Trump orders agencies to plan for widespread layoffs and attrition-based hiring

President Trump on Tuesday signed an executive order that will require federal agencies to severely curtail hiring once the current freeze is lifted and develop new plans to implement widespread layoffs across government. 

The order will place Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency at the center of the efforts, reinforcing a demand Trump issued on his first day in office. The renewed effort for cuts is the latest salvo in the Trump administration’s battle to significantly shrink the federal workforce and diminish government capacity.  

Trump’s new order mirrors a memorandum he signed on his first day in office, which instituted a hiring freeze he said could only be lifted once agencies worked with DOGE to create plans to slash their workforces. Similar to the freeze, the renewed workforce reduction efforts carve out the military or positions related to immigration enforcement, national security or public safety. Some law enforcement and public safety offices, however, have seen their hiring paused anyway. 

In a new layer, the order, according to a fact sheet on the document provided by the White House, will force agencies to hire only one new employee in non-exempted roles for every four who leave. That requirement will lead to significant attrition across the government and is likely to severely hamper agencies’ ability to meet key parts of their mission. Under the order, only hiring for “essential positions” will be allowed and must be approved by a DOGE team member. 

Agencies will also present plans for large-scale reductions in force. To date, the administration has largely sought to use RIFs on a targeted basis for employees working on diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives. The impact of indiscriminate workforce cuts would be devastating to agencies, though the details of if and how those would be carried out remain unclear. 

The order called for agencies to prioritize layoffs for offices that are subject to the administration's efforts to shutter parts of the government and for employees whose work is not required in statute and who typically face furloughs during government shutdowns. In recent shutdown plans during the Biden administration, agencies planned to furlough about one-third of federal employees—or more than 700,000 individuals—if funding had lapsed. 

Musk joined Trump in the Oval Office on Tuesday, where he said that “you can’t have an autonomous federal bureaucracy,” while also noting that there are “good people” working in the government. 

“We have this unelected, fourth—unconstitutional—branch of government, which is the bureaucracy,” he said. He added that some things he says “will be incorrect and should be corrected."

The federal bureaucracy serves as part of the executive branch, one of three branches of government as defined by the Constitution.

DOGE is situated within what was formerly the U.S. Digital Service. Employees already at USDS before it became the U.S. DOGE Service have largely been sidelined.

Since Trump took office, Musk and his associates have fanned out across government agencies, causing alarm among some and collecting lawsuits over the access to sensitive government systems and data that DOGE and its associates have. Some experts have said that the billionaire’s actions amount to a constitutional crisis, and many ethics and transparency questions remain about Musk and his work. He has billions in government contracts and has faced legal pushback for circumventing federal appropriations and other statutes.

Musk told reporters that “the people voted for major government reform and that’s what people are going to get” when asked about concerns that Musk is facilitating a “hostile takeover” of the government.

Trump’s day-one executive order establishing the DOGE also called on agencies to set up DOGE teams with engineers, HR specialists and lawyers. That order was largely focused on modernizing government technology. 

But Musk’s actions have been wide-reaching. The administration is also trying to shutter at least the U.S. Agency for International Development, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and the Education Department without required involvement from Congress. Musk has said he and the president have agreed to shut those entities down, though the USAID efforts are largely paused under a federal court-issued restraining order.

Musk has already been heavily involved in the administration’s workforce policies. He has personally spent time at the Office of Personnel Management and some of his team is based there. He has played an instrumental role in the “deferred resignation program” offers that went out to all federal workers.

Trump previously tasked DOGE with key responsibilities relating to workforce reduction and hiring plans.