Trump orders federal workers back to office, reversing remote work trend, aiming to replace civil servants with loyalists.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) -President Donald Trump has ordered federal workers to return to the office five days a week and weakened job protections for civil servants, the first salvoes in his campaign to gut the federal bureaucracy. The one-two punch would force large numbers of white-collar government employees to forfeit remote working arrangements, reversing a trend that took off in the early stages of the COVID-19 pandemic. Trump's allies have said the return-to-work mandate and the stripping of civil service protections - widely known as "Schedule F" - is intended to help the president replace long-serving government workers with loyalists faithful only to his agenda.