(DCNF)—A paralegal at the Department of Justice (DOJ) claimed in a video posted to TikTok Thursday that President Donald Trump’s executive order requiring federal employees to return to federal government offices meant they “cannot get any work done.”
Trump issued an executive order Monday requiring agencies to terminate remote work arrangements and for employees to work in-person on a “full-time basis.” The paralegal, Kaitlin Kons, said she and her co-workers were dealing with an “information intake” and were “yapping” in the office instead of doing their jobs.
“As a government employee, what’s so ironic about all this shit going on with Trump making us go in-person five days a week to promote efficiency, and also establishing the Department of Government Efficiency, the DOGE, what’s really funny is, because of all of this news and all of the change in policy, we are yapping more at work, we are trying to digest everything that’s going on,” Kons said. “We cannot get any work done because of how much information intake that, like, existing in this administration requires.”
“And we’re not yapping just to yap. We’re yapping because every single day a memo comes down from God knows where telling us that there’s a new rule that we need to enforce for a job that does not relate to what we’re doing,” Kons continued. “Like, oh, you work for the FDA? Guess what? Now you’re going to have to enforce immigration. Any fucking federal employee, guess what, go snitch on your fucking colleagues if they do anything related to DEI now. Like, this week has been such a whirlwind. I cannot get work done.”
Kons, who has a side gig providing styling services for weddings, posted other videos to her TikTok about Trump’s executive orders, including one mandating an end to diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) efforts.
Kons’ LinkedIn page shows she worked at the DOJ for over three years, while she described the goal of her styling company as “providing more inclusive styling options for queer women and non-binary people” in a post on Instagram.
Republican Sen. Joni Ernst unveiled a scathing report on the effects of telework on the federal government on Dec. 5, covering findings from her investigations into telework since she sent an August 2023 letter to 24 government agencies seeking requesting a review of the issues involved with telecommuting. The report detailed issues telework created involving locality pay, an adjustment to the basic pay of civilian employees in the federal government intended to make sure that federal employees have comparable compensation to private-sector counterparts in a given area of the country, and from the effects that largely vacant office buildings had on the working environment.
