Iowa Republican Sen. Joni Ernst claimed that the "vacation" was over for the hundreds of thousands of federal employees who will now need to return to working in person during President Donald Trump's new administration. 

A recent Congressional probe found that vast numbers of federal employees telework from home, or other locations, wasting billions of taxpayer dollars spent on office space. But Trump signed an executive order last week that instructs all executive branch departments and agencies to terminate remote work arrangements.

Ernst told podcaster Gabe Groisman in an upcoming episode of his podcast "Standpoint with Gabe Groisman," that federal employees have "abused" telework policies that were initiated during the COVID-19 pandemic, and claimed it is one of the "biggest areas of waste" in the federal government.

"We are paying federal workers for a glorified vacation, because they're not working from home," Ernst said. “I’ll use the [Veterans Affairs department] as an example. They have very few people that actually show up to work, most of their workers are teleworking, and yet we have an ever-increasing backlog of VA disability claims, we have VA hotlines where calls go unanswered.” 

Ernst recounted how one VA employee allegedly participated in a Zoom meeting in 2023 while in his bathtub, which he reportedly bragged about on social media. 

"You're not actually working if you're taking a long, hot soak in a bubble bath," the senator said.

The comments come after the House Oversight and Accountability Committee released a report that found as of last May, among “the 2.28 million federal civilian employees, approximately 228,000 are never required to show up to the office, and nearly all of the other 1.1 million employees technically-eligible for telework are engaged in telework.”

Federal agencies have 30 days to implement their new return-to-office plan, according to the Daily Mail.

Misty Severi is a news reporter for Just The News. You can follow her on X for more coverage.