Federal Government Policy and Business

Trump hiring freeze could turn out to be less sweeping than it seems

The Washington Post: President Trump vowed as a candidate to take a sledgehammer to the federal bureaucracy, put a workforce full of “waste, fraud and abuse” on notice and “cut so much, your head will spin.”

But the “across the board” hiring freeze he put in place Monday could be a more symbolic, less forceful first step toward shrinking government than the sweeping order it appears to be, federal personnel experts said Tuesday. In fact, the memorandum regarding the 2.1 million civilians in the federal workforce leaves plenty of room for exceptions.

Federal offices in many corners of government could continue to hire, as long as the job has — or can be construed to have — a national security or public safety mission. Individual Cabinet secretaries and agency heads have broad leeway to decide on exemptions.

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