US agencies face Thursday deadline to submit mass layoff plans

By Nathan Layne, Alexandra Alper and Daniel Wiessner

The potential scale of President Donald Trump's efforts to shrink the U.S. federal government could become clearer on Thursday, the deadline for government agencies to submit plans for a second wave of mass layoffs and to slash their budgets.

Trump's efforts to fire government workers, however, hit a legal snag on Thursday, with a California federal judge ordering six agencies to reinstate thousands of probationary employees who had been dismissed in recent weeks.

U.S. 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 Department of Defense, Department of Veterans Affairs, Department of Agriculture, Department of Energy, Department of Interior and the Treasury Department.

His ruling does not affect the career federal employees set to be fired by agencies in plans to be submitted to the White House and the Office of Personnel Management on Thursday, the government's human resources department. That process could eliminate tens of thousands of federal jobs.

The new round of layoffs marks the latest step in Trump's sweeping effort to remake the federal bureaucracy - a task he has largely put in the hands of tech billionaire Elon Musk and his Department of Government Efficiency.

So far, DOGE has overseen cuts of more than 100,000 jobs across the 2.3 million-member federal civilian workforce, the freezing of foreign aid, and the canceling of thousands of programs and contracts.

Many probationary workers were told they were being let go for poor performance despite performance appraisals showing otherwise.

"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 said in what amounted to the most significant legal setback for Trump and Musk to date.

Dozens of lawsuits have been filed by labor unions and others challenging the legality of the DOGE-led firings, with mixed success.

AMERICANS CONCERNED ABOUT DOGE CUTS

The prospect for more job losses comes with financial markets already rattled about the economic risks posed by Trump's global trade war. Over the weekend, Trump declined to predict whether his tariff policies might cause a recession.

The Trump administration is taking some steps to mitigate potential risks. On Wednesday, a White House official urged federal agencies to refrain from laying off their cybersecurity teams, citing national security concerns.

Americans are broadly supportive of the idea of cutting the size of the federal government, with 59% of respondents to a Reuters/Ipsos poll completed on Wednesday saying they supported that goal.

But they expressed concern about the way Trump was going about doing so, with a similar 59% of respondents saying they opposed the moves to fire tens of thousands of federal workers.

Trump appears to be rushing to enact deep, painful reforms to use his political capital before whatever is left of the post-election honeymoon period comes to an end, said Mark Jones, a political science professor at Rice University.

"The Trump administration knows that it has a limited time horizon," Jones said. "The risk is they cut too much, or they don't cut strategically, and it has negative blowbacks in terms of the ability of the federal government to function."

With Musk at his side, Trump signed an executive order on February 11 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.

An OPM memo 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.

The agencies are unlikely to publicly disclose their plans in full, though some may provide statements outlining cuts.

A handful of agencies have already telegraphed details of the second phase of layoffs. The Department of Veterans Affairs was aiming to cut more than 80,000 workers, and the U.S. Department of Education said on Tuesday it would lay off nearly half its 4,000-strong staff.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, which provides weather forecasts, planned to layoff more than 1,000 workers.

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, which unions have vowed to fight in court.

Trump and Musk have said the government is bloated and prone to wasting taxpayers' money. DOGE says it has saved $105 billion by eliminating waste, but has publicly documented just a fraction of those savings, and its accounting has been plagued by errors and revisions.