Trump’s Federal Workers: Buyouts, RIFs, and Court Rulings

Since October 2024, roughly 348,000 people have left the federal workforce, and the Trump administration’s federal workforce cuts have run through nearly every tool available: a mass buyout offer, a one-in-four hiring cap, the firing of probationary employees across at least 17 agencies, reduction-in-force notices during a government shutdown, the stripping of civil service appeal rights from about 8,000 senior positions, and the cancellation of union bargaining rights covering roughly two-thirds of federal employees. Courts have called some of the firings illegal but have generally declined to reverse them, and the Supreme Court has stayed the broadest injunction against the restructuring.

A Pew Research Center analysis of Office of Personnel Management data found 348,219 separations in 2025 alone, an 80.8% increase over 2024, while new hiring fell 55.6%. The net result was a workforce drop from about 2.31 million in December 2024 to about 2.07 million a year later — a 10.3% decline.¹ The White House has said the workforce is at its lowest level since 1966.²

How the Cuts Happened

The “Fork in the Road” Buyout

On January 28, 2025, OPM emailed nearly every federal worker offering a “deferred resignation”: resign now, stay on paid administrative leave with full benefits through September 30, 2025. The window was just over a week. More than 150,000 employees accepted, including roughly 20% of the Department of Energy workforce.³ Several agencies reopened the offer in late March and April 2025.

Return-to-Office Order

On his first day back in office, President Trump signed a memorandum ordering all executive branch agencies to end remote work and require full-time in-person attendance at duty stations.⁴ More than a million workers were potentially affected, and the mandate arrived alongside the buyout email.⁵

The One-in-Four Hiring Cap and RIF Order

A February 11, 2025 executive order directed agencies to hire no more than one employee for every four who leave, with exemptions for law enforcement and public safety. It also ordered agency heads to begin “large-scale reductions in force,” prioritizing functions not required by statute, diversity and equity programs, and positions not deemed essential during a funding lapse. Each agency’s DOGE team lead was given a veto over filling vacancies.⁶

Probationary Firings

Starting in February 2025, the administration fired probationary employees — those in their first or second year of service — across at least 17 agencies, citing performance. U.S. District Judge William Alsup later called that rationale a “sham” and ruled in September 2025 that the firings were unlawful because OPM had directed them, taking authority Congress had reserved for individual agencies.⁷⁸ He declined to order reinstatement, saying “too much water has now passed under the bridge.”⁹ He did order agencies to send letters by November 2025 confirming the terminations were not based on personal performance and to correct personnel records.

The composition of the losses matched who tends to be probationary. Workers under 35 fell from 18% to 16.8% of the federal workforce, and those with less than two years of service dropped from 16.2% to 10.3%.¹

Which Agencies Lost the Most

Reductions were far from even. The U.S. Agency for International Development lost 92.4% of its staff, and the Department of Education lost roughly half its workforce.¹ The Department of Veterans Affairs shed more than 40,000 employees in fiscal 2025, including about 3,000 registered nurses and 1,000 physicians; a Senate Democratic report described “damaging and dangerous” effects on veteran care, including average mental health appointment waits of 35 days.¹⁰ The Environmental Protection Agency lost about 4,000 staff.¹¹ Proposed RIFs reviewed by a federal court reached 93% at the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health, nearly 50% at the Department of Energy, and more than 50% at NOAA.¹²

Immigration enforcement grew. Immigration and Customs Enforcement added roughly 7,500 workers.¹

Loss of Civil Service Protections: Schedule Policy/Career

On June 3, 2026, Trump signed an executive order reclassifying about 8,000 senior federal employees as “at-will” workers under a new category called Schedule Policy/Career. It revives the concept behind the first-term “Schedule F” that the Biden administration had rescinded.¹³

Roughly 97% of affected positions are at the GS-15 level or above: regional office heads, chiefs of staff, program managers, senior attorneys, regulation writers, and officials overseeing grants and spending. Once reclassified, an employee can be fired without cause and loses the right to appeal to the Merit Systems Protection Board. Eligibility for student loan repayment and some recruitment and retention incentives also ends.¹⁴

OPM Director Scott Kupor called the change “a restoration of the democratic process,” saying existing protections let career staff “thwart the president’s agenda.”¹³ The administration said the reclassified positions remain merit-based career roles and that whistleblower protections are preserved. Federal employee unions and Democracy Forward argue the policy enables political purges. During the rule’s April 2025 comment period, OPM received more than 40,000 comments, about 94% opposed.¹⁴ OPM has previously estimated that up to 50,000 positions could eventually be reclassified.

Four federal lawsuits challenge the policy. As of mid-2026, no court had granted relief.¹⁵

Loss of Union Bargaining Rights

A March 2025 executive order, “Exclusions from Federal Labor-Management Relations Programs,” invoked a national-security provision of the 1978 Civil Service Reform Act to strip collective bargaining rights from employees at dozens of agencies. Coverage spans the Departments of State, Defense, Treasury, Veterans Affairs, Justice, Homeland Security, Interior, Agriculture, and others, reaching roughly two-thirds of the federal workforce. Once existing agreements expire, agencies must terminate union-related grievance proceedings and reassign employees performing union business to agency work.¹⁶

By February 2026, OPM had told covered agencies to terminate or modify their collective bargaining agreements and notify affected unions.¹⁷ In April 2026, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth directed agency leaders to terminate most departmental collective bargaining agreements within 24 hours, with narrow exemptions for units covered by court injunctions and certain wage-system workers at four military installations.¹⁸

What Courts Have Done

In May 2025, U.S. District Judge Susan Illston in San Francisco issued a preliminary injunction blocking the RIF and reorganization plans, finding plaintiffs likely to succeed in arguing the actions illegally circumvented tasks Congress had assigned to agencies. The court reviewed 68 sworn declarations and noted about 40 reductions in force underway across 17 agencies.¹²

In July 2025, the Supreme Court stayed that injunction, stating the government was “likely to succeed” in defending the executive order and implementing memorandum. The stay remains in effect pending further appeals.¹²

A separate fight followed the October 2025 shutdown, when the administration issued RIF notices to roughly 4,200 employees during the funding lapse. OMB Director Russ Vought said the goal was to “shut down the bureaucracy” and target “Democrat programs.” Judge Illston issued a temporary restraining order, noting “it is also far from normal for an administration to fire line-level civilian employees during a government shutdown as a way to punish the opposing political party.”¹⁹ In December 2025, she ordered four agencies to rescind RIF notices affecting about 680 employees, citing a continuing resolution that declared such layoffs would have “no force or effect.”²⁰

Shutdown Backpay

During the same shutdown, the administration disputed the assumption that furloughed workers would automatically get backpay. OMB General Counsel Mark Paoletta produced a memo arguing that the 2019 Government Employee Fair Treatment Act did not create an “unconditional obligation” to pay furloughed employees, only an authorization requiring a specific appropriation. OMB removed references to the law from its shutdown guidance, and President Trump publicly suggested some workers “really don’t deserve to be taken care of.”²¹²²

Senate Majority Leader John Thune called the dispute a “non-issue” and said the statute “is very clear.”²² The 40-day shutdown ended with a bipartisan Senate deal guaranteeing backpay for all furloughed and excepted workers retroactive to October 1, 2025, and banning further reductions in force through January 2026.²³

Where Fired Workers Can Appeal

The Merit Systems Protection Board — the body that hears appeals from fired federal employees — was without a quorum for months after Trump fired member Cathy Harris. It regained a quorum in October 2025 when the Senate confirmed a new member. By May 2025 it had already received more than 11,000 appeals, roughly twice its typical caseload.²⁴

In December 2025, a D.C. Circuit panel ruled 2-1 that the firings of Harris and NLRB member Gwynne Wilcox were lawful, holding that the MSPB and NLRB fall outside the protections of the 1935 Humphrey’s Executor precedent.²⁵ Legal commentators have written that the board’s structural independence is effectively over: the president can now remove members at will, and the Justice Department has asserted that the MSPB is bound by executive legal interpretations.²⁶ Reclassified Schedule Policy/Career employees lose access to the MSPB entirely.¹⁴

DOGE and Access to Personnel Data

The Department of Government Efficiency, established by executive order in January 2025 and initially led by Elon Musk, was granted “full and prompt access to all unclassified agency records, software systems, and IT systems.” DOGE personnel obtained access to databases containing medical diagnoses, therapy notes, bankruptcy filings, and income data. At least a dozen lawsuits sought to block or expose the scope of that access.²⁷

In a case brought by the American Federation of Government Employees and the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a federal judge allowed claims to proceed under the Privacy Act and the Administrative Procedure Act, finding plaintiffs had sufficiently alleged that DOGE agents “actually exploited their access to review, possess, and use OPM records” containing Social Security numbers, health histories, and financial disclosures of tens of millions of current and former federal employees. The complaint alleged agents had “administrative access” enabling them to alter records and obscure their own activity, contradicting agency claims that access was read-only.²⁸

Musk left the federal government around mid-2025. As of May 2026, the Government Accountability Office was investigating how DOGE members handled sensitive information, but the administration was withholding some requested records.²⁹

1
Pew Research Center. Federal Workforce Shrank 10% in Trump’s First Year Back in Office
2
The White House. Fact Sheet: President Donald J. Trump Increases Accountability in the Federal Workforce
3
NPR. Federal Employees Fork Deferred Resignation Trump
4
The White House. Return to In-Person Work
5
The Washington Post. Federal Workers Return to Office
6
The White House. Implementing the President’s Department of Government Efficiency Workforce Optimization Initiative
7
NPR. Federal Probationary Employees Firing Supreme Court
8
Government Executive. Trump’s Mass Probationary Firings Were Illegal, Judge Concludes, but He Won’t Order Re-hirings
9
The New York Times. Probationary Employees Firing Illegal
10
Government Executive. VA Has Shed 40,000 Employees, Democratic Report Finds Drastic Impacts on Veterans
11
E&E News. EPA Very Susceptible to More Layoffs Under Shutdown, Former Officials Warn
12
Supreme Court of the United States. Trump v. American Federation of Government Employees, No. 24A1174
13
NPR. Trump Federal Employees Civil Service Job Protections Schedule F
14
Federal News Network. Trump Moves About 8,000 Federal Positions to Schedule Policy/Career
15
Workers Legal Defense. Litigation Tracker
16
The White House. Exclusions From Federal Labor-Management Relations Programs
17
Office of Personnel Management. Implementation of Executive Orders 14251 and 14343
18
Government Executive. Hegseth Orders Termination of Union Contracts
19
Federal News Network. Court Blocks Trump Administration’s Latest Mass Layoffs for Federal Employees
20
Federal News Network. Federal Judge Orders Reversal of Hundreds of Layoffs Finalized During Shutdown
21
Government Executive. Trump Administration’s Claims Against Automatic Furloughed Worker Backpay Lack Legal, Historical Basis
22
ABC News. Senate Majority Leader Thune Says Furloughed Federal Workers Will Get Back Pay
23
Government Executive. Senate Moves on Shutdown-Ending Deal That Would Ensure Backpay and Unwind Some Federal Layoffs
24
Government Executive. Federal Employee Appeals Board Gets Quorum After Senate Confirms New Member
25
Federal News Network. Appeals Court Backs Trump’s Firings of MSPB, NLRB Members
26
Lawfare. The Merit Systems Protection Board’s Independence Is Dead
27
NPR. DOGE Elon Musk Security Data Information Privacy
28
Electronic Frontier Foundation. Our Privacy Act Lawsuit Against DOGE and OPM: Why a Judge Let It Move Forward
29
The Washington Post. Agencies Won’t Hand Over Records in an Investigation Into How DOGE Accessed Data