Trump pushes out 300,000 federal employees this year

• Trump says there will be about 300,000 fewer people working for the federal government by the end of the year. That means one in eight fewer civilian workers, the biggest one-year reduction since World War II. Most of the employees will be officially separated by the end of September, and others by the end of the year. Most have already stopped working, even though they remain on the payroll.

Supreme Court allows Trump to fire employees and practically dismantle agencies. 

• Overturning a ruling by a lower court, the Supreme Court in early July allowed Trump to fire employees across the government.  As the New York Times reported, “The Trump administration can move forward with plans to slash the federal work force and dismantle federal agencies… The decision could result in job losses for tens of thousands of employees at agencies including the Departments of Housing and Urban Development, State and Treasury. …the justices wrote that they had concluded that “the government is likely to succeed on its argument” that President Trump’s executive order announcing plans to downsize the government was legal.”  In dissent Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson wrote “What one person (or president) might call bureaucratic bloat is a farmer’s prospect for a healthy crop, a coal miner’s chance to breathe free from black lung, or a preschooler’s opportunity to learn in a safe environment,” 

• In a separate ruling, the Court allowed Trump to fire 4,100 Education Department employees as part of his declared intention to dismantle the DOE. The deep cuts will hit some offices particularly hard including the Office for Civil Rights, which will lose about half its staff and seven of its 11 regional offices, though it faces a deep backlog of cases. It also includes the Federal Student Aid office, charged with overseeing the servicers and contractors that power the student loan program.  Another office will have steep cuts runs the National Assessment of Educational Progress, sometimes called the Nation’s Report Card, which has been cut back.

• Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote a scathing dissent,  joined by Justices Jackson and Kagen,  labeling the ruling “indefensible” and a major expansion of presidential power. “When the Executive publicly announces its intent to break the law, and then executes on that promise, it is the Judiciary’s duty to check that lawlessness, not expedite it,” Sotomayor wrote.

Trump’s probationary filings illegal… but the horse has long left the barn

• Months after Trump fired tens of thousands of federal employees who were considered probationary,  a federal judge called the firings illegal. But by the September 2025 ruling, most of the fired employees have moved on,  been rehired or their jobs were eliminated. The judge said that Trump saying that the firings was based on performance was “fabricated” and “a sham.”  While it’s too late for many of the federal employees, the ruling may be helpful if Trump tries to pull it off again. 

Trump scramble to rehire some fired federal employees

• Trump administrators are trying to rehire thousands of people they fired as well as experienced senior staffers opted for a voluntary exit, at the same time that his administration rolls out a second resignation offer. The Washington Post reports “Thousands staff are returning in fits and starts as a conflicting patchwork of court decisions overturn some of Trump’s large-scale firings, especially his Valentine’s Day dismissal of all probationary workers, those with one or two years of government service and fewer job protections. A federal judge in April ordered the president to reinstate probationary workers dismissed from 20 federal agencies, although a few days later the Supreme Court — in a different case — halted another judge’s order to reinstate a smaller group.

• The agencies that have scrambled to rehire people include: The IRS, the CDC, the National Security Administration and the FDA. After dismantling USAID, Trump’s State Department has tried hiring them back for other work.

• But thousands of federal employees are having a hard time finding new jobs as alternatives like teaching or research are also having funds taken away from them as Trump cancels contracts. 

Trump institutes political loyalty tests for federal workers 

• Trump is requiring federal job applicants to describe their allegiance to administration policy in an essay. For the first time, political appointees are directly involved in most federal hiring. And Trump is mandating political education training for senior agency officials.