Major firings have begun across a wide swath of federal agencies including the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Homeland Security, and more.
The cuts were aimed at probationary employees, people less than two years into their jobs, NBC News reported.
Almost all new jobs within the government – and many in the private sector – begin with this time before new hires are recognized as “permanent.”
“The brain trust that was just terminated is insane,” a nuclear safety specialist at the National Nuclear Security Administration, who was fired Thursday, complained to NBC.
The specialist made that claim in spite of the relatively little time in the jobs for the now-released employees.
As with most things in Washington, D.C. there’s a political element to the firings, not just a financial element, attorney Gerard Filitti said on American Family Radio Monday.
“I think that when you see these mass resignations, they are people who would be obstructing Trump's administration, Trump's policies, his priorities and his agenda," he told show host Jenna Ellis.
"And if they can't serve the president of the United States, in the capacity that they need to, then they shouldn't be in government,” Filitti, senior counsel at the Lawfare Project, added.
Musk versus the 'liars'
Too often federal employees are loyal to a political party or president, and not to American citizens, Filitti said.
The public witnessed that, too, during Trump's first term. That is when many federal workers named themselves the "Resistance," as if they were the French Resistance fighting the Germans.
“This really shouldn't be that political. You're implementing the will ultimately of the American people as expressed through the person that they voted into office,” he said.
The firings are in addition to the voluntary layoffs offered by the Trump administration to a number of federal workers. Those leaving voluntarily were wooed to clear out their cubicles with an offer of eight more months of salary and benefits.
Musk called out the CBS News program "60 Minutes" for implying otherwise on Sunday.
The program posted on X quoting a fired USAID employee who said, “Twelve days ago, people knew where their next paycheck was coming from. They knew how they were going to pay for their kids’ daycare, their medical bills. And then, all gone overnight.”
“60 Mins are such liars,” Musk wrote. “As the Community Note states, all employees were offered eight months pay and benefits.”
Filitti concedes that mass layoffs could affect the continuity of government work but says the risk of disruption is far less than many on the Left would contend.
“We do know that there is bloat in some of these departments. We do know that far more people have been hired over the years who don't really seem to understand what their jobs are, and quite frankly, the taxpayers don't understand what their jobs are,” he said.
The continuity argument has merit, but federal workers are still subject to changing political landscapes, and the country voted for change last November.
Workers are not “immune from outsiders like Elon Musk coming in with DOGE and examining whether their positions are actually necessary, just like with any company,” Filitti said.
Some jobs may be important but may be found wanting when held against other elements of the overall workplace like overstaffing or general inefficiency.
D.C. workers file for unemployment
The Trump administration had been quietly preparing for the firings for weeks by gathering lists of recently hired employees who were still in their probationary period — before the full protections of the civil service had kicked in, NBC News reported.
In a separate story, NBC News reported that Labor Department figures show almost 4,000 workers in Washington, D.C., have filed for unemployment since Trump took office.
About 75,000 workers, not all of them in Washington, have accepted the buyout offer, according to CNBC, which cited a U.S. Office of Personnel Management spokesperson.
The size of government is something that needs to be addressed, especially when government is running a deficit the way the U.S. is right now.
The deficit is projected to be $1.9 trillion for 2025 and is projected to grow to 118% of the Gross Domestic Product in 10 years.
Sometimes cuts are hard and may mean sacrificing “people who are important to the operation of the company,” Filitti said.
But at the end of the day, the focus should be on serving the American people.
“The government is not meant to be a jobs program. We want people to serve and then to go into the private sector, go home,” Filitti said.
