Latest news with #governmentcuts
New York Times
a day ago
- Business
- New York Times
Government's H.R. Arm Shedding a Third of Staff
The Office of Personnel Management, the government's human resources arm, has shed 10 percent of its staff and plans to shrink even more by the end of the year, the agency said on Monday. On Jan. 20, when President Trump returned to the White House, the agency had a staff of 3,110. Hundreds are leaving through incentive programs, and some are leaving without incentives. More than 125 have been laid off. The newly confirmed director, Scott Kupor, told reporters on Monday that he expected staffing to drop to 2,000, by the end of the year. Mr. Kupor said the agency was cutting its contractors by half as well, going from about 1,200 at the beginning of the year to 600 by the end of December. The personnel office has been issuing guidance to agencies for months about how to cut staff and consolidate or eliminate programs. Agencies offered incentives for people to resign voluntarily, which has shifted the calculation of how many employees the government would have to lay off to achieve President Trump's goal of shrinking the size of the federal work force. Some 788 employees at the personnel office took advantage of the incentives to retire early or resign and get paid through Sept. 30, while 152 others resigned without participating in any of the incentive programs. The agency laid off an additional 129 employees. The personnel office did not say what other agencies have planned, but the threat of layoffs has been looming since the earliest days of the administration. The Department of Health and Human Services laid off 10,000 employees this spring. And on July 11, the State Department laid off more than 1,000 employees after the Supreme Court lifted a lower court's block on mass government firings. Most agencies have not announced layoff plans, and the projected number of reductions has changed with thousands of employees leaving the government voluntarily. The Department of Veterans Affairs recently said it would not have to make layoffs because so many people decided to leave.
New York Times
15-07-2025
- Business
- New York Times
The Collateral Damage of Federal Work Force Cuts: Summer Interns
In December, Ryan Silien found out that he had secured an internship working on a United States Agency for International Development program in the Philippines. Mr. Silien, then a freshman at William & Mary, was elated. His plans started to unravel once President Trump took office in January. U.S.A.I.D. was among the organizations targeted by Mr. Trump's Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE. By March, Mr. Silien's internship offer had been swept away along with at least 7,000 jobs the department had deemed a waste of taxpayer dollars. Beyond his panic and disappointment, Mr. Silien said he was a bit baffled that in its push for efficiency, the department championed by Mr. Trump and Elon Musk had done away with his unpaid internship. The government was passing up 'free labor by, arguably, some of the people who will be most passionate and excited to get involved in this work,' said Mr. Silien, 18. The Trump administration's sweeping cuts have pushed many lifetime civil servants out of their roles They have also disrupted people at the other end of the career spectrum: summer interns, those energetic new arrivals who count on internships to serve as the on-ramp to their professional lives. (Some, but not all, are paid for their efforts.) Young people who hustled for competitive internships and research positions said they felt dejected when those offers were taken back. Their optimism gave way to a stressful scramble to find other roles or sources of income on short notice. Several second-guessed whether they really wanted to enter fields that seemed to be crumbling before their eyes. Want all of The Times? Subscribe.
Free Malaysia Today
15-07-2025
- Business
- Free Malaysia Today
White House reviews mass federal layoff plans, aims for swift action
US President Donald Trump launched a campaign to downsize the 2.3 million-strong federal civilian workforce. (EPA Images pic) WASHINGTON : The White House is scrutinising layoff plans by federal agencies in an effort to limit further court challenges after the Supreme Court cleared the way for a sweeping downsizing of the government workforce, according to two senior White House officials with knowledge of the matter. The White House counsel's office and the office of personnel management are coordinating with federal agencies to ensure their plans comply with the law, one of the officials said. That includes meeting requirements set by Congress, such as rules for how layoffs must occur and the minimum number of staff an agency must retain. The official declined to give a specific timetable for when layoffs will begin but said the plan is to move quickly. 'The goal is to simplify the size of the federal government, so we will do what we need to do to reach that goal,' the official said, calling the downsizing an 'immediate priority'. The Supreme Court's decision on Tuesday opened the door for president Donald Trump's administration to pursue thousands of government job cuts across multiple agencies. While administration officials have called the effort a streamlining of government, unions and their allies warn the layoffs will disrupt lives and essential services, and hollow out agencies already stretched thin. The White House on Tuesday had applauded the Supreme Court ruling but stopped short of saying agencies could immediately execute the workforce reduction plans they drafted at Trump's direction earlier this year. With hundreds of thousands of unionised federal workers, large-scale layoffs must also comply with labour contracts or risk additional legal challenges. Legal experts say that even if the administration meets basic legal thresholds, agencies may still face broader lawsuits related to due process, civil service protections, union rights and public access to services. One of the senior officials said the administration expects legal challenges. 'You're just going to see in the coming days, the different plans that sort of come out … they're going to be legally sound, (but) they're still gonna get lawsuits, because that's just the way it goes,' the official said. On Thursday, the US state department said it was moving forward with its plan to lay off employees. The department is widely expected to send the first notices of employment termination on Friday. In late May, the agency had proposed laying off nearly 2,000 employees. Upon taking office in January, Trump launched a campaign to downsize the 2.3 million-strong federal civilian workforce, an effort led by billionaire Elon Musk and his department of government efficiency. By late April, the project had resulted in the firing, resignations and early retirements of 260,000 federal employees, according to a Reuters tally. The US departments of agriculture, commerce, health and human services, state, treasury, veterans affairs and more than a dozen other agencies submitted layoff plans to the White House in March to reduce staff. Months of legal uncertainty have left those plans stuck in limbo until this week's ruling.
Washington Post
14-07-2025
- Politics
- Washington Post
White House preps for legal fight over firings — despite court victory
The Trump administration is gearing up for an intense legal battle over its plans to fire federal workers, even after a victory in the Supreme Court last week cleared the way for President Donald Trump to resume his attempts to slash government. Although the high court removed a California judge's block on reductions in force planned in most federal agencies, officials are still preparing for legal challenges to cuts at each agency as they try to enact those plans, according to two White House officials speaking on the condition of anonymity to preview legal strategy.
Yahoo
13-07-2025
- Climate
- Yahoo
Rosie O'Donnell Blames Trump's ‘Horrible Decisions' for Texas Floods
Comedian Rosie O'Donnell believes President Donald Trump's 'horrible decisions' are to blame for the flash floods in central Texas that have killed at least 70. 'What a horror story in Texas,' O'Donnell, who moved to Dublin, Ireland, earlier this year after Trump was re-elected, said in a TikTok video posted Sunday. 'When the president guts all of the early warning systems and the weathering forecast abilities of the government, these are the results that we're going to start to see on a daily basis.' The Department of Government Efficiency had previously cut hundreds of jobs at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and the National Weather Service (NWS) in its effort to cut government spending earlier this year. The NWS lost around 600 staffers at the time, according to a June report from The New York Times. 'It's because he put this country in so much danger by his horrible, horrible decisions and this ridiculously immoral bill that he just signed into law,' O'Donnell, whose feud with Trump dates back to 2006, continued. 'As Republicans cheered, people will die as a result and they've started already.' 'Shame on him … Shame on every GOP sycophant,' she concluded. Catastrophic flooding first struck central Texas on July 4 after torrential rains caused the Guadalupe River to rise around 26 feet within just 45 minutes. The surge washed out roads and destroyed property across six counties. Texas Emergency Management Chief W. Nim Kidd bemoaned inaccurate forecasts from the NWS in a press conference Friday, saying that 'the original forecast that we received Wednesday from the National Weather Service predicted 3-6 inches of rain in the Concho Valley and 4-8 inches in the Hill Country.' 'The amount of rain that fell at this specific location was never in any of those forecasts,' he said. The president has since issued a Major Disaster Declaration prompting the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) to be activated in Texas. Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem has also indicated that alongside emergency, on-ground support, the White House is also 'currently upgrading the technology' at the NWS and NOAA 'to renew this ancient system that has been left in place with the federal government for many, many years.' 'I do carry your concerns back to the federal government and to President Trump, and we will do all we can to fix those kind of things that may have felt like a failure to you and to your community members,' Noem continued. 'We know that everybody wants more warning time, and that's why we're working to upgrade the technologies that been neglected [for] far too long.'
