President Donald Trump took a shot at federal workers’ industriousness after spending the day at his golf course in Miami.
While speaking at the FII Priority Summit on Wednesday, Trump decried telecommuting in the federal workforce. Though Trump himself had spent the day hitting the links, he said that remote federal workers were likely spending their workdays playing tennis and golf.
“All federal workers must once again show up to work. Show up to work in person like the rest of us. It doesn’t work when you don’t show up,” he said. “You can’t work at home. They’re not working. They’re playing tennis, they’re playing golf or they have other jobs. But they’re not working or they’re certainly not working hard. You could never build a company or a country with that. So, we have a very strong policy and if they don’t show up to work they get fired.”
Trump has reportedly spent 9 days golfing in the first month of his second term.
Trump issued a memo on his first day in office instructing the “heads of all departments and agencies in the executive branch” to “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.”
A 2024 report from the Office of Management and Budget found that only 10% of the federal workforce is fully remote. Per the report, More than half of the federal workforce works completely in person. The report found that telework-eligible federal employees still spend more than 60% of their working hours either in-office or at work sites.
Trump’s attack on remote workers is part of a wider disdain for federal workers. The president and his adviser, Elon Musk, have focused on slashing the federal workforce in the first month of his second term.
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