Tonight, President Trump will deliver an address to a joint session of Congress where he will outline his political agenda for the next year. Among many other topics, the president is expected to highlight the numerous actions directed at reducing the federal workforce and federal spending, expelling a narrative of rooting out waste and fraud in the federal government. In reality, these actions are nothing more than attacks on federal workers and the services they provide, and an attempt to erode the public’s faith in the federal government.
President Trump has issued a record number of executive actions aimed at the federal workforce, including issuing an executive order to make it easier to fire federal workers in jobs that are normally apolitical; revoking an executive order that protected their collective bargaining rights; eliminating remote work options; and requiring all agencies to identify and review retention needs of all probationary federal employees, resulting in the firing of thousands of federal workers.
At the same time as the Trump administration has made massive cuts across the federal workforce, they have taken actions to expand immigration enforcement capacity by repurposing staff at other agencies to help carry out mass deportations, such as the Internal Revenue Service, the State Department, and multiple subagencies at the Department of Justice.
President Trump also created the so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), headed by tech billionaire Elon Musk, which has furthered the attacks on the federal workforce by offering federal workers a “deferred resignation” and calling on federal workers to justify their work in weekly emails. Moreover, President Trump has issued several executive orders that insert DOGE in the reduction of the federal workforce, creation of rulemakings, and the approval and disbursement of federal payments.
Let’s be clear, these attacks on the federal workforce will not make the government more efficient, but they will degrade the public goods and services we use every day. These actions are intended to foster distrust in the federal government and allow for the dismantling of vital social safety net programs millions of Americans rely on. This is further evident in the recently passed House budget resolution, which contains draconian cuts to social safety net programs like Medicaid to provide tax breaks for the extremely wealthy. Further, these attacks on the federal workforce and social programs are likely an economic crisis in waiting.
In the coming months, we will no doubt continue to see more attacks on the federal workforce. You can find a comprehensive catalogue of all policies relevant to working people and the economy at Federal Policy Watch, an EPI online tool documenting actions by the Trump administration, Congress, federal agencies, and the courts.
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