Trump Lawyers Disclose List of Deep Federal Workforce Cuts (1)

The Trump administration divulged to a federal court where it wanted to cut the federal workforce earlier this year, offering a rare look into the scope of its plans to reduce the size of the government.

The administration, at a federal judge’s request, Thursday turned over information on its reduction-in-force plans, after months of resistance. The list offers one of the most detailed looks yet at Trump’s plan to radically overhaul the federal workforce, though many questions remain unanswered.

The document denotes 40 layoff plans at 17 agencies, from Treasury to the National Endowment for the Humanities, reviewed by the Office of Personnel Management between March 10 and April 13. While some have been announced by the administration, others haven’t been previously disclosed. The plans have renewed relevance in the wake of a US Supreme Court decision allowing layoffs to proceed amid a legal challenge.

The General Services Administration and the Agriculture Department had the most requests for cuts at seven each, while the Treasury Department had five. In March, USDA sought to cut employees in human resources and employee support offices, as well as safety and environmental protection bureaus

In April, Treasury submitted five requests to cut roles in the taxpayer advocate and appeals offices in the Internal Revenue Service. The same month, the White House personnel office weighed cuts to the Federal Highway Administration and Federal Railroad Administration, which ensure the safety and efficacy of the nation’s highways and railways, respectively.

The information was revealed as part of a lawsuit brought by the American Federation of Government Employees, which challenged Trump’s authority to hatchet federal agencies without congressional approval. AFGE represents nearly a million federal workers at risk of termination.

Department of Justice attorneys had sought to keep the plans private, arguing in court that the reorganization plans were deliberative documents that should be kept secret by default. In the Thursday filing, they stated that the plans provided were an “early, initial step in a potential reduction in force,” not actual layoffs.

Trump’s workforce cuts remained mostly frozen by a court order until the Supreme Court allowed the layoffs to continue while a legal challenge moves forward.

The president was handed another win Wednesday when the US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit halted a lower court order requiring the government to hand over reduction-in-force plans. Those plans would likely be more detailed than the list provided separately to the US District Court of the Northern District of California, which didn’t offer estimates of how many workers would be let go or which positions would be eliminated.

The case is AFGE v. Trump, N.D. Cal., 3:25-cv-03698-SI.