The campaign by President Donald Trump and his adviser Elon Musk to radically cut back the US bureaucracy spread on Friday, firing more than 9,500 workers who handled everything from managing federal lands to caring for military veterans.
Workers at the departments of Interior, Energy, Veterans Affairs, Agriculture and Health and Human Services had their employment terminated in a drive that so far has largely — but not exclusively — targeted probationary employees in their first year on the job who have fewer employment protections.
The roughly 75,000 workers who have taken a buyout that Trump and Musk have offered to get them to leave voluntarily, according to the White House. That equals about 3% of the 2.3 million person civilian workforce.
Trump says the federal government is too bloated and too much money is lost to waste and fraud.
The government has some $36 trillion in debt and ran a $1.8 trillion deficit last year, and there is bipartisan agreement on the need for reform.
In addition to the job reductions, Trump and Musk have tried to gut civil-service protections for career employees, frozen most US foreign aid and attempted to shutter some government agencies such as the US Agency for International Development and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau CFPB almost entirely.
The US Forest Service is firing around 3,400 recent hires, while the National Park Service is terminating about 1,000, people familiar with the plans said on Friday.
The tax-collecting Internal Revenue Service is preparing to fire thousands of workers next week, two people familiar with the matter said, a move that could squeeze resources ahead of Americans’ April 15 deadline to file income taxes.
Other spending cuts have raised concerns that vital services were in danger. A month after wildfires devastated Los Angeles, federal programs have stopped hiring seasonal firefighters and halted the removal of fire hazards such as dead wood from forests, according to organizations impacted by the reductions.
