WASHINGTON – President Donald Trump has issued an executive order freezing the hiring of new federal employees, including the planned addition of 86,000 IRS agents under a program initiated by former President Joe Biden. The president also suggested that IRS agents, who are armed, might better serve the nation by being deployed to the U.S.-Mexico border.
“Maybe they should go to the border,” Trump remarked when asked about the controversial hiring initiative. “You know they have guns,” he added, criticizing the Biden-era plan as an unnecessary burden on taxpayers.
It is not certain whether the President was speaking in jest as he sometimes does, or if he was serious about deploying IRS agents to the U.S. southern border.
The executive order, signed Jan. 20, prohibits the filling of any vacant federal civilian positions as of noon that day and prevents the creation of new positions unless otherwise authorized by law. Another order requires all IRS employees to return to in-person work this week.
The hiring freeze is the latest development in Trump’s broader efforts to curtail IRS expansion, following repeated claims by Republicans that additional funding for the agency would lead to audits targeting middle-class Americans. The $80 billion allocated to the IRS under the Inflation Reduction Act has already been reduced through multiple stopgap measures.
Trump has also floated the idea of creating an “External Revenue Service,” though it remains unclear how such an agency would function or if it would replace the IRS. Meanwhile, some lawmakers are pushing forward a proposal to abolish the IRS entirely and rewrite the federal tax code.