One of President Donald Trump’s first actions when entering the White House was to order federal employees to return to the office.
The government’s workforce has repeatedly sustained, it could not be productive from home.
“I think I think you have to go to work. I don’t think you can work from home, “Trump said on February 11.” No one is going to work from home, they will leave, they will play tennis, they will play golf. They are going to do many things. They are not working. “
Three days later, Trump traveled to his extensive Mar-A-Lago mansion in Palm Beach, where he remained for six consecutive days, according to a NBC news tracker. In one of the days, Trump signed two executive orders and a memorandum. He also held an improvised press conference.
In other words, he worked from home.
That weekend, he did what he accused federal workers to do: he went to golf. Between February 14 and February 19, he played golf in four different days. While it is far from the first president to do so, each golf trip is a cost for taxpayers.
Before that, Trump received the Republican senators in Mar-A-Lago in early February, where he delivered comments that include an update on the cost reduction efforts of his administration.
Some federal workers said Trump’s frequent trips to their luxury assets in Florida, accumulating millions of dollars in safety and transport costs, while ordering millions of government employees to the office, bets on hypocrisy.
“It is clear and it should be for the rest of the Americans who are never ‘the rule’, it is who is doing the rules,” said a federal employee of the Department of Education who is also a disabled veteran. “All this fits so perfectly to the dynamics of power installed by this administration, a dynamic where Trump does what he wants, to what he wants, without repercussions.”
“The mandate back to the office was never effective, collaboration or cohesion,” added the employee. “It was always that federal employees” affect traumatically, “as Russell Vought said.”
The White House did not return a request for comments.
Vought was a lead author of the 2025 project, which arose frequently in the 2024 presidential elections. Among the many principles in the vast conservative government plan is a call to significantly reduce the workforce and expand presidential power, which are being developed as central thrusts of the Trump administration so far. Trump has empowered billionaire Elon Musk, his largest donor who is also a defense contractor, to direct the Government’s efficiency department, or Doge, to strengthen what he considers unnecessary and unnecessary expense.
Trump and Musk have said that the federal government is swollen, and the administration has already reduced tens of thousands of federal jobs. Meanwhile, Trump’s agenda would add billions of dollars to federal debt, budget experts say.
At the same time, Trump has reached links 14 times to date in his second term, with the potential of more expected rounds in the immediate future. Only since January, the cost of Trump’s golf weekends for taxpayers is more than $ 18 million, according to an analysis.
Trump has spent five of his seven weekends as president in Mar-A-Lago, and during the sixth, he won the night on another Trump property in Miami. This Friday, according to a notice of the Federal Aviation Administration, The president returned to Mar-A-Lago, where he is expected to remain until Sunday night. His caravan was heading to his golf club on Saturday afternoon. That would be the seventh of the eight weekends that would happen totally or partially of 1600 Pennsylvania Ave.
At the same time, since its inauguration of January 20, Trump and Musk have regularly denigrated the federal workforce as lazy and emblematic waste and fraud.
“I feel very bad, but many of them do not work at all,” Trump said about federal workers fired on Wednesday without providing any basis for those comments. “Many of them never appeared to work. That is not good. “
A report compiled by the White House Budget office said that as of May 2024, 54% of the Federal Civil Work Force of 2.28 million people worked in person, while 46.4% were eligible to work remotely. The report said that 10% of civil personnel actually worked in remote positions.
An employee of health and human services drew Trump’s comments as false and argued that federal workers’ critics do not realize that the public is really getting more work from employees who are based on the home and do not have to spend time traveling. He also called Trump’s frequent trips to Mar-A-Lago “a bad appearance” when he considers that he wants to send a message about the savings of taxpayers’ money.
Another hit Musk’s negative comments towards federal workers in the light of a political report that, at the request of Musk, a “mass television” was installed in the multimillionaire office in the building of the Eisenhower executive office to be able to play video games.
“Personally I work my A … off. I know that everyone else is. Routinely I work from 50 to 60 hours a week ”, and more whenever necessary, said the HHS employee. “Who is going to do all this work when they end these cuts? Do people think the public will not be affected?
Another worker spoke of colleagues who tried to quickly sell their houses to approach a train stop, while others struggled to find extended nursery to cover the extra time to travel. Some, including those who were hired exclusively to work remotely – It is probably forced to quit smoking.
“Everyone built their lives around these remote stalls,” said a veterans affairs employee who is on permission with a newborn. “My supervisor lives in [Florida] and was hired as a remote employee. She can’t relocate. “
As for the presidents, Trump is not alone in his travel home. As president, Joe Biden frequently traveled to his home in Wilmington, Delaware, for ten cents. The then first Lady Jill Biden was also called for an expensive trip since she was trying to be next to Hunter Biden during her trial. Amid the criticism, Joe Biden at that time said he continued celebrating meetings and working while he was at home. An analysis in 2022 found that Biden’s trips at that time cost taxpayers $ 11 million. Barack Obama would also travel to Hawaii for vacations, which was much more expensive than a trip than Palm Beach, said Tom Fitton, president of the Watch Judicial Group.
The group has tracked the costs of presidential trips since the Presidency of Obama and calculated that their vacations for eight years cost taxpayers at least $ 85 million. In an interview, Fitton said the figure can be conservative since it was not so inclusive to the auxiliary costs that are often part of the calculations today.
“That is a point. It is not great, ”said Fitton on Trump working from Mar-a-Lago even though he ordered employees to return to the office.
“Obviously he is president 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. There is really no comparison between a golf president on the weekend versus an employee who really doesn’t have to go to the office at all. Or whose duties and labor responsibilities are [not] Essential for the government, ”said Fitton.
He also pointed out: “The presidential golf is a perennial issue.”
Trump had said he would not play golf when president. In his first race for the position in 2016, Trump attacked Obama for his golf habits and repeatedly backed that the public would not see him in the course if he were president.
“I love golf, but if I were in the White House, I don’t think I see Turnberry again,” he said in February 2016, in a reference to a course he possesses in Scotland. “I don’t think it’s seen again,” he also said, in reference to his course in Miami. “I don’t think I would never see anything, I just want to stay in the White House and work my …”.
This year he has played golf in the doral field in Miami who once said that he would not have time to visit.
Noah Bookbinder, president of the Watchdog Citizens For Skilling and Ethics group in Washington, said that each president is expected to take days off to recharge while obtaining protection of the secret service. Bookbinder said that tension, however, is Trump’s current emphasis on cutting the waste, even while playing frequently. Bookbinder also pointed out another unusual circumstance that involves Trump.
“Not only goes home. He goes to the business he owns. And so, every time he makes a trip, which brings money to his business, which puts money in his pockets, ”said Bookbinder. “At the same time that waste and fraud are regretting in the federal government, it is actually through this trip that taxpayers pay to their businesses, which makes it richer. That seems problematic and as a real level of irony when there is so much emphasis on reducing government, police, fraud and abuse. “
