President Donald Trump’s administration gave no sign of diverting from its plan for a second wave of mass firings and budget cuts across the US government after two federal court rulings ordered the reinstatement of thousands of workers.
Even so, Vice President JD Vance acknowledged yesterday that mistakes had been made during the downsizing process, which has moved at breakneck speed since Mr Trump took office in January.
Federal agencies had faced a Thursday deadline to submit large-scale reorganisation plans as part of Mr Trump’s push to radically remake the federal bureaucracy, a task he has largely left to Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency.
So far, the DOGE effort has produced potential cuts of more than 100,000 jobs across the 2.3 million-member federal civilian workforce, the freezing of foreign aid, and the cancellation of thousands of programmes and contracts.
DOGE’s approach at times has been so scattershot that key federal employees such as those who oversee the country’s nuclear stockpile and scientists combating bird flu have been fired and recalled.
At the same time, financial markets have been rattled by the economic risks posed by a global trade war being waged by Mr Trump.
Stock markets have fallen dramatically over the past two weeks, wiping out $5 trillion (€4.5 trillion) in value over concerns that Mr Trump’s policies could lead to a recession, although Wall Street stocks were higher yesterday.
Mr Vance said that Mr Musk’s DOGE has made mistakes at times and defended most federal employees as hard-working.
“Elon himself has said that sometimes you do something, you make a mistake, and then you undo the mistake. I’m accepting of mistakes,” Mr Vance said in an interview with NBC News.
“I also think you have to quickly correct those mistakes. But I’m also very aware of the fact that there are a lot of good people who work in the government – a lot of people who are doing a very good job,” Mr Vance said.
“And we want to try to preserve as much of what works in government as possible, while eliminating what doesn’t work,” he added.
Rulings in federal courts in California and Maryland on Thursday ordered some agencies to reinstate thousands of probationary employees who had been dismissed in recent weeks.
The White House, calling the judges partisan activists, vowed to fight back. The California ruling has already been appealed, and the administration has asked the judge to pause implementation of his ruling pending the outcome.
“This injunction is entirely unconstitutional,” White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said. “You cannot have a low-level district court judge filing an injunction to usurp the executive authority of the president of the United States.”
With Mr Musk, the world’s richest man at his side, Mr Trump signed an executive order on 11 February directing all agencies to “promptly undertake preparations to initiate large-scale reductions in force,” using a legal term commonly referred to as RIF to denote mass layoffs.
Read more: Musk’s DOGE ordered to release records on operations
A subsequent memo from the US Office of Personnel Management said plans should include “a significant reduction” of full-time staff, cuts to real estate, a smaller budget, and the elimination of functions not mandated by law.
IRS cuts
The Internal Revenue Service, the tax-collecting agency that has long been a target of scorn for Republicans, is planning to eliminate 20% to 25% of its workforce by 15 May, according to a person briefed on the agency’s plans. The IRS had about 100,000 workers when Mr Trump took office, meaning up to 25,000 are set to lose their jobs.
The 20% to 25% target includes the roughly 5,000 IRS employees who took a buyout last month and potentially 7,000 probationary workers who were fired, though court rulings on Thursday could lead to the reinstatement of probationary staff, the person said.
The planned job cuts are being described internally as the first phase of the agency’s efforts to reduce career workers, the person briefed on the matter said, indicating there could be additional cuts after 15 May.
The Trump administration has yet to give a total of how many people it has fired, but Reuters reporting on internal memos, public statements and other sources add up to more than 100,000 people fired or offered buyouts, with the Department of Veterans Affairs alone aiming to cut more than 80,000 workers.
Court challenges
Several agencies have offered employees lump-sum payments to voluntarily retire early, which could help the agencies avoid legal complications inherent in the RIF process that unions have vowed to fight in court.
Court rulings on the layoffs have had mixed results but Thursday’s decisions in California and Maryland marked the largest legal setback yet for the administration.
US District Judge William Alsup in San Francisco ruled that probationary workers, typically those with less than two years on the job, should be reinstated at the departments of Defence, Veterans Affairs, Agriculture, Energy, Interior and Treasury.
After Mr Alsup’s ruling was handed down, US District Judge James Bredar in Baltimore directed the administration to reinstate tens of thousands of federal workers.
Mr Bredar agreed with 20 Democratic-led states that 18 agencies that had fired probationary employees en masse in recent weeks violated regulations governing the process for laying off federal workers.
