President Trump on Tuesday signed an executive order that will require federal agencies to severely curtail hiring, once the current freeze is lifted, and to develop new plans to implement widespread layoffs across government.
[Editor’s note: The order says the layoffs do not apply to military personnel, and that agency heads “may exempt from this order any position they deem necessary to meet national security, homeland security, or public safety responsibilities.”]
The order will place Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency team at the center of the administration’s latest effort to shrink the federal workforce and reduce government capacity.
Trump’s new order mirrors a memorandum he signed on his first day in office that instituted a hiring freeze he said could only be lifted once agencies worked with DOGE to create plans to slash their workforces, with exceptions for workers in national security, immigration enforcement, and public safety. (Some law-enforcement and public-safety offices have seen their hiring paused anyway.)
According to a fact sheet provided by the White House, the new order constrains agencies to hire only one new employee in non-exempted roles for every four who leave. That will cause significant attrition across the government and is likely to severely hamper agencies’ ability to meet key parts of their mission. Under the order, only hiring for “essential positions” will be allowed and must be approved by a DOGE team member. There are some exceptions, it says: “This ratio shall not apply to functions related to public safety, immigration enforcement, or law enforcement.”
Agencies must also present plans for large reductions in force. To date, the administration has sought to use RIFs mostly to target employees working on diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives. The impact of indiscriminate workforce cuts would be devastating to agencies, though the details of if and how those would be carried out remain unclear.
The order called for agencies to prioritize layoffs for offices that are subject to the administration’s efforts to shutter parts of the government and for employees whose work is not required in statute and who typically face furloughs during government shutdowns. In recent shutdown plans during the Biden administration, agencies planned to furlough about one-third of federal employees—or more than 700,000 individuals—if funding had lapsed.
The order says that it does not apply to military personnel, and that agency heads “may exempt from this order any position they deem necessary to meet national security, homeland security, or public safety responsibilities.”
Joining Trump in the Oval Office on Tuesday was Musk, who said that “you can’t have an autonomous federal bureaucracy,” while also noting that there are “good people” working in the government.
“We have this unelected, fourth—unconstitutional—branch of government, which is the bureaucracy,” Musk said. He added that some things he says “will be incorrect and should be corrected.”
The federal bureaucracy serves as part of the executive branch, one of three branches of government as defined by the Constitution.
DOGE is situated within what was formerly the U.S. Digital Service. Employees at USDS before it became the U.S. DOGE Service have largely been sidelined.
Since Trump took office, Musk and his associates have fanned out across government agencies, causing alarm among some and collecting lawsuits over the access to sensitive government systems and data that DOGE and its associates have. Some experts have said that the billionaire’s actions amount to a constitutional crisis, and many ethics and transparency questions remain about Musk and his work. He has billions in government contracts and has faced legal pushback for circumventing federal appropriations and other statutes.
Musk told reporters that “the people voted for major government reform and that’s what people are going to get” when asked about concerns that Musk is facilitating a “hostile takeover” of the government.
Trump’s day-one executive order establishing the DOGE also called on agencies to set up DOGE teams with engineers, HR specialists and lawyers. That order was largely focused on modernizing government technology.
But Musk’s actions have been wide-reaching. The administration is also trying to shutter at least the U.S. Agency for International Development, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and the Education Department without required involvement from Congress. Musk has said he and the president have agreed to shut those entities down, though the USAID efforts are largely paused under a federal court-issued restraining order.
Musk has already been heavily involved in the administration’s workforce policies. He has personally spent time at the Office of Personnel Management and some of his team is based there. He has played an instrumental role in the “deferred resignation program” offers that went out to all federal workers.
Trump previously tasked DOGE with key responsibilities relating to workforce reduction and hiring plans.
