The Trump Administration’s Executive Orders and ADR in the Public Sector
By Fred N. Thomas IV
How will President Donald Trump’s executive orders affect government conflict resolution services and practices?
Alternative dispute resolution functions are part of the numerous early executive order targets, if less publicized than others. In his first three months in office, Trump has signed more executive orders than any other president. Nigel Chiwaya and nine co-authors, “Tracking Trump's executive orders,” NBC News (Feb. 20) (available at https://bit.ly/41MkMYT). But see Andrew Hsu, “Firing federal employees was swift. Unwinding the terminations is proving complicated,” NPR (March 18) (available at https://bit.ly/4iylL67).
As of March 26, Trump had signed a total of 103 executive orders, and counting. See The American Presidency Project, Executive Orders, UC Santa Barbara (as of March 26) (available at https://bit.ly/42hAgW8). These orders have affected government functions in a number of ways, including announcing tariffs on goods from Mexico and Canada, which has been delayed, and imposing a tariff on China products, as well as pausing foreign aid.
Trump also has engineered employment reductions, with efforts led by the new Department of Government Efficiency—DOGE—that have at least temporarily restructured several prominent government agencies, including the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. David Ingram, Daniel Arkin and Lora Kolodny, “Trump administration begins mass firings across government,” NBC News (Feb. 14) (available at https://bit.ly/41G8DVm).
Still, it’s unclear how the current orders, and the inevitable follow-ups, will be felt in the use of ADR. Nevertheless, an event cancellation early this month looks to be the indicator of major ADR-related effects that followed, and probably more to come.
The Federal Mediation & Conciliation Service on March 4 noted that due to recent executive orders, its 43rd FMCS Arbitration Symposium, long scheduled for May 8-9 in Atlantic City, N.J., had been canceled. See FMCS’s notification at https://bit.ly/4iP7EJs.
The FMCS is “a small, independent federal agency” that provides arbitration, mediation, facilitation, dispute systems design, and other ADR services to federal agencies throughout the United States, and “plays a crucial role in sustaining the American economy by preventing, minimizing, and resolving work stoppages and labor disputes,” according to its website at www.fmcs.gov.
In the wake of the administration’s actions, FMCS is currently “reviewing Executive Orders for immediate implementation” to discern what this impact will truly look like. That advisory is stated prominently in a bright red, bolded font as an “important notice” on its homepage. See www.fmcs.gov.
The agency notes that the Executive Orders’ “requirements . . . may affect some services or information currently provided” on the FMCS website.
In fact, the FMCS cancellation was the start of a bigger Trump administration focus on the 78-year-old agency. A March 14 Trump executive order, titled “Continuing the Reduction of the Federal Bureaucracy,” explicitly calls out FMCS, along with six other government agencies. It calls for the elimination of all “non-statutory components and functions” at the agency and the reduction of performing all “statutory functions,” including minimizing the presence of personnel in accordance with the agency’s statutory mandate. Exec. Order No. 14,238, 90 Fed. Reg. 13,043 (Mar. 14, 2025).
The FMCS’s statutory authorization can be found at 29 U.S.C. 172.
These non-statutory functions—that is, presumably, those that don’t originate from the original legislation--include FMCS offering ADR services to federal agencies under the authority of the Administrative Dispute Resolution Act, also known as ADRA, while the statutory functions include helping to prevent major work stoppages and improving relationships between workers and unions. Administrative Dispute Resolution Act, 1990 Enacted H.R. 2497, 101 Enacted H.R. 2497, 104 Stat. 2736, 2737. ADRA is a federal statute that authorizes and encourages federal agencies to use ADR methods in dispute resolution.
An explicit Trump administration goal is reducing the budget of the federal government (see Penn Wharton’s Budget Model at https://bit.ly/4j1nT6l), and reducing salaried employees at agencies is a key component, using the DOGE as its vehicle to make these changes.
But that in turn has produced costs, beyond lost services, in order to minimize the presence of these federal workers. For example, the March 14 executive order requires agencies to offer workers buyouts, or a deferred resignation, which has led to many seasoned employees getting pushed out of the door. This is, effectively, paid administrative leave prior to separation; it has reduced the number of employees in each of these agencies, some exponentially, all in accordance with the executive orders’ and DOGE’s goals.
In response to questions from CPR Speaks regarding current FMCS operations, Greg Raelson, the FMCS Director of Congressional and Public Affairs, stated in an email that “FMCS must reexamine [its] operations, mission, budget, personnel, and physical spaces to ensure [it is] best positioned to serve [its] clients while aligning with the current administration’s goals.”
According to Raelson, some adjustments that have been made thus far have included “changes to [the] employee roster, modifications in . . . case management, and scaling back certain event participations”—which would include the recent cancellation of the 43rd Symposium discussed above.
Raelson added that despite the challenges that stem from experiencing such drastic changes in a short time period, FMCS remains “confident in [its] ability to meet all statutory requirements” and in its ability to “adapt and re-strategize, as necessary.”
Moreover, the communications director says that FMCS’s goal of providing arbitration services focused on labor relations and collective bargaining is still the same, and that positively contributing to the economy has always been at the top of FMCS’s priorities. For details, see the FMCS press release response to the March 14 Executive Order, released March 19, at https://bit.ly/4bREmHQ.
On top of aligning with the March 14 Executive Order, FMCS is also addressing conservative critics who question its spending and want the agency closed. Luke Rosiak, a longtime FMCS critic, wrote an article published by the Daily Wire in which he claimed that FMCS was “rife with corruption” and inquires how employees at such a small agency can afford to live such “luxurious lifestyles.” See his March 19 article at https://bit.ly/4hIcJSV, which links to Rosiak’s coverage of alleged FMCS improprieties more than a decade ago.
A March 19 FMCS press release fired back. It said that “Rosiak’s article contains numerous falsehoods and misleading claims that irresponsibly do not reflect the reality of FMCS’s operations.” In a press release, Greg Goldstein, the agency’s Chief Operating Officer and Acting Director, emphasized that “FMCS remains steadfast in its dedication to ethical operational practices and transparent operations.” For details, see the FMCS response to Rosiak’s article at https://bit.ly/4c7wKRB.
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These recent activities related to conflict resolution process and activities raise a question as to whether the Trump administration is committed to ADR use generally, as well as the within the federal agencies focused on it or, for that matter, the government’s place within ADR at all.
Further administration orders and actions will develop the ADR intentions of the administration.
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The author is CPR’s 2024-2025 full-year intern and is a student at the Howard University School of Law in Washington, D.C.
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