This week in Federal Policy Watch: Trump administration undermines federal workers, immigrants, and DEI programs

The Trump administration issued a series of policies in its first week, largely focused on the federal workforce, immigration, and eliminating diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) programs and protections.  

A few key policies are highlighted below, but you can find a comprehensive catalogue of all policies relevant to working people and the economy at Federal Policy Watch, an EPI online tool documenting actions by the Trump administration, Congress, federal agencies, and the courts. You can subscribe to daily Federal Policy Watch updates here.

Federal workforce  

President Trump instituted a series of executive orders (EOs) aimed at gutting the federal workforce and politicizing the career civil service.

• Most significantly, he implemented Schedule F, which upends longstanding job protections for federal career employees and makes it easier to fire them for any reason. Moving a sizable chunk of the federal workforce to Schedule F makes it easier for President Trump to shift the work of the government away from the public interest and toward the president’s political goals.
• A new EO overturned a Biden administration executive order that protected the rights of federal workers to collectively bargain and affirmed due process protections.
• In an attempt to quickly shrink the federal workforce, President Trump issued an EO requiring federal workers to report in person to the office five days each week, ending remote work arrangements.
• Another EO freezes the hiring of federal civilian employees and directs the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), in consultation with the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) and the United States DOGE Service (USDS), to submit a plan to reduce the size of the federal workforce within 90 days.

Immigration

President Trump signed a number of EOs on day one that direct federal agencies to make sweeping changes to the immigration system, and rescinded five EOs on immigration that were issued early during the Biden administration. Some of the most notable recissions and new directives include:

• Declaring a national emergency at the southern border, allowing the administration to unlock various federal national security and emergency authorities, and calling for military reserves and the National Guard to assist with immigration enforcement.
• Shutting down virtually all avenues for persons to request asylum at the southern border and shutting down the U.S. refugee resettlement program indefinitely.
• Ending birthright citizenship so that future U.S.-born children with an unauthorized immigrant parent will not be U.S. citizens. (The EO orders the policy to go into effect 30 days after issuing the EO, but the policy was challenged and temporary blocked for 14 days by a federal district court in Washington state on January 23. Litigation will continue and the case is likely to end up at the Supreme Court.)
• Calling on the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to take all possible actions to expand the immigrant detention system.
• Ending the Biden-era programs that use parole authority (which provides temporary deportation from removal and work permits), including those for nationals of Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua, and Venezuela, and the Customs and Border Protection (CBP) One App, a tool for migrants abroad to use to schedule interviews with U.S. immigration officials.
• Setting out new, more expansive immigration enforcement priorities, and rescinding policies on enforcement operations at or near sensitive locations like schools, churches, and courthouses.
• Directing the Attorney General and DHS to take civil or criminal legal action against so-called “sanctuary” jurisdictions and calling for stripping federal funding from such jurisdictions.

Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion

• President Trump rescinded multiple Biden administration executive orders expressing the federal government’s commitment to diversity, equity, and inclusion. President Trump revoked policy goals like expanding language access to government benefits and services, responding to the rise in racial hate crimes, support for improved data disaggregation, and fulfilling the federal government’s commitment to further Tribal sovereignty. He also rescinded an EO that sought to strengthen the government’s partnership with and support of Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs), Hispanic-Serving Institutions (HSIs), and Tribal Colleges and Universities (TCUs). Trump’s actions rescind any national acknowledgement of the value of this nation’s racial diversity and commitment to address systemic inequities.
• One of the EOs directs the Attorney General to submit a plan within 120 days to deter DEI principles. As part of the EO, each agency is directed to identify for “civil compliance investigations” nine publicly traded corporations, large nonprofits and foundations, or institutions of higher education with endowments over $1 billion.