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'Stupid, Costly, and Deadly': Trump Spent At Least $11 Billion Paying Government Workers Not to Work
"Donald Trump has often spoken about... making the government more efficient. Yet his massive federal layoffs and resignation programs have been the epitome of inefficiency."
Jun 24, 2026
A report released by government watchdog Public Citizen on Wednesday estimates that the federal government has blown billions of dollars paying former federal workers to not do their jobs.
According to Public Citizen, nearly 140,000 members of the federal workforce have taken part in the Trump administration's Deferred Resignation Program (DRP), which in turn has paid them at least $11 billion in exchange for not working.
Citing data from the Office of Personnel Management (OPM), the report calculates that "paying federal employees in the DRP not to work cost between $11.1 billion and $15.1 billion through March 2026," which would be enough money to pay for 3.6 billion school lunches, a full year of daycare for more than 837,000 children, or the combined annual salaries of 149,000 public school teachers.
The report finds that "the costs of paying federal workers not to work" will only rise over the next year.
"Since the beginning of 2026, several agencies have offered new rounds of the Deferred Resignation Program permitting federal employees to stop working, but to stay on the federal payroll through September 2026," the report states, "adding even more to the burgeoning financial cost of this billion-dollar resignation program."
The report emphasizes that there will be additional "massive costs on society" that will come from having a gutted federal workforce that aren't captured by its $11 billion estimate.
One obvious area where staff losses will cost the government money will be in lower tax collection, given that staffing at the Internal Revenue Services (IRS) fell by 25% over a four-month period last year.
"The Budget Lab at Yale University estimated that a 22% reduction in IRS staffing levels would result in a $197.7 billion loss over a 10-year period," the report notes, "the overwhelming majority of which will come from top earners who will escape paying what they owe."
Other critical government departments to see significant staff losses thanks to the DRP include the Department of Defense, which has lost 48,000 workers; the Department of Treasury, which has 23,000 fewer workers; and the Department of Agriculture, with a loss of more than 14,000 employees.
"Donald Trump has often spoken about cutting waste and making the government more efficient," the report concludes. "Yet his massive federal layoffs and resignation programs have been the epitome of inefficiency and have resulted in billions of dollars in wasted federal funds."
Douglas Pasternak, Public Citizen researcher and author of the report, said that "the Trump administration’s efforts to shrink the federal government have been stupid, costly, and deadly," and pointed to other negative impacts of the layoffs in addition to the costs of paying people to not work.
"Multiple agencies had to rehire those who took part in this program because Trump officials realized how vital they were to managing critical national programs," Pasternak said. "Even worse is the work left undone by the coerced departure of these workers, costing billions of dollars and putting untold numbers of lives at risk as the federal government fails to perform crucial functions."
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New Project 2025-Backed Trump Rule Guts Protections for 50,000 Federal Workers
“This rule is a direct assault on a professional, nonpartisan, merit-based civil service and the government services the American people rely on every day," said one critic.
Feb 05, 2026
The Trump administration on Thursday finalized a major civil service rule change that makes it easier to fire certain federal employees and replace them with political loyalists—a move that critics say increases the likelihood of abuse of power.
The new policy at the Office of Personnel Management (OPM)—the federal government's independent central human resources agency—reclassifies tens of thousands of federal workers as "policy/career," making them effectively at-will employees and easier to terminate.
The policy, known as Schedule F, was first proposed by President Donald Trump during his first term, which expired before he could fully implement it. Former President Joe Biden rescinded the policy, but Trump revived it on his first day back in office in January 2025, despite warnings from experts who say it is illegal.
Schedule F is one of the policies recommended in Project 2025, the far-right initiative to boost the power of the presidency and purge the federal civil service.
OPM estimates that around 2% of the federal workforce, or approximately 50,000 employees, will be affected by the rule change, which the agency said is aimed at "strengthening accountability, improving performance, and reinforcing a merit-based federal workforce."
Scott Kupor, who heads the OPM, said in a statement that the rule change “restores a basic principle of democratic governance: Those entrusted with shaping and executing policy must be accountable for results.”
“This rule preserves merit-based hiring, veterans’ preference, and whistle-blower protections while ensuring senior career officials responsible for advancing President Trump’s agenda can be held to the same performance expectations that exist throughout much of the American work force," he added.
However, critics are sounding the alarm over parts of the new policy, including a provision allowing agencies to fire employees who "obstruct the democratic process by intentionally subverting presidential directives."
“This rule is a direct assault on a professional, nonpartisan, merit-based civil service and the government services the American people rely on every day,” American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE) national president Everett Kelley said in a statement.
“When people see turmoil and controversy in Washington, they don’t ask for more politics in government, they ask for competence and professionalism," Kelley continued. "OPM is doing the opposite. They’re rebranding career public servants as ‘policy’ employees, silencing whistleblowers, and replacing competent professionals with political flunkies without any neutral, independent protections against politicization and arbitrary abuse of power.”
“A professional civil service means nurses and doctors can advocate for patient safety, inspectors can report violations, cybersecurity experts can warn about threats, and benefits specialists can tell the truth about what it takes to deliver services—without worrying they’ll be punished for it,” Kelley argued.
“Turning tens or maybe hundreds thousands of these professionals into at-will employees doesn’t make government more accountable," he added. "It makes it more vulnerable to pressure, retaliation, and political interference, which is exactly the opposite of what the public is asking for right now.”
Democracy Forward, which represents AFGE and another public sector union in a lawsuit challenging Trump's revival of Schedule F, said in a statement Thursday, "The final rule continues to weaken more than a century of bipartisan civil service protections by allowing the administration to remove experienced, nonpolitical federal employees at will while stripping away civil service protections, meaningful oversight, and appeal rights."
"Existing law already provides mechanisms to address employee misconduct," the group added. "This rule is not about accountability, but about politicization."
The Trump-Vance admin is choosing to ignore countless concerns from the American public in order to implement a cornerstone of Project 2025 – an unlawful effort to weaken and politicize the nonpartisan civil service through regulation. To that we say: we will see you in court.
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— Democracy Forward (@democracyforward.org) February 5, 2026 at 7:06 AM
Democracy Forward president and CEO Skye Perryman said that "this proposal was wrong when it was outlined in Project 2025, wrong when the president issued an executive order, and it remains wrong now... This is a deliberate attempt to do through regulation what the law does not allow—strip public servants of their rights and make it easier to fire them for political reasons and harm the American people through doing so."
"We have successfully fought this kind of power grab before, and we will fight this again," Perryman vowed. "We will return to court to stop this unlawful rule and will use every legal tool available to hold this administration accountable to the people.”
On the legislative front, US Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Va.) and the late Rep. Gerald Connolly (D-Va.) last year reintroduced the Save the Civil Service Act, which aims "to protect the federal workforce from politicization and political manipulation."
“The civil servants who make up our federal workforce are the engine that keeps our federal government running,” Connolly, who died last May of cancer, said at the time. “They are our country’s greatest asset. We rely on their experience and expertise to provide every basic government service—from delivering the mail to helping families in the wake of natural disasters."
Connolly added that Trump's push to "remove qualified experts and replace them with political loyalists is a direct threat to our national security and our government’s ability to function the way the American people expect it to."
"It threatens to create a system wherein benefits and services are delivered based on the politics, not the needs, of the recipient," he added. "Expertise, not political fealty, must define our civil service.”
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Unions Sue to Protect Federal Workers From Mass Firings During Government Shutdown
"If these mass firings take place, the people who keep our skies safe for travel, our food supply secure, and our communities protected will lose their jobs," one labor leader warned.
Sep 30, 2025
Just hours before an expected US government shutdown, two major unions for federal workers filed a lawsuit on Tuesday in hopes of protecting them from the Trump administration's threat of mass firings.
"Announcing plans to fire potentially tens of thousands of federal employees simply because Congress and the administration are at odds on funding the government past the end of the fiscal year is not only illegal—it's immoral and unconscionable," American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE) national president Everett Kelley said in a statement.
"Federal employees dedicate their careers to public service—more than a third are military veterans—and the contempt being shown them by this administration is appalling," Kelley declared.
Filed by AFGE and the American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees (AFSCME) in the Northern District of California, the new suit specifically takes aim at the Office of Management and Budget, OMB Director Russell Vought, the Office of Personnel Management, and OPM Director Scott Kupor.
"Federal workers do the work of the people, and playing games with their livelihoods is cruel and unlawful."
The OMB last week "issued a memorandum threatening that if 'congressional Democrats' do not agree to the administration's
demands, and the federal government shuts down, there will be mass firings of federal employees," the complaint explains. The memo "takes the legally unsupportable position that a temporary interruption of appropriations eliminates the statutory requirement for all unfunded government programs and directs all federal agencies to 'use this opportunity' to consider reductions in force (RIFs) for any programs for which the funding has lapsed and that are not priorities of the president."
"This past weekend, the Trump administration doubled down on its illegal activity," the complaint notes, as OMB and OPM "told agencies that federal employees could work during the shutdown in order to effectuate these RIFs. But this directive is contrary to federal law, because carrying out RIFs is plainly not a permitted (or 'excepted') function that can lawfully continue during a shutdown."
"The threat of massive layoffs was repeated and reinforced yesterday by the White House press secretary who, when asked whether there will be mass layoffs of federal employees, answered, 'There will be if Democrats don't keep the government open,'" the filing continues. "These actions are contrary to law and arbitrary and capricious, and the cynical use of federal employees as a pawn in congressional deliberations should be declared unlawful and enjoined by this court."
AFSCME president Lee Saunders highlighted how the firing threat connects to Project 2025, a policy agenda from a host of far-right figures, including Vought, published last year, in the lead-up to the November election.
"The Trump administration is once again breaking the law to push its extreme Project 2025 agenda, illegally targeting federal workers with threats of mass firings due to the federal government shutdown," Saunders said. "If these mass firings take place, the people who keep our skies safe for travel, our food supply secure, and our communities protected will lose their jobs. We will do everything possible to defend these AFSCME members and their fellow workers from an administration hell-bent on stripping away their collective bargaining rights and jobs."
AFSCME and AFGE are represented by Altshuler Berzon LLP, Democracy Defenders Fund, and Democracy Forward, whose president and CEO, Skye Perryman, accused President Donald Trump of "using the civil service as a bargaining chip as he marches the American people into a government shutdown."
"Federal workers do the work of the people, and playing games with their livelihoods is cruel and unlawful. That is why we have sued today," said Perryman, whose group has played a leading role in challenging the administration in court, as an increasingly authoritarian Trump and his Department of Government Efficiency have worked to gut the federal bureaucracy.
"Since inauguration, this administration has pursued a harmful Project 2025 agenda, attacking community programs and charities, lawyers, schools, private companies, law firms, judges, universities, public servants, and the programs, foundations, and civil servants working to deliver services to people and keep communities safe," she noted. "No one's lives have been made easier or better by these actions, and we will continue to meet these attacks in court. We are honored to again represent AFGE and AFSCME in protecting the American people from the Trump-Vance administration's callous and unlawful agenda."
The government will shut down at midnight unless Congress takes action. Although the GOP controls both chambers and the White House, they lack the numbers to advance most legislation in the Senate without Democratic support. The Senate voted Tuesday evening on Democrats' and Republicans' competing resolutions, neither of which passed.
Democrats have fought to expand Affordable Care Act subsidies and reverse cuts to Medicaid in the so-called One Big Beautiful Bill Act that congressional Republicans passed and Trump signed this summer. GOP leaders have refused to consider walking back their assault on the healthcare of millions of Americans.
In the event of a shutdown, "non-expected" employees are furloughed while "excepted" employees continue working, but no one gets paid until the shutdown ends.
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Christian Nationalism for Lunch? Thanks, But No Thanks
A new U.S. Office of Personnel Management memo allowing workplace proselytizing is not a great recipe for harmonious and productive coworker relations.
Aug 13, 2025
Imagine you’re a federal civil service employee, reading today’s paper while having a sandwich during your lunch break in the cafeteria. Another federal employee, maybe a coworker or maybe not, sits down beside you and politely begins to tell you why his faith is correct and why yours, actually, isn’t. Sounds annoying, possibly enraging, and presumably inappropriate if not prohibited? Think again.
According to a July 28, 2025 memorandum to the heads of all federal departments and agencies from Scott Kupor, director of the U.S. Office of Personnel Management (OPM), employees “attempting to persuade others of the correctness of their own religious views,” including “why the non-adherent should re-think his religious beliefs,” is perfectly okay and even protected religious expression, so long as it falls short of harassment.
As a former federal attorney who worked for the U.S. Labor Department for 39 years, including eight years as a senior executive who ran a regional office, I find this policy disconcerting at best. From the standpoint of office mission effectiveness, maintaining positive and respectful peer-to-peer relationships is crucial. It’s one thing for coworkers, during breaks, to have candid and even heated discussions about sitcoms, musical tastes, or even politics. It’s quite another to laud one’s own spiritual belief and disparage, if not outright insult, another’s. Not a great recipe for harmonious and productive coworker relations.
This right to attempt to convince others that their religious convictions are misguided extends not only to peer coworkers, but to supervisors too. In other words, as you’re enjoying your sandwich in the cafeteria, your supervisor could sit down next to you and explain why your deeply held beliefs happen to be wrong. Not quite so easy to tell them it’s none of their damn business.
The prospect of federal supervisors advising their subordinates that their religious convictions aren’t the “correct” ones becomes dramatically more troubling if supervisors’ tenure is subject to the president’s whims.
But there’s another aspect of this policy that casts an even darker shadow. All this arises in an administration fueled by U.S. President Donald Trump’s vow to “bring back Christianity,” and populated or supported by self-described Christian nationalists like House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) and Russell Vought, once again head of the powerful Office of Management and Budget.
Christian nationalism means different things to different people, but has a number of core beliefs. A major 2024 survey by the Public Religion Research Institute included five statements designed to measure support for Christian nationalism. The list included:
- God has called Christians to exercise dominion over all areas of American society.
- The U.S. government should declare America a Christian nation.
- Being Christian is an important part of being truly American.
- If the U.S. moves away from our Christian foundations, we will not have a country anymore.
- U.S. laws should be based on Christian values.
The study found that 30% of Americans can be classified as Christian nationalism “adherents” or “sympathizers” (those who fully or mostly agree with the five statements), compared to two-thirds of Americans found to be “skeptics” or “rejecters” (that is, they mostly or fully disagree with the statements). Nevertheless, according to preelection reporting by Politico, “Vought and his ideological brethren would not shy from using their administration positions to promote Christian doctrine and imbue public policy with it.”
According to Christian nationalism expert and history professor Kristin Du Mez, “This is not a pluralist vision for all of America coming together or a vision for compromise… It is a vision for seizing power and using that power to usher in a ‘Christian America.’” She believes that if the Christian nationalist movement gets what it wants, “There will be no meaningful religious liberty. There will be essentially a two-tier society between the quote unquote, real Americans—those who buy into this, or pretend to—and then the rest of Americans.”
Is this latest OPM memo part of a veiled effort to advance a Christian nationalist vision for our country? Consider that the prospect of federal supervisors advising their subordinates that their religious convictions aren’t the “correct” ones becomes dramatically more troubling if supervisors’ tenure is subject to the president’s whims—including, potentially, loyalty to a Vought-endorsed Christian-nationalist-inspired belief system. During Trump’s first term, Vought tried to reclassify tens of thousands of federal workers as political appointees, which would have enabled mass dismissals of those deemed unsuitable. A similar effort is underway this time around. Will espousing Christian nationalism be one of the unstated litmus tests to get, or keep, a supervisory job?
Whether there’s a Christian nationalist agenda lurking behind the OPM memo or not, a better policy for government workers would suggest, if not require, that unless asked, they—and particularly supervisors—keep their judgments of others’ personal belief systems to themselves.
But since the July 28 memo says otherwise, federal employees, please note: As you’re minding your own business munching a tuna salad sandwich at lunch, you might find your supervisor offering a spiritual lesson that wasn’t on the menu. If it works for you, fine. But if it doesn’t go down well, do send it back, with a polite but firm “no thank you.” Assert your freedom of religion, or your freedom not to be religious, while you still have it.
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Trump Administration Lets Federal Employees Push Religion in Workplaces
"The Trump regime just handed Christian nationalists a loaded weapon: your federal workplace," said one critic.
Jul 28, 2025
The Trump administration issued a memo Monday allowing federal employees to proselytize in the workplace, a move welcomed by many conservatives but denounced by proponents of the separation of church and state.
The U.S. Office of Personnel Management (OPM) memo "provides clear guidance to ensure federal employees may express their religious beliefs through prayer, personal items, group gatherings, and conversations without fear of discrimination or retaliation."
"Employees must be allowed to engage in private religious expression in work areas to the same extent that they may engage in nonreligious private expression," the memo states.
Federal workers "should be permitted to display and use items used for religious purposes or icons of a religiously significant nature, including but not limited to bibles, artwork, jewelry, posters displaying religious messages, and other indicia of religion (such as crosses, crucifixes, and mezuzahs) on their desks, on their person, and in their assigned workspaces," the document continues.
"Employees may engage in conversations regarding religious topics with fellow employees, including attempting to persuade others of the correctness of their own religious views, provided that such efforts are not harassing in nature," OPM said—without elaborating on what constitutes harassment.
"These shocking changes essentially permit workplace evangelizing."
"Employees may also encourage their coworkers to participate in religious expressions of faith, such as prayer, to the same extent that they would be permitted to encourage coworkers participate in other personal activities," the memo adds.
OPM Director Scott Kupor said in a statement that "federal employees should never have to choose between their faith and their career."
"This guidance ensures the federal workplace is not just compliant with the law but welcoming to Americans of all faiths," Kupor added. "Under President [Donald] Trump's leadership, we are restoring constitutional freedoms and making government a place where people of faith are respected, not sidelined."
The OPM memo was widely applauded by conservative social media users—although some were dismayed that the new rules also apply to Muslims.
Critics, however, blasted what the Freedom From Religion Foundation (FFRF) called "a gift to evangelicals and the myth of 'anti-Christian bias.'"
FFRF co-president Laurie Gaylor said that "these shocking changes essentially permit workplace evangelizing, but worse still, allow supervisors to evangelize underlings and federal workers to proselytize the public they serve."
"This is the implementation of Christian nationalism in our federal government," Gaylor added.
The Secular Coalition for America denounced the memo as "another effort to grant privileges to certain religions while ignoring nonreligious people's rights."
Monday's memo follows another issued by Kupor on July 16 that encouraged federal agencies to take a "generous approach" to evaluating government employees who request telework and other flexibilities due to their religious beliefs.
The OPM directives follow the U.S. Supreme Court's 2023 Groff v. DeJoy ruling, in which the court's right-wing majority declared that Article VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 "requires an employer that denies a religious accommodation to show that the burden of granting an accommodation would result in substantial increased costs in relation to the conduct of its particular business."
The new memo also comes on the heels of three religion-based executive orders issued by Trump during his second term. One order established a White House Faith Office tasked with ensuring religious organizations have a voice in the federal government. Another seeks to "eradicate" what Trump claims is the "anti-Christian weaponization of government." Yet another created a Religious Liberty Commission meant to promote and protect religious freedom.
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Amid Destructive Firing Spree, Trump Wants His Political Cronies to Get Max Pay
"Padding the pockets of political operatives while firing food safety inspectors is nothing short of an egregious abuse of taxpayer dollars and massively wasteful," wrote a group of Democratic senators.
May 28, 2025
Senate Democrats on Wednesday launched an investigation into the Trump administration's effort to give political appointees the maximum allowable salary while it fires career civil servants en masse, dismantles entire federal agencies, and works in concert with Republican lawmakers to gut safety net programs.
In a letter to Trump's Office of Personnel Management (OPM), Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.) and seven other Democratic senators raised alarm over an April 10 OPM memo that removed career human resources officials from appointment and salary processes and urged federal agency heads to pay policy-setting Schedule C appointees the max salary of $195,200 per year.
"This memo, coupled with the administration's widespread layoffs of career government workers who have loyally served in the executive branch for presidents of both political parties, makes clear your intention: fire dedicated public servants in droves, cut essential government services, and use taxpayer dollars to instead hire underqualified and overpaid political cronies," the senators wrote to Acting OPM Director Charles Ezell.
"Schedule C hires are not career civil servants. They will not be answering phones at Social Security field offices or conducting food inspections or fighting wildfires," the lawmakers continued. "They do not work for the American people; they work to advance the political agenda of the president. OPM's April 10 memo makes clear the Trump administration's ultimate goal is to decimate the nonpolitical career civil service and use taxpayer dollars to enrich and reward political allies, all at the cost of the government services that people rely on."
"Padding the pockets of political operatives while firing food safety inspectors is nothing short of an egregious abuse of taxpayer dollars and massively wasteful," they added.
"Your memo encourages agencies to help install loyalists who have not been properly vetted, in critically important positions—and to pay them at the highest possible rate."
The Senate Democrats demanded that Ezell provide them with salary information for political appointees and job descriptions for those hired at the maximum salary level of $195,200, which the lawmakers noted is roughly five times the median income for a single individual in the United States.
"While this administration pushes out scores of public servants and guts entire agencies, often in defiance of Congress and federal law," the Democrats wrote, "your memo encourages agencies to help install loyalists who have not been properly vetted, in critically important positions—and to pay them at the highest possible rate."
Following the release of OPM's memo last month, Government Executive observed that "traditionally, while the selection of Schedule C appointees is typically the job of the White House or an agency's White House liaison, career HR employees evaluate an incoming appointee's resume and experience, ensure they are properly vetted, and provide input about the appointee's proposed starting salary."
By removing career HR officials from the appointment process, the memo "appears aimed at expediting the replacement of career workers with political appointees," the outlet reported—advancing a top goal of the Trump administration and its far-right allies.
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US Supreme Court's Right-Wing Majority Sides With Trump on Fired Federal Workers
"Today's order by the U.S. Supreme Court is deeply disappointing but is only a momentary pause in our efforts to... hold the federal government accountable," said a group of nonprofits and unions.
Apr 08, 2025
A coalition of nonprofits and unions representing federal workers said Tuesday that it would remain "unwavering" in fighting to protect thousands of civil servants who were fired by the Trump administration, after the U.S. Supreme Court sided with the White House in a case regarding the mass dismissal of 16,000 people from various agencies.
In the 7-2 ruling, the court did not rule on whether the employees were unlawfully fired, as the American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE) and other plaintiffs argued they were.
Instead, the unsigned opinion—approved by every member of the high court except Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Ketanji Brown Jackson—held that the nonprofit groups that sued President Donald Trump's administration had not demonstrated they suffered "injury" due to the firing of 16,000 probationary employees, and that the plaintiffs did not have legal standing to sue and try to pause the firings.
The majority on the court sided with Trump's administration, which had argued that a lower court judge—Senior Judge William Alsup in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California—had overreached by ordering the reinstatement of people who had been fired from six federal agencies including the Pentagon, the Department of Energy, and the Department of the Treasury.
AFGE and other plaintiffs—including the Main Street Alliance and the American Public Health Association—suggested that the technical ruling, which will stand while the case regarding the probationary employees moves forward, does not change the fact that "thousands of public service employees were unlawfully fired in an effort to cripple federal agencies and their crucial programs that serve millions of Americans every day."
"Today's order by the U.S. Supreme Court is deeply disappointing but is only a momentary pause in our efforts to enforce the trial court's orders and hold the federal government accountable," said the coalition. "Despite this setback, our coalition remains unwavering in fighting for these workers who were wronged by the administration, and in protecting the freedoms of the American people. This battle is far from over."
The plaintiffs argued that the Trump administration not only acted outside its authority by dismissing 16,000 federal workers, but based the firings on a false claim by Charles Ezell, acting director of the Office of Personnel Management (OPM).
They said Ezell ordered the termination of the probationary employees in a template letter that falsely claimed they were being fired for poor performance; federal employees are protected from at-will firings, and their supervisors must have a complaint about performance or misconduct to immediately dismiss them.
Many of the workers who learned they had been fired last month had not been at their jobs long enough to receive any performance reviews, or had only received positive feedback about their work.
In his earlier ruling last month, Alsup wrote that while "each federal agency has the statutory authority to hire and fire its employees, even at scale, subject to certain safeguards," OPM does not have that authority.
"Yet that is what happened here—en masse," said Alsup.
"The conservative Supreme Court stepped in and used a technical excuse to let Trump have his way."
The plaintiffs said in their lawsuit that other recent court rulings ordering the administration to reinstate fired employees bolstered their view that the dismissals were illegal. Last week, another federal judge in Maryland ordered the reinstatement of federal workers in 19 states and the District of Columbia.
The coaliton also denounced the government's claim that calling the workers back after terminating their employment would be onerous.
"The scale of the task is simply a reflection of the scale of the government's own unlawful action and its 'move fast and break things' ethos," the plaintiffs wrote. "Accepting the government's argument would mean that it can act lawlessly as long as it acts quickly and destructively enough that restoring the status quo would be an 'enormous' task. That is not and cannot be the law."
The administration's argument was reminiscent of its claim in another case that the Supreme Court ruled on Monday—that of Kilmar Abrego Garcia, a Maryland man who was expelled from the country by immigration officials and sent to El Salvador's prison system, despite having no criminal record and having proven to a judge earlier that he could face persecution and torture in El Salvador.
White House officials have claimed in recent days they have no way of bringing Abrego Garcia back to the U.S., as a lower coirt judge demanded. On Monday, Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts temporarily blocked District Judge Paula Xinis' order demanding that he be returned.
On Tuesday, Rep. Teresa Leger Fernández (D-N.M.) said that regarding the fired workers, "the conservative Supreme Court stepped in and used a technical excuse to let Trump have his way."
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Judge Orders Trump Administration to Reverse 'Sham' Mass Firing of Federal Workers
"It is a sad day when our government would fire some good employee and say it was based on performance when they know good and well that's a lie."
Mar 13, 2025
A U.S. judge on Thursday ruled that the Trump administration must reinstate thousands of government workers fired from half a dozen federal agencies based on the "lie" that their performance warranted termination.
U.S. District Judge for the Northern District of California William Alsup—an appointee of former President Bill Clinton—granted a preliminary injunction supporting a temporary restraining order against the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) and acting Director Charles Ezell on the grounds that the mass firing of probationary federal employees is "unlawful" because the agency lacked the authority for the move.
Alsup—who last month also found the OPM firings illegal—ordered the Trump administration to immediately reinstate all probationary employees terminated from the departments of Agriculture, Defense, Energy, Interior, Treasury, and Veterans Affairs.
"The reason that OPM wanted to put this based on performance was at least in part in my judgment a gimmick to avoid the Reductions in Force (RIF) Act, because the law always allows you to fire somebody for performance," Alsup said, referring the process used by federal agencies reduce the size of their workforce during reorganizations or budget cuts.
Last month, Trump signed an executive order directing Elon Musk's Department of Government Efficiency to institute RIFs across federal agencies as part of a so-called "workforce optimization initiative."
"It is a sad day when our government would fire some good employee and say it was based on performance when they know good and well that's a lie," Alsup wrote. "That should not have been done in our country. It was a sham in order to try to avoid statutory requirements."
While the White House blasted Alsup's ruling as "absurd and unconstitutional" and lodged an appeal, advocates for government workers cheered the decision.
Everett Kelley, national president of the American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE), said in a statement that the union "is pleased with Judge Alsup's order to immediately reinstate tens of thousands of probationary federal employees who were illegally fired from their jobs by an administration hellbent on crippling federal agencies and their work on behalf of the American public."
"We are grateful for these employees and the critical work they do, and AFGE will keep fighting until all federal employees who were unjustly and illegally fired are given their jobs back," Kelley added.
Lee Saunders, president of the American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees (AFSCME), said: "Public service workers are the backbone of our communities in every way. Today, we are proud to celebrate the court's decision which orders that fired federal employees must be reinstated and reinforces they cannot be fired without reason."
"This is a big win for all workers, especially AFSCME members of the United Nurses Associations of California and Council 20, who will be able to continue their essential work at the Department of Agriculture, Veterans Affairs Department, and other agencies," Saunders added.
Violet Wulf-Saena, founder and executive director of Climate Resilient Communities—a California-based nonprofit that "brings people together to create local solutions for a healthy planet"—also welcomed Thursday's ruling.
"The mass firing of public service employees is a direct assault on the environmental justice movement and will harm people living in heavily polluted communities," she said. "Today's decision represents a key win for our movement because our lifesaving work cannot proceed without the vital infrastructure and support of our federal employees."
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Watchdog Launches Probe of Trump-Musk Use of AI for Mass Firings of Federal Workers
"The American people deserve to know what is going on—including if and how artificial intelligence is being used to reshape the departments and agencies people rely on daily."
Mar 03, 2025
A watchdog organization on Monday launched a public records probe to determine the extent to which the Trump administration and its billionaire wrecking ball, Elon Musk, are using artificial intelligence as part of their lawless effort to purge the federal workforce.
"The American people deserve to know what is going on—including if and how artificial intelligence is being used to reshape the departments and agencies people rely on daily," said Skye Perryman, president and CEO of Democracy Forward, the group behind the new investigation.
"We will continue to use every tool at our disposal to force the Trump-Vance administration to fulfill its obligation to the public and to our system of laws," Perryman added.
The probe comes days after NBC News reported that federal workers' responses to Musk's email ultimatum were "expected to be fed into an artificial intelligence system to determine whether those jobs are necessary."
"The information will go into an LLM (Large Language Model), an advanced AI system that looks at huge amounts of text data to understand, generate and process human language," the news outlet reported, citing unnamed sources. "The AI system will determine whether someone's work is mission-critical or not."
Additionally, according to The Washington Post, Musk lieutenants "have fed sensitive data from across the Education Department into artificial intelligence software."
"For an administration that claimed it wanted to bring about transparency and efficiency in government, the Trump-Vance administration's purge of public servants and sloppy processes have done just the opposite."
Democracy Forward said Monday that it would use Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests in an attempt to shine light on the administration's reliance on AI for personnel decisions. The Trump Justice Department argued in a court filing last week that the Musk-led Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, is exempt from public records requests—a claim that experts have rejected and condemned as an attempt to skirt oversight.
"For an administration that claimed it wanted to bring about transparency and efficiency in government, the Trump-Vance administration's purge of public servants and sloppy processes have done just the opposite," Perryman said Monday. "DOGE and this administration are operating in a shroud of secrecy, and their 'govern by chaos' tactics have only made government less efficient and caused disruptions to our safety and security."
Democracy Forward said its new FOIA requests were sent to DOGE as well as the Office of Personnel Management, the State Department, the Education Department, the U.S. Agency for International Development, and the General Services Administration, among other agencies.
Wired reported last month that "Thomas Shedd, the recently appointed Technology Transformation Services director and Elon Musk ally, told General Services Administration workers that the agency's new administrator is pursuing an 'AI-first strategy.'"
"Shedd provided a handful of examples of projects GSA Acting Administrator Stephen Ehikian is looking to prioritize, including the development of 'AI coding agents' that would be made available for all agencies," Wired added. "Shedd made it clear that he believes much of the work at [Technology Transformation Services] and the broader government, particularly around finance tasks, could be automated.
Geoffrey Fowler, the Post's technology columnist, noted Monday that "lots of recent evidence shows that relying on automation alone to make critical decisions can lead to big government mistakes."
"Just ask New York City, where last year a government AI chatbot advised businesses to break the law," Fowler wrote. "Or Australia, where a deeply flawed algorithm called Robodebt created the opposite of efficiency: the government had to settle for more than a billion dollars with citizens for wrongly reclaiming benefits."
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Let's Be Very Clear: The Real Fraud Is DOGE
The Musk-led effort is neither a money-saving nor fraud-finding operation—it's an ideologically driven assault by far-right libertarians who seek to destroy a functioning government for their own greedy ends.
Mar 03, 2025
Donald Trump and Elon Musk keep claiming that their scorched-earth approach to remaking the federal government is made necessary by the prevalence of fraud and waste. Musk’s DOGE attack-squad tabulates its progress on a Wall of Receipts that currently purports to have saved Uncle Sam $65 billion.
That number appears to have been plucked out of thin air. The savings for the 2,300 individual contracts listed on the site add up to only $9.6 billion, and even that amount is shaky. For example, the single biggest savings, $1.9 billion, is attached to a Treasury Department contract that is reported to have ended during the Biden Administration.
DOGE gives no details of any fraud it may have found in the contracts. That is not surprising, since it is impossible to have done a careful examination of that many contracts in such a short amount of time.
Large numbers of the contracts are linked to agencies the Trump Administration is in the process of dismantling. USAID accounts for 246 contracts with total purported savings of $4.2 billion. The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau has 404 listings with savings of $109 million. The Education Department, reported to be headed for the chopping block, has 119 contracts with supposed savings of $659 million.
What we see in DOGE is instead the illusion of an attack on corruption that serves as a smokescreen for the Trump Administration’s scheme to dismantle large portions of the federal government.
It seems clear DOGE targeted those contracts because of the agency involved, not any evidence of misconduct. Among the remaining 769 contracts, there are many that seem to be targeted for ideological reasons. They include numerous awards whose descriptions refer to now-taboo areas such as DEI or environmental justice.
There are more than 100 listings for subscriptions, especially for expensive services such as Politico, Bloomberg Law, and Lexis Nexis. Those may not always be worth the cost, but there is nothing corrupt about the need for an agency to have good access to information.
Then there are listings for contracts that have not gone into effect. The second biggest saving amount, $318 million, is attached to an Office of Personnel Management pre-award. How can there be fraud when there is no contractor yet?
DOGE’s list also contains numerous entries with obvious errors. These include instances in which there are two links pointing to different contract awards, making it unclear which one is meant to be included. For example, there is a $149 million savings connected both to a contractor called Advanced Automation Technologies Inc. (for three assistants) and to Airgas USA for refrigerated liquid gases.
By pointing to DOGE’s sloppy work, I do not mean to deny the existence of contract fraud. The problem is that Musk’s people, whether through ignorance or design, are looking in the wrong places. They seem to be ignoring the types of large contractors that have repeatedly been found to have cheated federal agencies.
The classic examples are the big weapons producers. As of now, DOGE lists only $8 million in savings from Defense Department contracts—and those are mainly from DEI awards and subscriptions. The same is true for the Department of Health and Human Services, even though healthcare is a major source of contractor fraud.
What gets forgotten in the claims about fraud coming from Trump and Musk is that the federal government already had a robust system for fighting contractor misconduct. Audits were done by agency inspectors general—who have now been fired by Trump—and prosecutions were launched by the Justice Department using the False Claims Act. Over the past decade, the DOJ has collected about $30 billion in fines and settlements.
That is serious fraud fighting. What we see in DOGE is instead the illusion of an attack on corruption that serves as a smokescreen for the Trump Administration’s scheme to dismantle large portions of the federal government. It remains to be seen how long they can keep up the charade.
This piece was originally published in the Dirt Diggers Digest newsletter.
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