Without DOGE’s Chainsaw, Federal Worker Cuts Lean on New Tactics

President Donald Trump kicked more than 300,000 federal workers to the curb during his first year in office.

Doing that again will not be easy.

As the president looks to tighten his grip on the civil service, he faces the reality that the wrecking-ball tactics pioneered by Elon Musk will be hard to repeat—mainly because they relied on a pool of voluntary resignations that’s already dried up—leaving Trump’s aides looking for other, more targeted ways to get rid of workers.

Key advisers are homing in on the budget process, looking to persuade lawmakers to claw back appropriated funds and pushing the bounds of the Constitution by refusing to spend money on programs the administration dislikes. It comes as the White House and Congress prepare for yet another funding fight, with the deal that ended the 43-day government shutdown set to expire Jan. 30.

“Russ Vought needs to be let off the chain in 2026,” Steve Bannon, Trump’s former chief strategist, told Bloomberg Law, referring to the White House budget director. “The appropriations bill is a ceiling, not a floor—recessions, impoundments. Where DOGE failed, OMB is the weapon to deconstruct the administrative state.”

Trump’s shock-and-awe campaign to dismantle the federal workforce started with a hiring freeze on his first day back in office, an end to remote work, and executive orders aimed at eroding protections against political interference. The federal workforce has shrunk by about 219,000 since Trump took office, after accounting for new hires who offset some of the departures, according to data released by the Office of Personnel Management last week.

While Trump and his allies, including Musk, who brought a chainsaw to the Conservative Political Action Conference to illustrate their plans, trumpeted the layoffs, data show that most separations were voluntary.

Roughly 162,000—more than half of all federal workers who left in 2025—dropped off the payroll from September to October 2025, according to the US Bureau of Labor Statistics. That’s when most people who took Trump’s “fork in the road” offer were set to resign after taking several months of paid leave.

Those who chose to stay in government are unlikely to take the offer this year.

“You can offer more, but anyone that was interested in taking it already took it,” said Russell Klosk, managing director of workforce planning at Deloitte.

Vought and his spokeswoman, Rachel Cauley, didn’t respond to calls and emails seeking comment.

New Classifications

The Trump administration has been working on other efforts to bring non-political civil servants under his control.

The Office of Personnel Management proposed a major change to the civil service system, giving the president the power to hire and fire at will as many as 50,000 people who previously could only be subject to layoffs or terminated for cause. It reflects a proposal from Trump’s first term, known as Schedule F, that was withdrawn by former President Joe Biden.

The new classification, called Schedule Policy/Career, could give Trump more room to fire people he sees as incompetent or disloyal. Opponents say it could allow Trump and future presidents to meddle in scientific research, data gathering, and other endeavors that are supposed to be removed from politics.

“This job reclassification creates an incentive for scientists to conduct studies that are biased in favor of the outcome the president wants,” Jennifer Jones, director of the Union of Concerned Scientists’ Center for Science and Democracy, wrote earlier this year.

The Trump administration also aims to create a more transient, nimble type of federal worker. In an interview with Bloomberg Law in September, Kupor said he wanted to attract skilled workers who would come for two or three years between private-sector jobs.

“We have just completely fumbled on actually telling people the right message about why government is exciting,” Kupor said. “It’s not about stability. We’ve got to go tell the story about how you can work on really huge, important projects.”

The proposal has yet to be finalized. Kupor declined to comment through a spokeswoman.

The fallout from the Trump administration’s dragnet approach could make it hard to recruit subject-matter experts to the government.

“I worry about the chilling effect, when you have these kinds of cuts, on people being interested in pursuing federal service to begin with,” Gautam Raghavan, director of the White House Office of Presidential Personnel during the Biden administration, said. “If you’re sitting on the outside and think, ‘oh, I’ve always dreamed of working at the EPA,’ and then you see what happens, it’s like ‘well maybe that’s not a stable career choice for me.’”

This month, OPM announced a new program, US Tech Force, to recruit 1,000 artificial intelligence experts and partner with some of the biggest tech companies, including Palantir, OpenAI, Amazon.com Inc., and Uber. It’s one of the first major signs of the administration backfilling, in some form, positions cut during the initial purge.

With any new hiring, Trump’s previous actions could come back to haunt him.

“Layoffs and early buyouts are incredibly toxic things,” Klosk, the Deloitte consultant, said. “They destroy morale, and it takes years, if not decades, to get it back.”