Trump Administration Orders Federal Agencies To Prepare Plans By Mid-march For Large-scale Layoffs

Federal agencies are being ordered to submit plans by mid-March for laying off employees in “large-scale reductions in force” — an escalation in President Donald Trump’s efforts to reshape the federal workforce.

“Pursuant to the President’s direction, agencies should focus on the maximum elimination of functions that are not statutorily mandated while driving the highest-quality, most efficient delivery of their statutorily-required functions,” according to the Office of Management and Budget and Office of Personnel Management memo released on Wednesday.

While the federal government has seen a host of layoffs since Trump took office, this move takes the president’s agenda a step further. Most recent dismissals focused on probationary employees — generally federal workers in their jobs for one or two years — while reductions in force could target a wider range of workers.The memo directs agencies to submit these “agency RIF and reorganization plans” by March 13.

“The federal government is costly, inefficient, and deeply in debt,” OMB Director Russ Vought and OPM acting Director Charles Ezell wrote in the memo. “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 hard working American citizens.”

The memo directs agency heads to collaborate with “team leads” from the Department of Government Efficiency — the group run by Elon Musk that has led cuts across the government — within the agencies for this effort.

This looming threat of mass layoffs is only the latest in a series of mass firings and buyouts as DOGE looks to overhaul the federal government. Over 77,000 employees took buyout offers from DOGE’s “Fork in the Road” email.

Then “probationary” employees from departments and agencies across the government received termination notices.

At the first Cabinet meeting of his administration on Wednesday, Trump said the federal government will adopt a “little more surgical” approach to government spending cuts, marking a change of tune after recent dismissals roiled a diminished workforce and Republican lawmakers started to back away from Musk.

“We’re being a little more surgical, and [Elon Musk] is doing a lot of things himself,” Trump said. Still, Trump said that some federal agencies will trim staffing by over half, and the Department of Education’s responsibilities would be largely dissolved and offloaded to the states.

The new messaging comes days after Musk miffed federal workers with a Saturday evening email that demanded staffers list five bullet points to demonstrate their productivity. Staffers who failed to respond by Monday night would face dismissal, according to Musk’s post on X, although government guidance later made clear it was optional.

Musk’s attendance at the meeting, which is usually reserved for department heads, points at the tech billionaire’s muscular influence over the Trump administration and federal government.

“We’re going to send another email,” said Musk, who sat not at a table filled with Cabinet heads but by the perimeter of the room. “Our goal is not to be capricious or unfair. … We want to give people every opportunity to send an email, and the email could simply be, ‘What I’m working on is too sensitive or classified to describe.’ That would be sufficient.”

“We wish to keep everyone who is doing a job that is essential and doing that job well,” he continued. Musk also said his five bullet directive was approved by Trump, though several agency heads have told staffers to withhold their replies. The deadline for responses came and went Monday at midnight. On Tuesday, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt announced the email had received over a million responses.

Trump added Wednesday in his Cabinet meeting that terminations are on the table for federal employees who do not reply to Musk’s next email. "It’s possible a lot of those people will be fired," Trump told reporters.

The Wednesday reduction in force memo suggests agencies’ plans should aim to “consolidate management layers where unnecessary layers exist” and target positions within the agency organization chart that are “duplicative.” The plans should also identify “competitive areas for large-scale reductions in the force” and the impacts of such reductions, including canceled contracts, leases or overhead. The memo said positions that are necessary for “law enforcement, border security, national security, immigration enforcement, or public safety responsibilities” and within the armed forces are exempt.

A month after the mid-March deadline, the memo directs agencies to submit a “Phase 2” plan that outlines a “positive vision for more productive, efficient agency operations going forward,” which will be approved and implemented by Sept. 30.