President Donald Trump ordered federal workers to return to the office five days a week, signing an executive order in front of cheering supporters at Capital One Arena in Washington on Monday.
The measure would force a large number of civil servants to abandon remote working, reversing a trend that developed in the early stages of the influenza A (COVID-19) pandemic.
Some allies of Mr. Trump have said the back-to-work mandate was intended to gut the civil service, making it easier for Mr. Trump to replace longtime civil servants with loyalists.
In a brief statement posted on the White House website, Mr. Trump ordered all department and agency heads to “take, as soon as possible, all necessary steps to terminate working arrangements at distance and require employees to return to work in person at their respective duty stations on a full-time basis, provided that heads of departments and agencies make such exemptions as they deem necessary.”
-Tesla CEO Elon Musk, who chairs an organization aimed at cutting costs, recently predicted that revoking the “COVID-era privilege” of teleworking would trigger “a wave of voluntary layoffs that we welcome.”
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