Federal workers are being used as pawns in the shutdown
have federal workers In the past year, he has become accustomed to a certain kind of fear. 2025 has been non-stop: first the “forked” email from Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency was released, followed by multiple firings from the Trump administration.
More than 150,000 federal employees have reportedly resigned since President Donald Trump took office for a second term in July. The Washington Post. Tens of thousands of people were also deported.
For the past few months, it looked like the bleeding was over – but that all changed on Friday.
Thousands of employees at eight government agencies were subject to RIFs, or reductions in force — the government’s official process for firing federal workers. The latest round of layoffs has affected more than 4,000 federal employees, according to a court filing from the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) on Friday. The court filing also alleges that the administration targeted the Treasury Department and the Department of Health and Human Services hard, hacking a total of 2,500 jobs at the two agencies and the entire Washington, D.C., office of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. CNN reported Tuesday that the Department of Education eliminated nearly its entire team managing special education. According to the same case, in the Environmental Protection Organization, the Ministry of Energy, and the Ministry of Housing and Urban Development, job cuts ranged from a few dozen to several hundred jobs.
Every day is an adventure
“People are scared. Who’s to say they’re out to hurt people?” One IRS worker said, referring to private speeches by OMB chief Russell Vought and a key architect of the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025, who has been the public face of the job cuts. “If any normal person says, ‘My goal is to hurt families,’ the police should be on that person’s doorstep.”
“It’s very depressing,” one FDA employee told WIRED. “It is clear that this administrator is acting illegally and is trying to further harm agencies or offices that they do not like.” (The Trump administration has used government sources such as websites to blame Democrats for the shutdown, which critics say is a violation of the Hatch Act, a law that prohibits the use of public property for political messaging.)
“Every day is an adventure: new EOs, new memos,” says one DHS employee. “The organization is constantly watching where to move and what to stop, start and maintain.” (All of these employees have been given anonymity so they can speak candidly about their experiences.)
