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      From weather apps to taxes: the trickle-down effects of Trump’s federal worker firings

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      You wake up to dark clouds outside, so you check the weather on your phone: a storm is coming.That weather app uses data from the National Weather Service, a part of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, a small organization which could see as much as 10% of its workforce cut this week.You grab food to make breakfast: eggs, meat, formula for your baby. The safety of your food is regulated and inspected by a host of federal employees, who flag and investigate when items shouldn’t be eaten.The former head of the Food and Drug Administration’s food division resigned this week because he thought firings and layoffs at the agency would hinder its work. “I didn’t want to spend the next six months of my career on activities that are fundamentally about dismantling an organization, as opposed to working on the stated agenda,” he told Stat News.You check your flight reservations for an upcoming trip to a national park. The safety of that flight is overseen by the Federal Aviation Administration, which experienced layoffs this month despite recent high-profile aviation accidents. The national park will probably see its staff gutted, leaving it more vulnerable to wildfires and without search and rescue capabilities. “I honestly can’t imagine how the parks will operate without my position,” a park ranger who was cut wrote on Instagram. “I mean, they just can’t. I am the only EMT at my park and the first responder for any emergency. This is flat-out reckless.”You keep an eye on the bird flu levels and a measles outbreak – the winter has been punishing for illnesses. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention were hit with a first round of layoffs this week, which could affect outbreak response and reporting. The Epidemic Intelligence Service, a disease-detective training program, could be on the chopping block.Oh, and you’re working on your taxes – while thousands of Internal Revenue Service probationary employees are expected to be laid off during tax season.The government certainly has room for improvement – backlogs that should be cleared, investigations that should be more thorough, communication that should be sharper, actions that should be more transparent. But all of this work is done by the federal government and its millions of workers and contractors, whose daily jobs touch the lives of all Americans and many around the globe.In the first weeks of the Trump administration, the president and the billionaire Elon Musk, tasked with cutting government through the so-called “department of government efficiency” (Doge), have waged war against federal workers. Musk and his team have moved from agency to agency, indiscriminately firing probationary employees and those whose work they say doesn’t align with the administration’s priorities, including many who work on diversity initiatives or in international development.The result is a hobbled and terrified federal workforce that is just at the beginning of the expected cuts – and an American public that is starting to experience the repercussions.“We’re playing Russian roulette, and basically you’re putting a whole bunch of more bullets in the chambers,” said Max Stier, the CEO of the Partnership for Public Service, a non-profit that advocates for a strong civil service. “You can’t prevent all bad things from happening, but our federal government is, in a lot of ways, a manager of risk, and it does a pretty darn good job of managing that risk, even though it can be improved.”An email went out in January to millions of federal employees offering a deferred resignation, which the White House says about 75,000 people have accepted, although it’s unclear how many of the people who accepted are actually eligible.Joel Smith works at the Social Security Administration and is the president of the American Federation of Government Employees Local 3184, which covers more than 90 agency offices in parts of Arizona, New Mexico, Texas and Louisiana. He said the office of management and budget, which has coordinated the buyout program it’s calling a “fork in the road”, hasn’t communicated with the agencies about which employees accepted the buyout. Some employees didn’t show up the first day the program’s leave was supposed to begin, and the agency had to call them to figure out where they were, he said.“It’s just chaos on top of chaos, on top of terror, on top of employees that want to leave are being told they can’t leave. I’m trying to think of a good word for it. I don’t know if there is one, other than clusterfuck,” Smith said.Those that remain in their jobs worry about whether they’re next as they add to their workloads to cover for those who lost their jobs or quit. People eyeing next career moves will avoid civil service, previously seen as a stable career, to stay out of the current chaos.Many people take core functions of the federal government for granted, as it protects them from disasters or national security concerns, but might not otherwise affect them. But that could change after widespread firings. For example, layoffs in the Environmental Protection Agency mean that those remaining in their positions have less capacity to do their jobs.“That could come in the guise of someone not being able to respond to an environmental disaster,” said Nicole Cantello, president of the American Federation of Government Employees Local 704. “Or what about if there’s a facility illegally flaring air pollutants? We might not be as able to respond to something like that which could have health effects. There could be devastating effects to the American people.”If you or your loved ones use any direct services such as benefits programs, you could see the effects of a beleaguered federal workforce up close.Let’s say you’re helping your parents sign up for social security. The Social Security Administration is already understaffed, so losing any positions will make wait times longer for people who need to access benefits, Smith said.Smith’s father filed for retirement benefits in November to begin in February, but by February, his case hadn’t been processed – it was stuck in somebody’s backlog. A member of Congress had to intervene to bring attention to the delay, a frequent tactic to overcome stalled claims.“What people think they’re witnessing now and they’re complaining about now, in terms of delays, is going to be considered the good old days here in a year or two if this continues,” he said. “We already don’t have the people to do the work.”For federal workers and their families, the impact is heavy and immediate if they lose their livelihoods.“The way it’s working now is that the career civil servants are viewed as the villains,” said Rob Shriver, former acting director of the US office of personnel management who now works at Democracy Forward. “They’re viewed as people who are to be worked around and not worked with. They’re being deprived of the thing that’s most important to them, which is to contribute to the agency’s mission and bring their skills and expertise to the table to help inform decision makers.”Though many have focused on the disruption caused in Washington, federal workers live throughout the US and, in some cases, other parts of the world.“There’s a human aspect of it, which is these people are not just being fired, but they’re being fired in the worst way. No notice, no nothing. This is true across the board. There is zero humanity being demonstrated,” said Stier, of the Partnership for Public Service. “It is unbelievably costly to the individuals involved, and it’s costly to the system and to the American taxpayers. It’s going to cost the American taxpayer a ton of money. It is not going to save any money.”Send us a tipIf you have information you’d like to share securely with the Guardian about the impact of cuts to federal programs or the federal workforce, please use a non-work device to contact us via the Signal messaging app at (646) 886-8761. More

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      ‘It comes from racism’: immigrant workers on Trump’s deportation push

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      Donald Trump has ramped up anti-immigration fervor into his second presidency, promising mass deportations, pushing to increase arrests and bolstering public relations efforts to amplify arrests. The moves have sent a wave of terror through the undocumented worker community that underpins large parts of the US economy.“Every day I wake up and walk out the door, I go with the hope of going to work, but with the fear of not being able to come back,” said a construction worker and single parent in Texas who obtained immigration protection under the Biden administration. She requested to remain anonymous due to fears about her immigration status.“Every day I worry if something happens, who will take my kids,” she said. “I have only one child born in the US. They are the only one who might be able to return, but me and the other kids would not be able to come back.”She claimed that since Trump took office for his second term, there had been fewer opportunities to work construction jobs given the increased fear of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) raids at workplaces.Despite being in the US for 10 years and constantly trying to obtain documentation, she explained it took her experiencing weeks of wage theft to be able to get documentation through the deferred action program, which provides temporary status and work authorization to immigrants who have been victims of labor abuses.“Unfortunately, these next few years will be years of fear, years of silence,” she said. “I believe the anti-immigrant pushes are racist. People have been taken away without criminal records. We used to have the ability to pay fines before because we didn’t have criminal records, but I’ve heard from other immigrants, anyone being taken into custody by Ice, regardless of their situation, will be deported.”Trump has signed an executive order to allocate military resources at the US border with Mexico and opened Guantánamo Bay prison in Cuba to the detention of undocumented immigrants. The Department of Homeland Security also rolled back a policy of restricting Ice arrests at sensitive locations such as hospitals, places of worship and schools and the agency is pushing to recruit IRS agents to assist in immigration enforcement. The administration is also reportedly planning to reopen family detention centers.View image in fullscreenThe changes come as Trump campaigned with misleading and false statements about immigrants, portraying them as criminals and taking away jobs, including making a baseless claim that Haitian immigrants in Ohio were eating pets.Despite this rhetoric fomenting xenophobic sentiments, an October 2024 report by the Economic Policy Institute on the benefits of immigration to the US cited the enabling of economic growth as the US-born workforce declines, and the payment of nearly $100bn annually in taxes, and noted mass deportations actually result in job losses for US-born workers due to reduced local demand output.Several industries rely heavily on immigrant workers. Nearly 2.9 million immigrants, the most in any occupation group, are employed in construction and extraction, comprising 34% of employment in these occupations in the US.The Guardian spoke with several immigrant workers in construction about their experiences and fears caused by Trump’s immigration policies and the anti-immigrant sentiments stoked by his rhetoric and policies.Another undocumented construction worker in Texas said there is a “constant fear” in going to work every day that his workplace will be raided by Ice or that he will return home to find his family, the majority of whom are undocumented, taken away.“It is a constant fear. It’s something we can’t take from our minds, every instance of the day,” they said. “My main worry is there will be one day where my family might be taken away from me and be sent back to Mexico.”Trying to acquire legal documentation has been “almost impossible”, they added. “The reason behind these policies, it comes from racism. The majority of immigrants aren’t criminals. Like myself, a lot of immigrants come to this country to be able to fulfill their dreams, to be able to work. We’re humans and we have rights. The things we go through when being held in immigration detention, unless you live them, you won’t be able to understand it.”Andres Surquia of Georgia currently has immigration protection through deferred action – a government policy that allows certain undocumented immigrants to work and avoid deportation for two-year periods.“I’m scared because Trump has said he wants to remove deferred-action protections, which took me so long to get,” he said. “As immigrants, we come into this country to work and we want to be respected and protected.”The International Union of Painters and Allied Trades, which represents 140,000 workers in the US and Canada, pushed to secure deferred-action immigration protections for workers experiencing labor abuses in construction for the past several years under the Biden administration.“It was one of the main pillars we put forth as a union, in coalition with other unions, that really view immigration as a working-class issue,” said the IUPAT general president, Jimmy Williams. “Now, under the Trump administration it’s going to go back to all these workers having no recourse, and the employers continuing to be able to use their status as a way to keep them further and further from being able to speak out.”Immigration is a labor and economic issue, Williams said. The union views it as a responsibility to fight and defend these workers because they are their union members. But he expressed disappointment with Democrats whom he feels have so far failed to support these workers.“Where’s the resistance?” Williams asked. “When will the Democratic party really get it right on framing this as a working-class issue and put the target solely on where it belongs, which is on the employers that have abused this system for decades now, keeping workers’ rights down, keeping wages down? You’ve seen limited to no response from the opposition.”A construction worker in Texas who has been pursuing asylum said she had seen fewer people show up to work out of fear in recent weeks.“There’s not many people going to work any more, because of the fear. The only reason why I go to work is it’s a necessity to bring food home and pay bills,” she said. “They want to extract the people that are working in the farms, that are working in the fields, that are working in the restaurants that they eat in, and now they’re taking them without any explanation. It’s not fair.”Milton Velásquez is a construction worker in Maryland from El Salvador who currently has temporary protected status (TPS), provisional protection given to nationals of some countries in crisis. Trump has already revoked these protections for 350,000 Venezuelans and has incited fears he will revoke or limit protections for 1 million immigrants in the US from 17 nations granted protections under the Biden administration.“It scares me because if my TPS does get revoked, I will lose a lot of job opportunities without it and it would limit my income,” he said. “There is always fear of deportation. I try not to think about it, but what scares me the most is having to go back to El Salvador. I would have to work 10 times as much to get paid $10 a day.”Under the first Trump presidential term, Velásquez faced issues with trying to bring his son and daughter to the US from El Salvador through the Central American Minors program, which Trump shut down in 2017. He is still separated from his daughter.“I tried to get her a visa,” Velasquez added. “I’ve been longing to bring them here. That’s what I work for, to provide for my family, to get my family to come here.”Send us a tipIf you have information you’d like to share securely with the Guardian about the impact of the Trump administration’s temporary protected status decision, please use a non-work device to contact us via the Signal messaging app at (929) 418-7175. More

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      ‘A scary time to be a scientist’: how medical research cuts will hurt the maternal mortality crisis

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      On Tuesday, a few days after the Trump administration announced its plan to slash billions of dollars in funding for biomedical and behavioral research, an investigator at a maternal health research center in Pennsylvania told Dr Meghan Lane-Fall that the cuts may lead her to leave academia altogether.Lane-Fall urged her not to make any sudden moves. “It’s not like nothing has happened. No one’s threatened her job,” said Lane-Fall, a professor at the University of Pennsylvania. “But if she looks six months down the line, it looks uncertain.”She did advise her colleague to update her resume.Among the many fields of research threatened by the funding cuts is the growing effort to curb the US maternal mortality rate, which is far worse than in other rich nations. Not only could the cuts delay vital breakthroughs but women’s health experts warn they could also push promising young scientists out of the field.“Above and beyond the stalling of progress, we’re going to see this hollowing out of the workforce that’s been working on this research,” Lane-Fall said. “That will reverberate for years, if not decades.”Late last week, the Trump administration declared that the National Institutes of Health (NIH) would only reimburse 15% of researchers’ “indirect costs”, which can pay for expenses such as staff and laboratory maintenance. Normally, such costs hover at around 50% for elite universities. If indirect costs are capped at such a low percentage, scientists and the institutions where they work say they will not be able to carry out research.A court ordered that the Trump administration suspend the policy earlier this week, but this change – which was reportedly the work of the Elon Musk-run “department of government efficiency” (Doge) – casts into doubt the future of the NIH, the planet’s premier public funder of biomedical research. In 2023, the NIH spent more than $35bn on grants. If implemented, the new policy would endanger at least $4bn worth of funding, but its impact could go much further, imperiling the ability of research institutions – especially smaller ones – to do their work at all. The US maternal mortality rate almost doubled between 2018 and 2022, with rates of deaths among Black and Indigenous expecting or new mothers increasing at a disproportionally fast clip. States that Donald Trump won may be hit especially hard by NIH cuts: they are home to some of the country’s worst maternal mortality rates.To address this crisis, the NIH in 2023 launched a seven-year, $168m initiative to set up more than a dozen research centers to investigate and improve maternal health outcomes, as well as help train new maternal health researchers. The future of these centers – one of which is co-led by Lane-Fall – are now in question.“We’re working with agencies across 20 Michigan counties – that have more than 7 million people in them – to be able to improve services so that moms don’t get sick and die,” said Dr Jennifer E Johnson, a Michigan State University public health professor who helps run one of the research centers in Flint, Michigan. “To do that, we need offices. We need electricity. We need lights, heat, IT, infrastructure, people to create and sell the contracts. All of the support for that would be cut dramatically.”Normally, Johnson said, NIH reimburses about 57% of the indirect costs for Michigan State University’s grants, including hers. It’s not feasible, she said, for the university to cover those costs on its own or for her center to lower its indirect costs so substantially.“If we can’t turn on the lights and we can’t pay the rent and we can’t get people hired – I don’t know what we would do,” Johnson said. “The research is the car. All the infrastructure costs are the road. You can go a little while, but if there’s no maintenance on that, it’s a problem.”Several of the institutions that host the maternal health centers – which tend to focus on improving maternal mortality among people of color and rural communities – are set to lose millions over the NIH cuts. Stanford University officials have said the school, whose center aims to reduce the risk of dangerous postpartum hemorrhages, would take a $160m loss. The University of Utah, which studies how drug addiction impacts pregnancy, would lose $45m.The Guardian reached out to dozens of researchers who have NIH grants to study the health of women, children and parents. Many declined to speak, often citing the ongoing uncertainty of the situation. “I’m honestly not sure what to say as like most of my colleagues I was taken off guard and it’s really unclear how this will play out now that courts are involved,” one scientist, from Missouri, wrote in an email.While Republicans have generally been supportive of Musk’s slash-and-burn approach to the government in the last few weeks, some members of Congress have expressed alarm about the NIH cuts. “It’s pretty drastic. So I’m thinking we need to look at this,” Shelley Moore Capito, the West Virginia senator, told the Washington Post. Alabama senator Katie Britt said she planned to work with Robert F Kennedy Jr, the new leader of the Department of Health and Human Services, to address the impact. “A smart, targeted approach is needed in order to not hinder life-saving, groundbreaking research at high-achieving institutions like those in Alabama,” she told AL.com.One of the agencies behind the maternal health centers is the NIH’s Office of Research on Women’s Health – whose website has been hollowed out by the Trump administration’s recent, widespread purges of government websites. Links to pages on the Office of Research on Women’s Health website about “funding opportunities and notices”, “research programs and initiatives” and “supporting women in biomedical careers” have all vanished.“It is a scary time to be a scientist in the United States,” said Johnson, who is also concerned about recent reports of efforts at the National Science Foundation – an NIH sibling agency that focuses on scientific and engineering research – to scrutinize projects that include words like “women”, “disability” and “underrepresented”. Johnson continued: “All of a sudden, we’re working in a world where we’re not sure we’re going to be allowed to say what the data clearly shows.”On Monday, the day the new policy was supposed to take effect, the Association of American Medical Colleges sued to halt it.“Even at larger, well-resourced institutions, this unlawful action will impose enormous harms, including on these institutions’ ability to contribute to medical and scientific breakthroughs,” the association, which represents several of the US medical schools that host maternal health centers, said in its lawsuit. The association continued: “Smaller institutions will fare even worse – faced with more unrecoverable costs on every dollar of grants funds received, many will not be able to sustain any research at all and could close entirely.”A federal judge then ordered Trump to suspend the cuts, writing in a court order that implementing the cuts would cause “immediate and irreparable injury”. A hearing in the case is set for 21 February.However, it is unclear whether Trump will obey. Although the administration is legally required to heed court orders, a federal judge ruled in another case this week that Trump had defied an order to halt a separate freeze in federal funding. Disregarding court orders may tee up a showdown between the executive and judicial branches of the government – and a constitutional crisis.Regardless of when, how or if NIH grants function in the future, Lane-Fall believes the chaos unleashed by the Trump administration has already led science to suffer. Lane-Fall had to pause plans to hold a conference and told some postdoctoral students that they cannot yet move forward with research projects. She’s now worried that maternal health centers – who have built partnerships with local groups that champion doulas, breastfeeding among Black women and more – will not be able to compensate those groups.“One really important trend in maternal and child health research is that we are working now more with communities than we ever have before, because we understand that there’s a lot of lived experience and expertise in communities. Part of what makes that partnership possible is that we’re able to compensate them for their time,” Lane-Fall said. “When we go to those communities and we say: ‘We promised you money, but it might not be there’ – that is devastating.”Dr Nancy E Lane is haunted by the idea that the confusion will lead women’s health scientists to leave academia. A University of California, Davis, doctor who specializes in osteoporosis and osteoarthritis, Lane was part of a 2024 report calling for more NIH funding for women’s health. Between 2013 and 2023, just 8.8% of NIH grant dollars focused on investigating it.“My career has tremendously benefited from the resources from the National Institutes of Health. It’s what made me who I am,” Lane said. “How much will the current generation put up with this before they’ll just throw their hands up?” More

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      US watchdog to investigate Musk ‘Doge’ team’s access to payment systems

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      A government watchdog is to launch an inquiry into security over the US treasury’s payments system as a judge on Friday considered whether access by Elon Musk’s “department of government efficiency” (Doge) to the highly sensitive data base was unconstitutional.Amid mounting court cases concerning Doge’s activities, the treasury department’s inspector general said it would launch an audit after Democrats complained about the access gained to a 25-year-old Musk associate, Marko Elez, who was briefly granted edit access within the system, meaning he had the potential to change entries. The access was later rescinded by an interim court ruling.The payment system contains the personal details of millions of Americans and disburses trillions of dollars to federal government programmes.Musk, the billionaire owner of Tesla and SpaceX, has been tasked by Trump to slash government spending by targeting alleged waste and fraud and has upended large swaths of the federal bureaucracy, cancelling contracts, stopping spending programs and throwing thousands of staff out of work.Loren Sciurba, the treasury’s deputy inspector general, said the audit would review the past two years of the system’s transactions to examine Musk’s claim that his team has uncovered evidence of billions of dollars of fraudulent payments.She said the audit – launched in response to demands from the Democratic senators Elizabeth Warren and Ron Wyden – would begin immediately and take until August to complete.Its launch coincided with a judge in Washington considering a legal suit lodged by Democratic attorneys general from 14 states, arguing that Doge’s work was illegal on the alleged grounds that Trump violated the US constitution by creating a federal government department without congressional approval.The attorneys general argue that Musk has exercised “virtually unchecked power” by entering government agencies and ordering sweeping cuts without oversight or authorization from Congress.USAid, the government foreign assistance agency, has been shuttered on his authority and its workforce put on leave, although a judge on Thursday ordered the Trump administration to temporarily lift the funding freeze it has imposed on the agency’s humanitarian work.The suit, led by New Mexico’s justice department, alleges that Doge has “unraveled federal agencies, accessed sensitive data, and caused widespread disruption for state and local governments, federal employees, and the American people”.The attorneys general asked the court to order Musk to identify how “any data obtained through unlawful agency access was used” and to destroy any “unauthorised access in his or Doge’s possession”. They called on the court to bar Musk and his team from stopping the disbursement of public funds, cancelling contracts and dismantling agencies.The hearing was due to take place after Musk said the US needed to “delete entire agencies” to eliminate waste.A separate hearing in a court in New York was due over whether to extend a temporary block on the Doge team entering the payments system that was imposed in an interim ruling last Saturday by Judge Paul Englemayer. Musk called for Englemayer’s impeachment after that ruling, while JD Vance, the vice-president, wrote in a social media most that judges were not allowed to interfere with a president’s “legitimate power” – a view contested by most constitutional law experts.Swingeing cuts continued apace despite the plethora of legal challenges. Federal agency heads were ordered to fire most recent hires who have not completed their probation period – a move likely to affect about 200,000 workers, the Washington Post reported.The treasury department audit coincided with a call from Chris Murphy, Democratic senator for Connecticut, for an official investigation into the “legality and scope” of Musk’s penetration of the federal bureaucracy.“Musk and his aides are subject to various conflict of interest statutes which prohibit federal employees from participating in matters that impact their own financial interests,” Murphy wrote to the US government comptroller general, Eugene Dodaro.He added: “It is imperative the public understands whether Musk and his aides have complied with the law and whether highly sensitive data could be at risk if accessed by private actors who seek to benefit from the information illegally, or worse, by foreign adversaries who wish to attack this country.”Despite the rising resistance to its activities, the US armed services were preparing a list of weapons systems to be cut in preparation for Doge casting its gaze over the Pentagon, the Wall Street Journal reported.Members of Musk’s team were expected to visit the Pentagon on Friday. “People are offering up things sacrificially, hoping that will prevent more cuts,” a defence official told the Journal.The army was said to be volunteering cutting outdated drones and vehicles, while the navy is proposing cuts to frigates and littoral combat ships. 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      Some federal workers given just 30 minutes to leave amid Trump layoffs

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      Some federal employees who have been laid off were reportedly given only 30 minutes to pack their belongings and vacate federal offices. Federal agencies were ordered by Donald Trump to fire mostly probationary staff, with as many as 200,000 workers set to be affected and some made to rush off the premises, the Washington Post reported.More mass layoffs came on Friday as approximately 2,300 employees have been fired from the US interior department.The interior department oversees the US’s natural resources and manages 500m acres of public land, including national parks. The widespread layoffs were confirmed by three sources with knowledge on the subject, who spoke to Reuters anonymously.Probationary employees at two US agriculture department research agencies were also fired, Reuters reported, citing two anonymous sources. The exact number of terminated workers has not been confirmed, but layoffs reportedly happened overnight.Several federal unions have filed a lawsuit against the Trump administration for mass terminations at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB), ABC News reported. The plaintiffs argued that Russ Vought, the acting director of CFPB, plans to slash 95% of the agency’s workforce, essentially gutting the agency.The large-scale layoff strategy, led by Elon Musk’s so called “department of government efficiency”, is meant to cut costs by downsizing the federal government. Trump and Musk have both criticized the federal workforce as being oversized, with Trump calling the federal government “bloated” and filled with “people that are unnecessary”. Musk said on Thursday that the US should “delete entire agencies”, comparing them to “weeds” that needed to be rooted out.But massive layoffs have created chaos for affected federal employees. Thousands of workers were fired in group calls or via pre-recorded messages in recent days, the Post reported. Others were told they would be laid off by email, but never received such messages.Elaine Kamarck, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, told the Associated Press that firing employees on probation is flawed because it targets younger workers.“Baby boomers are retiring right and left, so actually the people you want to keep are probably most of the people who are right now on probation,” said Kamarck, who worked in former president Bill Clinton’s Democratic administration when about 426,000 federal jobs were cut over more than eight years in a deliberative effort aimed at reinventing government. “They’re younger and presumably have better skills, and that’s who you want.”About 100 employees at the office of personnel management (OPM) were fired in a Microsoft Teams group call, CNN reported, and told they had half an hour to leave the building.OPM workers were told that they were terminated because they did not accept the Trump administration’s deferred resignation plan, the American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE) union told CNN. The buyout offers allowed employees who agreed to stop working to be paid through 30 September, although some have questioned if the payment offer is valid.Everett Kelley, head of the AFGE, which represents 800,000 federal workers, has condemned the layoffs and promised to use “every legal challenge available”, in comments to the Post.“Employees were given no notice, no due process, and no opportunity to defend themselves in a blatant violation of the principles of fairness and merit that are supposed to govern federal employment,” said Kelley.So far, at least six agencies have carried out widespread layoffs. The Department of Veterans Affairs, which oversees services and benefits to military veterans, laid off 1,000 probationaries, Reuters reported. A termination notice to VA employees stated and CNN reported: “The Agency finds, based on your performance, that you have not demonstrated that your further employment at the Agency would be in the public interest.”Termination notices were also sent to employees at the Department of Education, the Small Business Administration (SBA), and the General Services Administration (GSA).Additional layoffs are expected at the National Science Foundation and Department of Housing and Urban Development, the Post reported, citing a person with knowledge on the reductions who spoke anonymously. The US Forest Service, which manages 193m acres (78m hectares) of US public lands, is also expected to fire more than 3,000 workers.The job slashing comes as a judge ruled on Wednesday that the Trump administration’s buyout offers could proceed, with officials then closing the plan to employees who may still have been weighing the decision.Approximately 3.75% of workers – or about 75,000 people – accepted the deal, Semafor reported. The figure is below the 5-10% of workers that the White House aimed to get rid of and estimated would accept the buyout offers.Send us a tip
      If you have information you’d like to share securely with the Guardian about the impact of cuts to federal programs, please use a non-work device to contact us via the Signal messaging app at (646) 886-8761 More

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      Inside Trump’s ‘unprecedented’ crackdown on US consumer watchdog

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      The termination email for a score of employees at the top US consumer watchdog arrived in the late hours of the night.“Unfortunately, the Agency finds that you are not fit for continued employment because your ability, knowledge and skills do not fit the agency’s current needs,” dozens of probationary staffers at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) were informed on 11 February.“For these reasons, I regrettably inform you that I am removing you from your position of [job title], with the agency and the federal service [effective date],” continued the letter from Adam Martinez, CFPB’s chief human capital officer and seen by the Guardian.The CFPB has long been known as a popular agency, one that’s recovered more than $21bn for defrauded Americans since its creation in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis. But now it faces the threat of dismantlement, and becoming the next institution under the Trump administration to potentially be rapidly hollowed out from within – a situation that could cause consumers the need to fend for themselves against predatory financial practices. More broad layoffs may be on the way.“It’s been really stressful to potentially lose my way to support my family as the primary breadwinner,” said one of several CFPB employees who spoke on condition of anonymity due to fear of retaliation. “But the chaos that’s happening is impacting not just the bureau, but consumers and industry.”The trouble began earlier this month, when the newly appointed acting director, Russell Vought, issued a sweeping order halting all agency operations. Staff were instructed not to perform any work tasks without explicit written approval. The agency’s headquarters was abruptly closed, its website went dark, and its social media accounts were deleted.“This has been unprecedented,” said a second CFPB employee, who joined the financial watchdog just before Trump’s first term. “No administrative tasks, no trainings, we can’t do anything. We were in the middle of exams, doing what we do. And now there are open questions about everything.”The freeze has left both CFPB staff and the financial institutions they oversee in limbo. Ongoing examinations have been suspended mid-process. Statutory deadlines loom with no one authorized to handle them. Even routine consumer-protection functions have ground to a halt.“Right now, they’re not allowed to proceed with any kind of court cases,” a third employee explained. “Any of these cases they’re litigating against any kind of bank is presumably going to be thrown out, which really sucks.”The work stoppage came with a twist: the possible installation of surveillance software on employee computers just days before the shutdown, two current staffers told the Guardian.“People are almost scared to work. There are concerns of keystrokes being monitored,” the first CFPB employee said. “No one wants to get fired for insubordination.”“I would have it open and I’d be, like, jiggling my mouse to keep it green,” the second employee said, “if only because I’m just extremely nervous about what the consequences are of a work stoppage.”The CFPB did not return a request for comment.This climate of fear has only been amplified by the tech billionaire Elon Musk’s so-called “department of government efficiency” team, who were granted access to CFPB’s headquarters and computer systems. Hours after their arrival, Musk posted “CFPB RIP” with a tombstone emoji on his social media platform, X.The CFPB holds vast amounts of sensitive consumer and corporate data, raising serious security concerns. The bureau maintains one of the federal government’s largest consumer-complaint databases, containing millions of detailed records about Americans’ personal financial struggles, from mortgage difficulties to credit card disputes. This includes social security numbers, account details and comprehensive financial histories.“Companies submit confidential business information, trade secrets and information about consumers,” the third employee went on. “People reveal very personal, sensitive information, and it seems like there has been very little regard towards protecting that.”skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionMeanwhile, the administration is preparing for even more dramatic cuts. According to legal filings from a federal workers’ union on Thursday, plans are believed to be under way to terminate more than 95% of the bureau’s employees, in effect rendering it impossible for the agency to fulfill any of its statutory functions.Another legal filing from the union that represents CFPB employees on Friday seeks an injunction to prevent further disruption, arguing that Vought’s moves violate separations of powers by obstructing Congress’s mandate to protect American consumers.There are fears that CFPB’s potential demise would leave a massive void in consumer protection. Over the years, some strong enforcement actions included a $120m settlement with student loan servicer Navient over illegal practices, a $175m penalty against Block’s Cash App for inadequate fraud protection and a $3.7bn order against Wells Fargo for mismanagement of auto loans, mortgages and deposit accounts.Still, Trump has been explicit about his intentions to gut the agency. When asked whether his goal was to eliminate the CFPB entirely, he told a press pool on Monday: “I would say, yeah, because we’re trying to get rid of waste, fraud and abuse.” He added: “It was a very important thing to get rid of.”Adding to the confusion, Trump moved to install his own pick atop the watchdog, nominating Jonathan McKernan, the former Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation board member.McKernan, who quit his FDIC post just a day before his nomination, would potentially be moving from an agency focused on banking stability to one focused on consumer protection. He took a parting swipe at financial regulations as he left the FDIC, posting on X that he hoped it would “succeed in its mission while also reversing the regulatory overreaches of the last few years”.The actions come despite overwhelming public support for financial protection. A September poll from Americans for Financial Reform showed that 91% of voters believe it is important to regulate financial services to ensure they are fair for consumers, including 95% of Democrats, 87% of Republicans and 88% of independents.But the administration is looking to move ahead and dismantle the agency’s infrastructure anyway. As the future of America’s consumer financial watchdog hangs in the balance, its employees remain defiant.“We’re the watchdogs. We do this work to protect all American consumers. It doesn’t matter who they voted for, where they live,” one staffer said. “What matters is that people have rights. There are laws to protect them, and we’re here to do the work to help protect them, and we’re not going to be bullied.” More

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      Trump continues clearout of top US labor officials with fresh firing

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      Donald Trump has fired a top official at the independent agency responsible for labor relations with the federal government.Susan Tsui Grundmann, one of three board members at the Federal Labor Relations Authority (FLRA), has been dismissed, a White House official told the Guardian. She served as the agency’s chair.Trump is “committed to building a team fully committed to advancing his America-First agenda”, the White House official said.Her profile page on the agency’s website has already been removed, and an organizational chart of its leadership states that the chair role is now vacant.Tsui Grudmann’s firing was first revealed by a Washington Post reporter on social media.The FLRA is responsible for overseeing management and labor relations for some 2.1 million federal employees. Tsui Grundmann was nominated to its board by Joe Biden in 2021, and approved by the Senate in 2022, before her designation as chair in 2023. Her term was set to end on 1 JulyTrump has already been sued after firing a board member of the National Labor Relations Board, Gwynne Wilcox, last week.Wilcox has argued that the president only has authority to remove board members for negligence or misconduct, which were not alleged by the Trump administration during her termination.In 1935 the US supreme court ruled in Humphrey’s Executor v United States that the US constitution did not grant “illimitable power of removal” to the president.The FLRA has identical stipulations, with a statute that states a president can remove a member “only upon notice and hearing and only for inefficiency, neglect of duty, or malfeasance in office”.The FLRA was contacted for comment.As chair, Tsui Grundmann argued against stagnant funding and understaffing at the agency amid increases in unfair labor practice charge filings, saying the agency would have to engage in furloughs if funding remained flat.Last year, Biden nominated Colleen Duffy Kiko and Anne Wagner to serve on the three-member board. Duffy Kiko had previously served as a Republican appointee to the board under Trump. Wagner is a former counsel for the American Federation of Government Employees.Send us a tipIf you have information you’d like to share securely with the Guardian about the impact of cuts to federal programs or the federal workforce, please use a non-work device to contact us via the Signal messaging app at (646) 886-8761. More