Stephen Miller, who has been tapped to serve as White House deputy chief of staff for policy, says President-elect Trump will order federal workers to return to the office and not work remotely.
“When Donald Trump is inaugurated on January 20th and that new golden age of America begins, he’s gonna tell the federal workers of this country who your viewers pay for to get back into the office and do their jobs or find another line of work,” Miller told Fox News’s Jesse Watters during an interview.
Ensuring that federal workers work in the office has become a priority for Trump and his allies, including Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy, the businessmen selected by the president-elect to lead a new Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE).
Just how many federal workers are not coming to the office of work is a point of debate.
Musk on Thursday highlighted a report released by Iowa Sen. Joni Ernst’s (R) office that found that 6 percent of government employees “report in-person on a full-time basis” and one-third of federal workers are “entirely remote.
Musk argued that real number of federal workers showing up could be even lower, arguing the number of workers, excluding security and maintenance, who show up 40 hours per week on site is less than 1 percent.
Separately, a report from the Office of Management and Budget in August found that 50 percent of federal workers are not eligible for telework.
That work also found that 60 percent of federal workers who are elegible for telework performed at an assigned job site as of May 2024.
“These figures demonstrate that the Federal workforce is generally in line with the rates of on-site work performed across all sectors in the economy, as demonstrated by independent analysis from the Bureau of Labor Statistics,” the report said.
The OMB report did not say these workers performed at a job site for 40 hours per week.
Miller and Watters during their interview highlighted a federal worker who reportedly posted a picture of himself taking a bath while working.
“Grown men should not be taking bubble baths. They certainly should not be doing their work from home in a bubble bath,” Miller said.
“It’s so emblematic of the contempt that so many people in the swamp have for the people who pay their salaries,” Miller added.
