President Donald Trump’s bold Sharpie pen came commercial real estate’s way on Day 1 of his second term as he issued an executive order that could have a massive impact on the office market in Washington, D.C., and beyond.

Trump signed a mandate requiring all federal workers to return to full-time in-person work. The executive order banning telework was one of eight Trump signed in a packed Capital One Arena following his inauguration Monday, including withdrawing the U.S. from the Paris Climate Accord and freezing all new regulations until Trump's Cabinet is fully in place.

“Heads of all departments and agencies in the executive branch of Government shall, as soon as practicable, take all necessary steps to terminate remote work arrangements and require employees to return to work in-person at their respective duty stations on a full-time basis, provided that the department and agency heads shall make exemptions they deem necessary,” the executive order reads.

Despite the strong wording, the order will face significant headwinds due to existing agreements with federal unions.

The Office of Personnel Management previously mandated that employees report in person at least two days per biweekly pay period. Roughly half of federal employees weren't eligible to telecommute in May, according to the most recent Office of Management and Budget report on remote work released in August.

Telework-eligible federal workers spent about 60% of their working hours at their agency-appointed job sites.

The push to bring federal workers back to the office goes back years, but the impact has been limited. Bringing the “vast majority” of federal workers back to the office was also a priority for former President Joe Biden, who spoke about it in his State of the Union speech in 2022. In March 2023, the Republican-controlled House of Representatives passed a measure mandating in-person work for federal employees. That bill had little Democratic support and was never approved by the Senate.

There is a great deal of inconsistency in how agencies have put the OPM’s one-day-a-week rule into practice since federal unions also influence how and where their members work.

Last month, the Federation of Government Employees, a union representing 42,000 Social Security Administration workers, secured telework for those bureaucrats through 2029.

The federal government leased 150M SF nationwide as of October, S&P Global reported. A return-to-work mandate will disproportionately impact the D.C. area since that stat includes 16.5M SF in the city and more than 29M SF in neighboring Virginia and Maryland.

There has been a great deal of hand-wringing about the D.C. office market, where many buildings remain mostly empty.

“The biggest elephant in the room is the uncertainty that these agencies are up against as to what their utilization will be for their space and how many employees are coming back to work, what those requirements will be,” Bob MacKichan, partner at law firm Holland & Knight and former general counsel for the General Services Administration, said during a Bisnow event in July.

Federal agencies were using just 12% of the space in their headquarters buildings on average in March, according to a report from the Public Buildings Reform Board. The group concluded that a federal policy change was “urgently needed” to reduce the waste of taxpayer money.

The GSA last month announced plans to offload eight D.C. office buildings totaling 1.5M SF.

“The actions we’re announcing today demonstrate our commitment to accelerating the disposition of federal buildings that don’t use taxpayer dollars effectively — and the opportunity to do even more with full access to the Federal Buildings Fund,” GSA Administrator Robin Carnahan said in a news release at the time.

The government accounted for 17% of D.C.’s leasing activity in 2024 through November, CBRE reported. That is 52% below the long-term annual average, and the federal leased footprint is down 14.4M SF from its peak in 2014.

The new presidential pressure for in-office use mirrors a renewed push from the private sector.

JPMorgan Chase announced a five-day-per-week return-to-office mandate last week for its 300,000-person global workforce. Amazon, AT&T and Sweetgreen all also issued new rules that took effect this month.