Tens of thousands of government employees told to leave amid Elon Musk’s call to ‘delete’ entire agencies.
Good morning, US politics blog readers. The Trump administration’s drive to downsize the federal workforce continues, with news that thousands of US government employees across the United States have been told they are being let go. The latest cuts target employees in their probationary periods at agencies that include the department of veterans affairs, small business administration and US forest service. That’s in addition to the 75,000 employees the White House said accepted its legally questionable offer of deferred resignations. All this is taking place after Elon Musk, who Trump has appointed as chair of his “department of government efficiency” said that his intention is to “delete entire agencies”. Federal worker unions have sued over his moves, while warning that the Trump-Musk drive to downsize government by going after the people who work there threatens to undermine programs Americans depend on. We’ll tell you more about that today.
Here’s what else is going on:.
Trump is heading to Mar-a-Lago for the weekend this afternoon, but before he does, he’ll sign executive orders at 1pm. He often invites the press into the Oval Office to watch him do so.
Top federal prosecutors have resigned after receiving orders from the justice department to drop bribery charges against New York mayor Eric Adams. We expect to hear more about the fallout from the decision throughout the day.
JD Vance is scheduled to meet with Volodymyr Zelenskyy and deliver remarks at the Munich security conference, where America’s European allies are grasping for details of the Trump administration’s new policy on Ukraine. We have a live blog covering it all, and you can read it here.
