Trump mass layoff memo

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The Trump administration directed federal agencies on Wednesday to prepare for mass layoffs, according to the heads of the White House budget and personnel management offices.

Budget Director Russell Vought and Charles Ezell, the acting director of the Office of Personnel Management, wrote in a memo to the heads of these agencies that the federal government is "costly, inefficient, and deeply in debt."

"At the same time, it is not producing results for the American public. Instead, tax dollars are being siphoned off to fund unproductive and unnecessary programs that benefit radical interest groups while hurting hardworking American citizens," they said.

The memo notes that President Donald Trump has required "large-scale reductions in force" and in order to implement that, it calls on the heads of departments and agencies to submit the first phase of reorganization plans by March 13, which "shall focus on initial agency cuts and reductions."

The plans should be grounded in the principles of ensuring "better service" for Americans, "increased productivity," a "reduced real property footprint" and a "reduced budget," the memo said.

It calls for agencies to consolidate areas that are "duplicative" and where "unnecessary layers exist" within management. It also calls for implementing technology that can "automate routine tasks" so that staff can "focus on higher-value activities."

The memo specifically calls for the removal of "underperforming employees or employees engaged in misconduct."

The heads of departments and agencies will have to submit plans for a second phase workforce reduction by mid-April. "That will outline a vision for more productive, efficient agency operations going forward and be implemented by the end of September," the memo said.

That second part of the plan should include "any proposed relocations of agency bureaus and offices from Washington, D.C. and the National Capital Region to less-costly parts of the country," it said.

Vought and Ezell explained that the memo doesn't apply to positions that are necessary for law enforcement, national security, immigration enforcement, and U.S. military personnel. It also excludes the U.S. Postal Service and presidential appointees.

An official at a federal agency told NBC News that DOGE employees have created a spreadsheet of workers in the agency and have started going through and marking whether they are considered critical or not.

A federal judge on Thursday ordered the Office of Personnel Management to rescind earlier instructions telling federal agencies to “promptly determine whether these employees should be retained at the agency.”

The directions, communicated in a Jan. 20 memo and Feb. 14 internal email, are “illegal” and “should be stopped, rescinded,” Judge William Alsup of the Northern District of California said from the bench.

The ruling does not reinstate dismissed employees.

Alsup has also ordered a hearing scheduled in which acting Office of Personnel Management Director Charles Ezell will testify. The timing of that hearing is unclear.

“The Office of Personnel Management does not have any authority whatsoever under any statute in the history of the universe, to hire and fire employees within another agency,” Alsup said Thursday night. “It can hire its own employees, yes. Can fire them. But it cannot order or direct some other agency to do so.”

“OPM has no authority to tell any agency in the United States government, other than itself, who they can hire and who they can fire, period. So on the merits, I think, we start with that important proposition,” he said.

Alsup called probationary employees “the lifeblood of our government.”

“They come in at the low level and they work their way up, and that’s how we renew ourselves and reinvent ourselves,” he said.

Probationary workers are employees who are recent hires or sometimes longtime employees who were recently moved into new positions.

“The government’s position, for the first time in history of the United States, is that these employees can be fired at will,” an attorney for the plaintiffs, Danielle Leonard, said. “That is not the law, Your Honor. Probationary employees and agencies do have obligations before firing probationary employees.”

“The government should not operate in secrecy when it comes to wholesale orders to fire so many people,” Leonard pleaded with the court.

There was significant disagreement as to whether the OPM’s phone call to agencies instructing the firing of probationary employees in mid-February was an “order” or a “request.”

“Something aberrational happens, not just in one agency, but all across the government, in many agencies on the same day, the same thing. Doesn’t that sound like to you that somebody ordered it to happen, as opposed to, ‘Oh, we just got guidance,’” Alsup posited to local Assistant U.S. Attorney Kelsey Helland, who was the only representative of the government at the hearing.

“An order is not usually phrased as a request,” Helland said. “Asking is not ordering to do something.”

Helland suggested impacted employees should go through the Office of Special Counsel or the Merit Systems Protection Board to fight their employment status — and that a temporary restraining order like this would be unnecessary.

“Are they really contending to this court that all of these federal employees are lying, Your Honor?” Leonard asked. “That’s what counsel is saying. I don’t think it’s credible.”

A spokesperson for OPM did not immediately respond to a request for comment Thursday night.

Hundreds of thousands of people could have been affected by the directives from the Trump administration, according to data from OPM, although the exact number of people who were terminated was not immediately clear.