The Senate’s lead "DOGE" lawmaker said Friday that her quest for government efficiency is beginning to come full-circle, as the U.S. Department of Agriculture instituted a return-to-work mandate she said was first spurred by a 2024 whistleblower who contacted her office.

"The Trump administration, DOGE, and I are already racking up wins for taxpayers," Sen. Joni Ernst, R-Iowa, told Fox News Digital on Friday.

"Growing up on a farm, I know what working from home really means."

President Donald Trump, too, highlighted the difference between telework in white-collar jobs and Americans in agriculture and manufacturing who don’t have the luxury of working from a desk.

In remarks to reporters, Trump said that federal workers appear less productive when working from home and that the dynamic is "unfair to the millions of people in the United States who are, in fact, working hard from job sites and not from their home."

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He also warned federal workers they would have to report to the office or, "You’re fired."

In that regard, Ernst looked back on a whistleblower who came to her and alleged that USDA's District of Columbia offices were largely vacant.

That, she said, spurred her to outline policy proposals that eventually became "DOGE" – a term popularized by Trump ally Elon Musk.

"When I first discovered that the Department of Agriculture was a ghost town, I took action to end federal employees’ abuse of telework and get the agency working for Iowa farmers," said Ernst.

"I have put bureaucrats on notice that their four-year vacation is over, and we are just beginning to get Washington back to work and serving the American people."

A memo from Acting Agriculture Secretary Gary Washington obtained by Politico on Thursday ordered senior staff "with assigned duty stations" to work from their offices full-time. Additional guidance would follow for workers without a preassigned workstation.

Ernst characterized the memo as that full-circle moment.

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Ernst reportedly brought up her early concerns about teleworking bureaucrats and unused Washington office space running up tabs on the federal ledger during a meeting with Trump and Musk at Mar-a-Lago last year.

She previously compiled a report following an investigation into government waste and abuse through which $2 trillion in savings could be realized if the issues were addressed.

In a December statement highlighting that report, the House Budget Committee – now led by Rep. Jodey Arrington, R-Texas – said the Biden administration’s condoning of mass telework "generated complacency in the workforce while costing taxpayers billions in unnecessary maintenance and upkeep costs."

"Early success means there is much more to come," a person familiar with the Senate’s DOGE work added.

According to a report from the Government Accountability Office, only 11% of the USDA's office space was occupied in the first quarter of 2023, and 75% of available space across 17 federal agencies has remained empty since the pandemic.

Ernst built her initial pre-formal-"DOGE" probes off of the USDA whistleblower, which is why she believes the latest development mandating return-to-work for agriculture bureaucrats is the issue now coming full-circle.

Rep. Aaron Bean, R-Fla., – the chairman and founder of the DOGE Caucus – praised Ernst's work and said taxpayers deserve to have a government operating at "full capacity."

"President Trump’s executive order requiring federal employees to return to work is the first step in improving government efficiency."

"This is just common sense, and the exact type of waste DOGE will continue to crack down on," Bean said.

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Ernst’s first DOGE "win" came with the passage of an otherwise Democrat-favored bill named for former President Joe Biden’s longtime friend Sen. Tom Carper, D-Del., and signed as both Delawareans were departing public service.

Within the Thomas R. Carper Water Resources Development Act was a provision to compel the General Services Administration to sell the Wilbur J. Cohen Federal Building.

The block-long "stripped classicist" building southwest of the U.S. Capitol was designed by Philadelphia architect Charles Z. Klauder in the 1930s, and originally hosted the Social Security Administration.

However, its total occupancy dwindled to 2% – largely Voice of America workers – by 2025.

Another "DOGE" amendment sponsored by Ernst that requires agency oversight and reporting regarding telework was successfully added to a major appropriations bill passed in December.

Fox News Digital reached out to the White House for comment for purposes of this story but did not receive a response by press time. 

Six states, including one with a Democratic governor, have either banned or prohibited the use of diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) initiatives in public colleges and universities this year.

The practice of DEI in higher educational institutions has been controversial for several years, most frequently opposed by Republicans and described by critics, such as civil rights attorney Devon Westhill, as an "industry that pushes a left-wing, far-left ideological orthodoxy in essentially every area of American life."

In 2024 alone, Alabama, Idaho, Iowa, Indiana, Kansas and Utah either banned or limited the use of such teaching or use in the application process in their state's education system.

In January, Utah Gov. Spencer Cox, a Republican, signed legislation to prohibit institutions from engaging in "discriminatory practices" such as "that an individual, by virtue of the individual’s personal identity characteristics, bears responsibility for actions committed in the past by other individuals with the same personal identity characteristics." 

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The anti-DEI law also banned schools from having any policy, procedure, practice, program, office, initiative, or required training that is referred to or called "diversity, equity and inclusion."

In March, Republican Gov. Kay Ivey of Alabama signed SB 129 into law. It prohibits certain DEI offices, as well as the "promotion, endorsement, and affirmation of certain divisive concepts in certain public settings."

The bill bans "divisive concepts," such as "that any individual should accept, acknowledge, affirm, or assent to a sense of guilt, complicity, or a need to apologize on the basis of his or her race, color, religion, sex, ethnicity, or national origin" and "that meritocracy or traits such as a hard work ethic are racist or sexist."

The legislation also required that restrooms be used on the basis of biological sex rather than gender identity, and that public institutions of higher education "authorize certain penalties for violation."

Also in March, Indiana adopted legislation to amend the duties of state educational institutions' diversity committees and increase "intellectual diversity." Additionally, the Indiana House introduced legislation to further prohibit DEI teachings in schools by mandating that educators "shall not promote in any course certain concepts related to race or sex."

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Kansas Gov. Laura Kelly, a Democrat, allowed legislation prohibiting postsecondary educational institutions from engaging in certain DEI-related actions to become law without her signature. The bill, passed in April, imposes a $10,000 fine on any public institution that employs DEI practices in faculty hiring or student enrollment processes.

"While I have concerns about this legislation, I don’t believe that the conduct targeted in this legislation occurs in our universities," Kelly wrote in her passage of the bill.

Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds, another Republican, signed an education-funding bill in May that contained provisions to limit DEI in schools, just months after the state's board of education began to scale back on such practices in higher education.

The bill prohibits "any effort to promote, as the official position of the public institution of higher education, a particular, widely contested opinion referencing unconscious or implicit bias, cultural appropriation, allyship, transgender ideology, microaggressions, group marginalization, antiracism, systemic oppression, social justice, intersectionality, nee-pronouns, heteronormativity, disparate impact, gender theory, racial privilege, sexual privilege, or any related formulation of these concepts." 

Idaho became the latest state to determine that institutions may not "require specific structures or activities related to DEI."

In December, the Idaho Board of Education unanimously agreed on a resolution requiring that institutions "ensure that no central offices, policies, procedures, or initiatives are dedicated to DEI ideology" and "ensure that no employee or student is required to declare gender identity or preferred pronouns."

Other states, such as Florida, Texas and Tennessee, have all previously banned the practice of DEI in higher education.

The Senate’s top DOGE Republican will send 24 letters – one to each major federal agency head – demanding a halt to last-minute work-from-home negotiations before President Biden returns to Delaware.

Sen. Joni Ernst, R-Iowa, chair of the Senate GOP Policy Committee, made the demand days after crafting legislation for 2025 that would "decentralize" and relocate one-third of the federal workforce outside Washington, D.C.

That bill’s lengthy acronym spells out "DRAIN THE SWAMP Act."

Ernst said that not a single government agency’s office space is half-occupied two-plus years on from the COVID-19 pandemic, and she previously called for the Biden administration to sell off unused real estate for taxpayers’ benefit.

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In her letters, Ernst laid out that 90% of telework-eligible federal employees are still working from home and only 6% report they are working on a "full-time basis." 

Additionally, she wrote that public-sector unions are purportedly "dictating personnel policy" without regard to federal directives from the Office of Management & Budget (OMB), which is running up a massive tab and leading to wastes of time, space and money.

"The union bosses are rushing to lock in last minute, lavish long-term deals with the lame-duck Biden administration—extending beyond President Trump’s next term in office—guaranteeing that bureaucrats can stay at home for another four years or longer," Ernst wrote in one letter prepped for Office of Personnel Management director Robert Shriver III.

"Apparently, protecting telework perks for public employees is a higher priority than showing up to serve American taxpayers," she wrote, calling Biden’s submission to union demands "shocking and unacceptable."

She noted it was a similarly liberal president who vociferously opposed unionization of public employees in the first place, as Democrat Franklin Roosevelt wrote in a letter to a union steward declining a 1937 invitation to a national federal employee union convention.

"All government employees should realize that the process of collective bargaining, as usually understood, cannot be transplanted into the public service," Roosevelt said.

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"It has its distinct and insurmountable limitations when applied to public personnel management. The very nature and purposes of government make it impossible for administrative officials to represent fully or to bind the employer in mutual discussions with government employee organizations."

"The employer is the whole people, who speak by means of laws enacted by their representatives in Congress."

Ernst suggested federal workers and their union representatives have forgotten Roosevelt’s warning, citing the last-minute push to ratify collective bargaining agreements and telework privilege pacts before President-elect Donald Trump can begin his oversight endeavors through DOGE.

The lawmaker told Fox News Digital on Thursday that her report cited in the letters "exposed that telework abuse is so rampant in Washington that there are more reindeer on Santa’s sleigh than employees showing up at the Department of Energy headquarters."

"As if that was not bad enough, President Biden is working hand in hand with unions to help ink more last-minute contracts allowing for telework privileges for years. Bureaucrats have forgotten their job is to serve the public, and I am happy to remind them with a little Christmas cheer."

In the letter, Ernst pointed out situations she said show union bosses and career agency management have the "government wrapped around their finger."

In the letters, she embedded a photo of former Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley while he was serving as Biden’s Social Security Administration chief and who was wearing a Captain America T-shirt alongside a purported union official at a party.

Ernst cited news reports of O’Malley going to Florida to party with union members before endorsing a contract preventing easy reduction of work-from-home ability.

She said O’Malley spent the trip "crooning" Irish ballads on his guitar and drinking alcohol.

"This buddy-buddy relationship between the Social Security Commissioner and the union bosses representing his workforce during what is supposed to be a negotiation resulted in a contract unbelievably slanted towards the union and against the interests of taxpayers and the mission of the agency," she said.

In another case, she pointed to Housing & Urban Development employees who may not have deserved the TFUT or "taxpayer-funded union time" they filed for.

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One such worker successfully claimed compensation while in jail.

Ernst demanded the agencies report data on TFUT claims and payouts, unused or underused real estate holdings designated for use through collective bargaining, and any cases of each agency permitting unions or their employees to use department property at a discount or for free.

"Giving bureaucrats another four-year vacation from the office is unacceptable. Bureaucrats have had enough gap years—it’s time to get them back to work," she said.

Fox News' Julia Johnson contributed to this report.