US agencies face Thursday deadline to submit mass layoff plans

Source: Reuters

March 13, 2025 3:55 PM EDT Updated 11 hours ago


March 13 (Reuters) - The potential scale of President Donald Trump's efforts to shrink the U.S. federal government could become clearer on Thursday, the deadline for government agencies to submit plans for a second wave of mass layoffs and to slash their budgets. Trump's efforts to fire government workers, however, hit a legal snag on Thursday, with a California federal judge ordering six agencies to reinstate thousands of probationary employees who had been dismissed in recent weeks.

U.S. District Judge William Alsup in San Francisco ruled that probationary workers, typically those with less than two years on the job, should be reinstated at the Department of Defense, Department of Veterans Affairs, Department of Agriculture, Department of Energy, Department of Interior and the Treasury Department. His ruling does not affect the career federal employees set to be fired by agencies in plans to be submitted to the White House and the Office of Personnel Management on Thursday, the government's human resources department. That process could eliminate tens of thousands of federal jobs.

The new round of layoffs marks the latest step in Trump's sweeping effort to remake the federal bureaucracy - a task he has largely put in the hands of tech billionaire Elon Musk and his Department of Government Efficiency. So far, DOGE has overseen cuts of more than 100,000 jobs across the 2.3 million-member federal civilian workforce, the freezing of foreign aid, and the canceling of thousands of programs and contracts. Many probationary workers were told they were being let go for poor performance despite performance appraisals showing otherwise.

"It is a sad day when our government would fire some good employee and say it was based on performance when they know good and well that’s a lie," Alsup said in what amounted to the most significant legal setback for Trump and Musk to date. Dozens of lawsuits have been filed by labor unions and others challenging the legality of the DOGE-led firings, with mixed success.

Read more: https://www.reuters.com/world/us/us-agencies-face-thursday-deadline-submit-mass-layoff-plans-2025-03-13/