Federal workers have grown accustomed to a specific kind of dread over the past year. 2025 has been nonstop: First came the “fork” email from Elon Musk’s so-called Department of Government Efficiency, followed quickly by numerous layoffs from the Trump administration.
As of July, more than 150,000 federal workers had resigned from their roles since president Donald Trump took office for the second time, according to The Washington Post. Tens of thousands were also fired.
For the past few months, it seemed like this bloodletting was over—but that all changed on Friday.
Thousands of employees at eight government agencies were subjected to RIFs, or reductions in force—the government’s formal process of laying off federal workers. According to a court filing from the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) on Friday, this latest round of firings has affected more than 4,000 federal employees. The court filing also claimed that the administration targeted the Treasury and the Department of Health and Human Services the hardest, hacking away at a combined 2,500 jobs across the two agencies and the entire Washington, DC, office of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The Department of Education culled nearly its entire team handling special education, CNN reported on Tuesday. At the Environmental Protection Agency, the Department of Energy, and the Department of Housing and Urban Development, cuts ranged from a few dozen to several hundred jobs, according to the same filing.
Every Day Is an Adventure
“People are scared. Who says their goal is to traumatize people?” says one IRS worker, referencing private speeches given by Russell Vought, the head of OMB and a key architect of the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 who has been the public face of the job-cutting. ”If any normal human said ‘My goal is to traumatize families’ there should be police at that person's doorstep.”
“It’s pretty demoralizing,” a Food and Drug Administration employee tells WIRED. “It’s clear this admin will act illegally to try to make agencies or offices they don’t like suffer more.” (The Trump administration has used government resources, like websites, to place blame on Democrats for the shutdown in what critics claim is a violation of the Hatch Act, a law forbidding the use of public assets for political messaging.)
“Every day is an adventure: new EOs, new memos,” says one Department of Homeland Security worker. “It’s constantly being on watch on where to pivot and what to stop, start, and sustain.” (All of these employees have been granted anonymity so they can speak candidly about their experiences.)