President Donald Trump and his adviser Elon Musk’s campaign to radically cut back the US bureaucracy spread yesterday, with thousands of workers who handle everything from securing the nation’s nuclear weapons to caring for military veterans losing their jobs.As many as 2,000 workers at the Department of Energy were laid off, including hundreds of employees from the office that oversees the nuclear stockpile, sources familiar with the matter told Reuters yesterday.That added to a round of cuts that has targeted departments including Veterans Affairs, Education and the Small Business Administration.Officials from the Office of Personnel Management (OPM), which oversees federal hiring, met agencies on Thursday, advising them to lay off their probationary employees, according to a person familiar with the matter.Some 280,000 employees out of the 2.3mn member civilian federal workforce were hired in the last two years, with most still on probation and easier to fire, according to government data.Moves at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau signalled a broader range of people being targeted beyond probationary employees, sources said, with some employees on fixed-term contracts being axed.Trump says the federal government is too bloated and too much money is lost to waste and fraud.The federal government has some $36tn in debt and ran a $1.8tn deficit last year, and there is bipartisan agreement on the need for government reform.However, congressional Democrats say that Trump is encroaching on the legislature’s constitutional authority over federal spending, even as his fellow Republicans who control majorities in both chambers of Congress have largely supported the moves.“I take Secretary Collins at his word when he says there will be no impact to the delivery of care, benefits, and services for veterans with this plan,” Republican US Representative Mike Bost, who heads the House panel that oversees the Department of Veterans Affairs, said in a statement yesterday, referring to the department’s chief, Doug Collins.The department said on Thursday that it was firing more than 1,000 employees.The full scope of the layoffs was still emerging, but at a minimum nearly 6,000 employees across seven departments and agencies have been fired this week, according to reporting by Reuters and other outlets.An employee who was laid off from her job at the OPM told AFP on condition of anonymity that she had been fired during a video call to which close to 100 employees had been invited.The employee, and several other participants, were still serving out their probationary periods.All were told they were being let go for performance purposes.Shortly after the call ended, the employee received a letter from acting OPM director Charles Ezell confirming that she had been fired.Her access was cut off less than an hour later.Critics have also questioned the blunt force approach of Musk, the world’s richest person, who has amassed extraordinary influence in Trump’s presidency.Yesterday US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent shrugged off those concerns, comparing Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) to a financial audit.“These are serious people, and they’re going from agency to agency, doing an audit, looking for best practices,” he told Fox Business Network, dismissing what he called “hysteria” over the cuts.Musk is relying on a coterie of young engineers with little government experience to drive his DOGE campaign, and their early cuts appear to have been driven more by ideology than driving down costs.The speed and breadth of Musk’s effort has produced growing frustration among some of Trump’s aides over a lack of coordination from his team, including White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles, sources told Reuters.Steve Lenkart, executive director of the National Federation of Federal Employees union, which represents more than 100,000 workers, said he expects Musk and the Trump administration to concentrate going forward on agencies that regulate industry and finance.“That’s really what this whole thing is really all about,” Lenkart. “It’s getting government out of the way of industry and incredibly rich people, which is why Elon Musk is so excited about this.”Trump and Musk have said they are committed to reducing the size of the federal bureaucracy, which they charge is unaccountable to the White House and blame for actively stalling Trump’s policy initiatives.They have already offered some federal workers an incentive package to quit voluntarily, tried to gut civil-service protections for career employees, frozen most of US foreign aid and have attempted to shutter some government agencies such as the US Agency for International Development (USAID) and the CFPB almost entirely.About 75,000 workers have signed up for the buyout, the White House said, equal to 3% of the civilian workforce.One employee at the US Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) who spoke with AFP reported accepting the OPM’s offer to resign out of concern for otherwise being fired.“This was my dream job,” said the employee, who was not on probation but who had been at HUD for less time – and thus had less job security – than many other colleagues.“It just became very clear to me that the writing is on the wall,” the employee said. “I might as well take the best cushion I have to put myself in the best situation to take the time I need to find a new position.”Workers throughout the government who had opted not to take the buyout worried if they would be next on the chopping block.“I decided to roll the dice and stick around,” said an employee in the General Services Administration, who was granted anonymity to discuss his decision not to take the buyout. “It is a little unsettling to say the least.”Unions representing federal workers have sued to block the buyout plan.The American Federation of Government Workers said on Thursday that it will also fight the mass firings of probationary employees.A suit filed on Thursday by the attorneys-general of 14 states alleges Musk was illegally appointed by Trump and seeks an order barring him from taking any further government action.
