WASHINGTON: President Donald Trump’s administration targeted bank regulators, rocket scientists and tax enforcers on Tuesday for dismissal as a U.S. judge gave him the green light to continue with the unprecedented remaking of the U.S. civil service – at least for now.
Tech billionaire Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, has swept through federal agencies slashing thousands of jobs since Trump became president last month and put Musk in charge of a drastic overhaul of government.
The White House has not said how many people it plans to fire and has given no numbers on the mass layoffs so far. The information to date has come from employees of federal agencies.
The Office of Personnel Management, the government agency that manages the civil service, set a deadline of 8 p.m. on Tuesday (0100 GMT) for all government departments to provide a list of probationary employees who have been terminated so far and those they want to retain, according to an OPM spokesperson.
According to government data, about 280,000 civilian government workers were hired less than two years ago with most still on probation, which makes them easier to terminate.
Agencies should prioritize retaining the highest-performing employees in “mission-critical roles,“ said McLaurine Pinover, OPM’s head of communications.
It remained unclear whether the numbers would be disclosed.
State attorneys general from across the United States asked a federal court to intervene and place a temporary hold on the cost-cutting, but U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan denied their request, allowing the campaign to continue while underlying litigation plays out.
“Plaintiffs legitimately call into question what appears to be the unchecked authority of an unelected individual and an entity that was not created by Congress and over which it has no oversight,“ Chutkan said in her ruling, referring to Musk.
Trump appointed Musk, the world’s richest person and his biggest donor during his election campaign, to oversee the culling of the federal workforce, which the Republican president views as bloated, corrupt and insufficiently loyal to him.
‘PEOPLE ARE SCARED’
With tax-filing season underway, senior officials at the Internal Revenue Service identified 7,500 employees for dismissal, with possibly more on the chopping block, according to a person familiar with the matter. Republicans had objected to an IRS staff expansion undertaken by Democratic President Joe Biden that independent budget analysts said would boost tax collections and help close the persistent U.S. budget gap.
The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, which oversees banks, said it has fired an unknown number of new hires, according to an email seen by Reuters. The cuts could potentially worsen staffing problems at a 6,000-person agency where more than one in three workers are eligible for retirement.
Roughly 1,000 new hires, including rocket scientists, at NASA were expected to be laid off on Tuesday as well, according to two people familiar with the U.S. space agency’s plans, with more cuts possible.
“People are scared and not speaking up to voice dissent or disagreement,“ said one employee at the 18,000-person agency who spoke on condition of anonymity.
Layoffs were also expected at the Federal Emergency Management Agency, which handles flood insurance and disaster response, as well as its parent agency, the Department of Homeland Security, sources said.
The Trump administration plans to fire hundreds of senior Department of Homeland Security employees this week, according to an administration official and a second source familiar with the matter. The planned firings, first reported by NBC News, would target people viewed as not aligned with Trump, the sources said.
Among the workers swept up in the overhaul of dozens of agencies are those reviewing Musk’s brain implant company Neuralink and others monitoring an outbreak of H5N1 bird flu that has infected millions of chickens and cattle this year.
COST SAVINGS
The overhaul comes as Trump attempts to exert even tighter control over the Justice Department, an agency traditionally seen as independent of White House influence.
Several department officials resigned last week after refusing a directive from a Trump appointee to drop a corruption case against New York Mayor Eric Adams. Another top prosecutor, Denise Cheung, resigned on Tuesday after refusing to investigate a government contract awarded during Biden’s tenure.
The acting head of the Social Security Administration, Michelle King, resigned over the weekend after Musk’s team asked for access to a vast database of personal and financial data at the agency, which handles retirement and other safety-net programs, according to a person familiar with the matter.
Musk’s team has said it has saved $55 billion so far, a relatively small slice of the annual $6.7 trillion federal budget. The DOGE website has begun giving more details of government contracts it has canceled after widespread complaints that its work was not transparent.
