“I hereby order a freeze on the hiring of federal civilian employees, to be applied throughout the executive branch,” Trump’s executive order reads, issued as one of dozens of executive orders released as Trump began his second term, starting at noon Monday. “As part of this freeze, no federal civilian position that is vacant at noon on Jan. 20, 2025, may be filled, and no new position may be created except as otherwise provided for in this memorandum or other applicable law.”
The order does make an exception for military positions and openings tied to “national security.”
“This order does not apply to military personnel of the armed forces or to positions related to immigration enforcement, national security, or public safety,” the order says.
“It appears, reading the executive order, that those things will still be allowed,” said David Babcock, a retired Air Force chief master sergeant and president of the Dayton-area AFA (Air and Space Forces Association) Wright Memorial Chapter, a group of military retirees and citizens working to support the Air Force.
However, any impact on civilian job openings remains to be seen. Such a freeze “does affect the Dayton area somewhat,” Babcock said.
“It will definitely have a Wright-Patterson impact and the Dayton community, since our mission is critically important,” he said. “People are going to have to just step up until the dust settles.”
The hiring freeze is a significant step for federal employees working across the country, as more than 80% of the federal workforce operates outside the Washington, D.C., area, the Federal News Network reported Tuesday. Today, the federal government employs about 2.2 million career civil servants, the network said.
Michael Fallings, a partner at Tully Rinckey, a national law firm that practices in the areas of federal employment law and military law, said the orders might force some areas of the federal government to rely more on contractors.
“It is a big deal, but it’s been done before,” he said.
Wright-Patterson has some 38,000 military and civilian employees, including many contractors, working both on and off the base.
The base is home to critical Air Force missions, such as the headquarters of the Air Force Materiel Command, the sprawling, global command responsible for equipping and sustaining the service.
Wright-Patt is also home to the headquarters of the Air Force Research Laboratory, the Air Force Life Cycle Management Center, the National Air and Space Intelligence Center and many other missions that employ thousands of civilians. In fact, the base is Ohio’s largest concentration of employment in one location.
Trump issued a similar executive order shortly after he began his first administration in January 2017.
A spokesman for Air Force Materiel Command declined to comment in detail Wednesday. “It’s premature for us to speculate right now,” AFMC spokesman Derek Kaufman said.
Within 90 days of the order, the director of the Office of Management and Budget is expected to submit a plan to reduce the size of the federal workforce “through efficiency improvements and attrition,” Trump’s executive order stated.
Among the other executive orders Trump signed was an order mandating a return to in-office work for government employees.
Fallings expects the two-sentence order to be challenged in courts and he sees the possibility of instances where collective bargaining agreements will have to be renegotiated or addressed anew. Essentially, the new Trump administration is defining its expectations for government employees, he said.
“It is going to be a litigated issue,” Fallings said.
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