Tech billionaire Elon Musk's Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, has swept through federal agencies slashing thousands of jobs since Trump became president last month and put Musk in charge of a drastic overhaul of government.
The Office of Personnel Management, the government agency that manages the civil service, set a deadline of 8 p.m. on Tuesday (0100 GMT) for all government departments to provide a list of probationary employees who have been terminated so far and those they want to retain, according to an OPM spokesperson.
Agencies should prioritize retaining the highest-performing employees in “mission-critical roles,“ said McLaurine Pinover, OPM’s head of communications.
State attorneys general from across the United States asked a federal court to intervene and place a temporary hold on the cost-cutting, but U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan denied their request, allowing the campaign to continue while underlying litigation plays out.
Trump appointed Musk, the world's richest person and his biggest donor during his election campaign, to oversee the culling of the federal workforce, which the Republican president views as bloated, corrupt and insufficiently loyal to him.
With tax-filing season underway, senior officials at the Internal Revenue Service identified 7,500 employees for dismissal, with possibly more on the chopping block, according to a person familiar with the matter. Republicans had objected to an IRS staff expansion undertaken by Democratic President Joe Biden that independent budget analysts said would boost tax collections and help close the persistent U.S. budget gap.
Roughly 1,000 new hires, including rocket scientists, at NASA were expected to be laid off on Tuesday as well, according to two people familiar with the U.S. space agency's plans, with more cuts possible.
Layoffs were also expected at the Federal Emergency Management Agency, which handles flood insurance and disaster response, as well as its parent agency, the Department of Homeland Security, sources said.
Among the workers swept up in the overhaul of dozens of agencies are those reviewing Musk's brain implant company Neuralink and others monitoring an outbreak of H5N1 bird flu that has infected millions of chickens and cattle this year.
The overhaul comes as Trump attempts to exert even tighter control over the Justice Department, an agency traditionally seen as independent of White House influence.
The acting head of the Social Security Administration, Michelle King, resigned over the weekend after Musk's team asked for access to a vast database of personal and financial data at the agency, which handles retirement and other safety-net programs, according to a person familiar with the matter.
Musk's team has said it has saved $55 billion so far, a relatively small slice of the annual $6.7 trillion federal budget. The DOGE website has begun giving more details of government contracts it has canceled after widespread complaints that its work was not transparent.
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