Mass layoffs at the temporarily shuttered Department of Education sent shockwaves through Washington D.C., but they could foretell even bigger things to come.
“Many of them don’t work at all,” President Donald Trump said of the 1,315 Education Department employees who got pink slips Tuesday evening. “We’re keeping the best ones.”
That same pattern could hold for other agencies after the Department of Education’s workforce was effectively cut in half. Trump repeated some of his campaign rhetoric by claiming, “They’re not showing up to work” and “not doing a good job.”
The Education Department closed for the entirety of Wednesday, with officials citing security reasons, and will reopen Thursday with a greatly reduced headcount. Employees who will be let go will telework before receiving 90 days of severance pay plus additional compensated time depending on their length of service.
While that news rankled Democrats and teachers unions, it could prove the opening salvo in a wider swath of layoffs to come.
In late February, the Office of Management and Budget and Office of Personnel Management sent a memo telling government agencies to “take preparations to initiate large-scale reductions in force” and to submit two “Agency Reorganization Plans.”
The first of those two deadlines will hit Thursday, with the other set for April 14.
“Everybody is working together as one team,” White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt told the Washington Examiner. “This is a goal that every Cabinet Secretary across the board agrees with — we have to reduce our workforce. We have to make our bureaucracy more efficient.”
Those future developments will likely pile even more controversy on the Department of Government Efficiency and Elon Musk, who has already faced so much backlash that Trump saw fit to host a Tesla car show at the White House to boost the automaker’s stock.
Trump’s approval rating remains just above water in the RealClearPolitics polling average, but Musk is getting lower marks. A recent CNN poll found that just 35% of respondents approve of the world’s richest man, against 53% who rate him negatively.
Yet Musk is plowing ahead and says he’ll continue his involvement with the government for at least another year.
“We’re trying to act broadly across all departments, so it’s not just one department at a time,” he told Fox Business host and former Trump administration official Larry Kudlow.
Asked if DOGE was working in every federal agency, Musk responded, “Pretty much, yea.” DOGE is one of the few government organizations with an expanding workforce, as Musk predicted its staff would grow from 100 to 200 people.
“Really, I just don’t want America to go bankrupt,” he said. Musk claims DOGE has saved more than $4 billion a day and predicted it could reach $1 trillion, though Democrats say his figures are vastly overstated and that he’s in danger of breaching numerous ethics laws.
Despite their protestations, Democrats and federal government unions have little recourse to fight the Trump administration except in court, as Republicans control the White House and both chambers of Congress.
Federal judges have slowed down but not halted some of DOGE’s progress by preventing the U.S. Agency of International Development from shredding documents at DOGE’s request and ruling that it should be subject to Freedom of Information Act requests.
If the Department of Education layoffs indicate what’s to come, the GOP seems poised to keep cheerleading the cuts.
“Better education is closest to the kids, with parents, with local superintendents, with local school boards,” Education Secretary Linda McMahon said on Fox News’s Ingraham Angle. “I think we’ll see our scores go up with our students when we can educate them with parental input as well.”
