Mass layoffs, court challenges and buyouts: Making sense of Trump's plans to shrink the federal workforce

Widespread layoffs across the federal government are in full force and could soon accelerate, all spearheaded by Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency.

Musk, at the order of President Donald Trump, continues to use a broad brush to dismantle long standing departments of the federal government, including the effective shuttering of USAID and encouraging federal employees to take a buyout.

The changes have been met with swiftly filed lawsuits, with judges ordering foreign aid to be restored and a hold on placing USAID employees on leave, among others.

Now, a wider swath of departments is making cuts. Thousands of federal workers — many of which are probationary employees who have only held their job for a short period of time — have been let go from agencies across government, ranging from the Energy Department to the Forest Service.

The expeditious, widespread layoffs risk spreading additional chaos throughout the American civil service and could impact government services.

Trump, Musk and Vice President JD Vance have railed on the judges who have blocked other cost-cutting measures, and remain undeterred in carrying out their mission to make massive cuts to the federal government.

“I think we do need to delete entire agencies as opposed to leave a lot of them behind,” Musk said via a video call to the World Governments Summit in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, on Thursday. “It’s kind of like a weed, if we don’t remove the roots of the weed, then it’s easy for the weed to grow back.”

As the changes continue Friday, with probationary employees under the DOGE microscope, Office of Personnel Management data points to thousands of more employees who could be on the chopping block.

Here are some of the biggest questions about Musk and Trump’s purge of government workers.

What is Trump and Musk's goal?

When Trump first announced DOGE, Musk had promised to cut $2 trillion from the federal budget. He later said $1 trillion was a more realistic target.

Musk has been extremely critical of the number of agencies — and the amount of money spent — in the federal government. With Trump’s blessing, Musk has been clear that his goal is to drastically reduce the size of the government.

How many people took a buyout?

The Trump administration first tried to entice government employees to leave voluntarily, rolling out a “Fork in the Road” program that promised government employees several months’ pay should they accept. The program closely mirrored moves Musk made when he bought the social media site Twitter in an effort to shrink that workforce.

Democrats and federal employee unions sharply criticized the program, saying the Trump administration had no authority to offer it — and that they couldn’t be trusted to actually follow through and pay employees.

A federal lawsuit briefly paused the initiative, but a judge lifted that pause earlier this week. Trump officials have since said a buyout is no longer an option.

The administration said about 77,000 federal employees took the government’s offer to leave. The voluntary resignation program culled 3 percent of the workforce, well short of the administration’s 10 percent goal, POLITICO reported Thursday.

Who is getting let go now?

After the “Fork in the Road” program ended, Musk and Trump are now directing agencies to make deep cuts to their staffs.

As of Thursday evening, at least seven agencies, including the Energy Department, the Education Department, the Office of Personnel Management, the Department of Veterans Affairs, Small Business Administration, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and the General Services Administration, had initiated layoffs.

The Energy Department had announced the layoffs of 2,000 employees. VA Secretary Doug Collins announced the “tough” decision to dismiss more than 1,000 employees. The Small Business Administration terminated about 720 employees, or 20 percent of its workforce.

The U.S. Forest Service will fire roughly 3,400 federal employees across every level of the agency, POLITICO reported Thursday, noting that the move also targets probationary employees.

On Friday morning, AP reported that about 1,300 probationary employees at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention were let go.

Are they targeting specific employees?

The government-wide layoffs have primarily targeted employees who are in a probationary status — generally employees recently hired, within one to two years — that allows employers to fire without a cause, depending on the agency.

Across the government, that could amount to potentially hundreds of thousands of employees.

Where is DOGE looking?

Musk’s allies have begun interviewing federal workers across agencies, notably at the General Services Administration, where employees told POLITICO the questions were similar to Musk’s efforts in Silicon Valley.

DOGE workers have also been spotted in agencies across the government, including the Treasury, Education and Labor Departments — and elsewhere.

Who is challenging the moves in court?

Numerous lawsuits have been filed surrounding DOGE’s work. On Thursday, 14 Democratic states attorneys general joined forces to call Musk’s DOGE an “unlawful delegation of executive power.”

A federal judge has placed a broad block on Trump’s effort to freeze a vast swath of federal grant and aid spending, and a group of 22 attorneys general sued to enforce that ruling.

Federal workers have also mounted a lawsuit to prevent Musk from accessing their data, and on Feb. 8 a judge blocked most Trump administration officials — including Musk and his allies — from accessing sensitive Treasury records.