President Donald Trump‘s administration officially announced its plan for federal staff reductions in a Wednesday memo, telling agencies to prepare to cut staff and reorganize their departments by March 13.
Federal workers who spoke to Business Insider after the memo was announced said the move was “crazy and illogical,” but some were d to continue doing their work until they were removed from office.
The memo, sent by the Office of Management and Budget and Office of Personnel Management, did not identify specific targets for cutbacks, which they described as advancing the White House DOGE office efficiency initiatives. However, Trump on Wednesday, during a cabinet meeting, suggested as an example that as much as 65% of staff at the Environmental Protection Agency could be cut.
Representatives for the White House, OPM and OMB did not immediately respond to requests for comment from BI.
“I think what is going on is unfair to us. I have been told my job is exempt, but I truly don’t believe it,” an employee from the Department of Veterans Affairs said. “I know that we are shorthanded but also don’t trust the government or my supervisors here. I have seen nothing in writing. That scares me also.”
The memo lays out a timeline for most agencies — with exemptions for federal law enforcement, military, border security, and US Postal Service employees — to prepare and execute a layoff and reorganization strategy. Agencies must submit their restructuring plans by March 13, and “outline a positive vision for more productive, efficient agency operations” by April 14, with an implementation deadline in September.
It also requires field office operations to be consolidated or closed, which one employee of the Social Security Administration said would impact frontline offices that handle claims and issue Social Security cards, as well as disability hearing offices that handle appeals of unfavorable decisions in disability cases.
“So, the people who complain about long wait times and nobody answering the phone are talking about those entities, maybe there are a lot of layers of bureaucracy above us, but those exist to provide support for us frontline people,” the Social Security Administration employee told BI. “This is crazy and illogical, motivated by a blind, stupid hatred of the Public Sector as a whole.”
An Internal Revenue Service employee told BI “it will take years, if not decades, to fully recover” from the cuts across the federal government.
“Americans are going to feel this very deeply,” they said. “Services are going to be non-existent.”
An employee from the Department of Housing and Urban Development said they’re prepared to be moved to a different department after a meeting with their supervisor about the memo.
“There’s so much confusion — respond to the productivity email, don’t respond, and now being told to get ready to move departments — I see how this Elon tactic can mentally drain you because this week was so hard to log in and be productive,” the HUD worker told BI.
The restructuring memo comes just days after the White House DOGE office sent a weekend email asking all federal employees to list what work tasks they had accomplished last week, prompting confusing among some employees about how and whether to reply outside their chain of command.
While the confusion created by the emails, and subsequent conflicting guidance from department heads, has caused some federal workers who previously spoke to BI to reconsider their work in the government, others say they’re resolved to stick it out.
“I’ve never seen morale so low in my 18 years of service,” an employee from the Bureau of Reclamation told BI, adding that they “believe we are witnessing the final days” of their agency.
But, they said, they see their department’s work protecting water resources as essential for the country and have no plans of stopping their work unless they’re forced out of public service.
“They’ll have to fire me,” they said.
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