes he described. Existing collective bargaining agreements with large swaths of the federal workforce require certain telework allowances and those cannot be easily upended. 

“When it comes to changes in working conditions that could impact union contracts, [the American Federation of Government Employees] takes the position that such changes must be negotiated with the union through the normal collective bargaining process,” said Everet Kelley, president of AFGE, the largest federal employee union. He added that Ramaswamy’s assertion that civil servants are not working in person “is simply not backed up by data and reality.” 

Other elements of Ramaswamy’s plan are also likely to encounter significant hurdles and resistance. Congress typically includes in its appropriations bills requirements that the money not be redirected or used for reorganization without express sign off from the legislative branch. Even if he were able to push through RIFs, employees could appeal en masse to the Merit Systems Protection Board, a process that would bog down Ramaswamy’s proposed timeline. Dan Meyer, an attorney at Tully Rinckey who handles federal employment cases, previously told Government Executive he would have a full slate of cases for the next decade if Trump’s commission saw its plans through. 

“The RIF process isn’t quite as straightforward as he suggests,” Donald F. Kettl, professor emeritus at the University of Maryland and former dean of its School of Public Policy previously told Government Executive. He noted federal law requires RIFs be rooted in certain activities, such as a reorganization, lack of work or a shortage of funds. A president, Kettl added, cannot unilaterally “undermine agencies ability to carry out functions that Congress mandates.”

Kettl also noted that because Congress has specifically authorized and funded federal agencies, the notion that a president can unilaterally abolish them “is simply a farce.” 

“There is no way it can happen,” he said, adding it would create enormous political resistance given the basic and necessary government functions that would no longer occur. Ramaswamy conceded that some parts of his plan would require congressional action and Trump would tackle those later in the process. 

By citing the deregulatory action that may take place under Trump and the new Supreme Court precedents, Ramaswamy may be trying to create a “lack of work” argument to justify mass layoffs. The deregulatory process is typically quite lengthy, however, and often subject to significant legal scrutiny.

Trump has also promised to bring back his Schedule F initiative that would end the merit-based civil service for untold portions of the federal workforce, instead making them subject to politicized at-will firings. The Biden administration has finalized regulations aimed at preventing something like Schedule F from taking effect, perhaps slowing down Trump’s efforts. 

As an outside entity, the Musk and Ramaswamy-led DOGE will make recommendations for executive action rather than carrying any enforcement mechanism itself. Trump has said it will issue reports along the way, with one large product due by July 4, 2026. He also suggested the commission would work closely with OMB on its suggestions. 

Ramaswamy said his commission would attempt to carry out the layoffs with compassion. 

“Our goal is not to be cruel, by the way, to the individual federal employees,” he said. “Most of them, I do want to say this, are individually good people, and we want to be compassionate and generous in how we handle this transition. But the real issue is there's just too many of them.”

He added the nation should not have 4 million civil servants who are unelected and not held accountable, though there are currently only about 2.1 million federal employees (the U.S. Postal Service employs an additional roughly 600,000 individuals).

In his first term, Trump spearheaded a government reorganization initiative that led to dozens of agency restructuring proposals. Most of those ideas were either abandoned or never taken up, however. Overall, Trump oversaw a small growth in the federal workforce during his presidency, though most agencies did shed workers. His budget proposals to dramatically slash domestic spending and eliminate some small agencies were largely ignored by Congress.

The Trump transition team did not respond to an inquiry on Ramaswamy's comments or DOGE's plans.