President signs an executive order closing federal departments and agencies on December 24 and December 26, granting federal employees a four-day holiday weekend, as he golfs at his Florida club.

The President, last week, signed an executive order titled Providing for the Closing of Executive Departments and Agencies of the Federal Government on December 24, 2025, and December 26, 2025. The order, on its face, is a routine seasonal closure. Past presidents have signed similar orders. The order grants federal civil-service employees, with limited exceptions, paid leave on the two named dates. The two named dates, on the calendar, sit on either side of Christmas.

The order’s mechanism is the President’s authority, under 5 U.S.C. § 6103(b), to declare days of administrative leave. The order’s effect is that federal employees, who would otherwise be at work, are not.

The President’s own schedule, on the same two dates, on the public pool reports, was as follows. December 24: motorcade to the Trump International Golf Club in West Palm Beach. December 26: motorcade to the Trump International Golf Club in West Palm Beach. The pool reports do not specify the round score. The pool reports do confirm the motorcade.

This is, on the public record, the fifteenth consecutive weekend the President has visited his golf course while in residence at Mar-a-Lago. The total, by the count maintained at the Trump Golf Tracker website, is approximately ninety days at golf clubs since the inauguration in January.

There is a smaller observation. The order’s text, on the Federal Register, does not contain language to the effect that the President himself will treat the closures as days of leave. Federal civil-service days of leave, in the executive-branch tradition, do not apply to the President. The President is, by the constitutional design, on duty whether or not the federal civil service is. The President’s exercise of duty, on the two named dates, was the golf course.

A serious country, when it grants federal civil servants two paid leave days adjacent to a federal holiday, does so as a gesture of administrative grace. The President of that country, while signing the order, would typically schedule equivalent ceremonial duties on the same days. This President, on the same days, did not.

Calmly documenting the decline.