100 days of the Trump Administration – What do HR leaders need to know?

It has been 100 days since Donald Trump became President of the United States for a second time.

President Trump has been busy in first three months of his administration.

While tariffs and deportations have dominated the headlines in the past month, the Trump Administration has spent the past 100 days flooding the zone by signing  hundreds of executive orders and making announcements ranging from cutting university funding, eradicating paper straws, negotiating peace in Ukraine, federal layoffs, scrapping DEI policies, to the intention to annex Canada and Greenland.

It can be tough to keep up with all the policies and announcements – particularly amid numerous reversals – but UNLEASH is on hand to help our community of HR leaders navigate the current and the future of the US Trump government.

Let’s dig into the HR and workforce decisions you need to know about from Trump’s first 100 days in office.

Scrapping DEI policies: ‘We will forge a society that is color blind and merit-based’

The same day that Trump was inaugurated as the 47^th President of the US he signed an executive order titled ‘Ending Radical and Wasteful Government DEI Programs and Preferencing’.

The order alleges that the “The Biden Administration forced illegal and immoral discrimination programs, going by the name “diversity, equity, and inclusion” (DEI), into virtually all aspects of the Federal Government, in areas ranging from airline safety to the military”.

This “demonstrated immense public waste and shameful discrimination. That ends today”, stated the executive order.

Two days into his Presidency, Trump moved to place all employees working in DEI offices across the government to be put on administrative leave, as well as threatened federal employees with “adverse consequences” if they failed to report colleagues who defied ordered to purge DEI from federal agencies.

Across the Trump Administration’s first 100 days, it has issued 17 executive orders on the topic DEI, gender and transgender in its first 100 days, according to the American Presidency project.

This is no surprise as President Trump has long signaled his anti-DEI stance; it was present throughout his campaign, and he actually stated in his inaugural address: “We will forge a society that is color blind and merit-based.”

The Trump administration has gone further that outlawing diversity policies in the federal government; in fact, it has put pressure on American enterprises to follow suit.

This pressure has not been limited to the US; it has also extended to Europe, according to reporting from the Financial Times.

To date, European countries and companies have rejected this pull away from DEI, and with Canadians voting in droves for the Liberal Party who pledged to stand up to Trump, it looks like the DEI agenda remains safe outside of the US for now.

UNLEASH has actually been tracking the companies that have rollbacked on their DEI commitments in 2025 – we are continuously updating as news breaks.

Federal layoffs, Elon Musk and DOGE

Another day one action by the Trump Administration was to establish the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), run by tech mogul and CEO of Tesla and X Elon Musk.

DOGE is not truly a US government department. It is an offshoot of the Presidency, and according to Executive Order that created it, the aim of DOGE is “implement the President’s DOGE Agenda, by modernizing Federal technology and software to maximize governmental efficiency and productivity”.

In Trump’s first 100 days in government, DOGE has overseen the dismantling of numerous government departments, notably the US Agency for International Development (USAID), Voice of America and Department of Education.

While there have been high profile federal firings from Trump – notably US Archivist Colleen Shogan, FBI director Kash Patel and two commissioners of the EEOC – DOGE efficiency attempts has led to mass layoffs of federal employees.

CNN estimates that across the entire US federal workforce, at least 121,000 federal workforces have been fired or laid off. Given the federal government is American largest employer and employed around 5 million people, that means one in 14 employees at impacted agencies have lost their jobs.

These CNN figures do not include those who took the voluntary buyout route – where they took voluntary redundancy, did not have to work, and were offered pay until the end of September. The New York Times estimates the figure could be 76,000.

Those figures focus on federal employees, but do not take into account the contractors who are also impacted. Challenger Gray & Christmas actually estimates that the total layoffs is as high as 280,000.

Talking exclusively to TIME about DOGE, President Trump said: “DOGE has been a very big success. We found hundreds of billions of dollars of waste, fraud, and abuse.”

When asked “why is it better for these people to be out of jobs”, Trump replied: “Because we have to have an efficient country.”

These mass layoffs and redundancies are highly disruptive for the labor market, and the wider economy, particularly as they come at the same time as sky-high global tariffs on all goods coming into the US.

Chaos is always a worry for businesses, but could there be a glimmer of a silver lining through the dark clouds?

The layoffs have forced highly experienced and skilled individuals to look for jobs, potentially within corporate America, which has long faced labor shortages.

While federal employees may not have a typical private sector CV, skills-first hiring could enable HR teams in the private sector to tap into a new pool of talent.

Some food for thought, HR leaders.

Repealing AI oversight and workers’ rights

DOGE, federal layoffs and DEI rollbacks have dominated the news since Trump returned to the Presidency.

However, there are other important HR stories that have slipped under the radar.

First of all, AI, one of the biggest (and highly sensitive) topic facing the HR industry.

The US government notably refused to sign the final declaration of the AI Action Summit, held in Paris in February.

While the US was not alone in this decision, the Trump administration has gone further. It has repealed guardrails around the safe, secure development and use of AI, cut staff working at the US AI Safety Institute (AISI), and scientists partnering with AISI have been instructed to stop mentioning ‘AI safety’, ‘responsible AI’ and ‘AI fairness’ among skills required for their work.

They have also been requested to reduce “ideological bias, to enable human flourishing and economic competitiveness”, as reported by Wired.

According to a January 23 Executive Order, the Trump Administration believes that for the US to maintain its global AI leadership, “we must develop AI systems that are free from ideological bias or engineered social agendas”.

Beyond this, lots of reporting finds that President Trump’s decisions are threatening workers’ rights, a key compliance topic for anyone employing people in the US.

A March 27 Executive Order ended collective bargaining for Federal unions linked with national security, claiming that previous legislation “enables hostile Federal unions to obstruct agency management”.

While this only applies to the federal government employees – 1 million of whom are affected by this specific Executive Order – it demonstrates the administration’s attitude towards unions and workers’ rights.

While President Trump has appointed a pro-union Secretary of Labor, Lori Chavez-DeRemer, he has also made personnel changes at the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), which safeguards the right of private employees to unionize or organize.

The President removed Gwynee Wilcox, a board member of the NLRB, from office. She is fighting this move in court, but is yet to be reinstated in her position.

The Trump administration also fired the NLRB’s General Counsel; his appointee, William Cowen, has already rolled back many pro-union initiatives and prosecutors have already started to withdraw arguments advanced during the Biden Administration.

Of course, individual states have control over their own union laws, but this drastic federal shift from the President Biden’s pro-union stance is not something to be overlooked by employers, and HR leaders in particular.

100 days of the second Trump administration are done; there are still over 1,300 to go of this US administration.

The executive orders and announcements are showing no signs of slowing down; UNLEASH will be on hand to keep you and your teams up-to-date on the comings and goings of the Trump presidency.