The NPR Politics Podcast - Trump's Latest Efforts To Reduce The Federal Workforce

Episode Date: March 13, 2025

Since taking office, President Trump has championed the idea of reducing the federal workforce. A February 26 memo gave agencies until today to come up with a plan for that reduction. What does this memo mean and how is it different than the previous cuts federal agencies have seen? This episode: White House correspondent Asma Khalid, government restructuring reporter Stephen Fowler, and education correspondent Cory Turner.The podcast is produced by Bria Suggs & Kelli Wessinger and edited by Casey Morell. Our executive producer is Muthoni Muturi.Listen to every episode of the NPR Politics Podcast sponsor-free, unlock access to bonus episodes with more from the NPR Politics team, and support public media when you sign up for The NPR Politics Podcast+ at plus.npr.org/politics.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

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Oh my goodness. I just want to be there with her. Hey there. It's the NPR Politics Podcast. I'm Asma Khalid. I cover the White House. And I'm Stephen Fowler. I cover government restructuring. And we have got a special guest with us today, our colleague, Corey Turner. He covers education for NPR. Corey, thanks so much for joining us on the show. Oh, it's my pleasure. So Cory, I am very glad you're with us because today on the show we're going to look at the scale and scope of President Trump's efforts to shrink the federal government. It is no

secret that the president wants to slash the federal workforce. In fact, he campaigned on draining the swamp and cutting the federal budget. But today, government agencies face a new deadline to submit plans for mass layoffs. And Stephen, that's where I want to start with you. What are the agencies supposed to spell out today? And how is it different than what we have already seen Trump do thus far? So 30 days ago, Asma, President Trump ordered federal agencies to do a few things, identify essential jobs and essential functions that the law requires them to do, and find ways to cut just about everything else.

So today's deadline is for agencies to submit to the Office of Personnel Management and the Office of Management and Budget phase one of something called the Agency RIF and Reorganization Plan. RIF standing for Reduction in Force. This is different than what we've seen so far from agencies firing probationary workers and with what we have seen with federal courts and others saying no, no, no, reinstate them. In fact, a district judge in California just a short time ago ordered the Trump administration to reinstate probationary workers who were fired at the Department of Veterans Affairs, Defense, Agriculture, Energy, Treasury, and the Interior as part of this back-and-forth about these

probationary employees maybe being terminated against the rules and procedures in place to do so. Just so I'm clear, Stephen, a reduction in force would be legal, and this would be viewed differently by the courts? Well, yeah, and actually getting rid of probationary employees is on paper legal, but in practice, the way the Trump administration and the Department of Government Efficiency led effort to do so has kind of skirted those rules. Big picture, what the agencies are being asked to do

is to find ways to have fewer employees. There are several different ways to do it and all have different legal requirements and timelines for it. Agencies can do things like lower the retirement requirements for the age you have to be and the number of years of service you have to be able to retire.

Agencies can offer buyouts for people to just volunteer to leave with a little bit of cash to do so. And then there is this reduction in force RIF plan. Now usually there's a lot of complicated things involved with calculating seniority and different types of employment status and other things to consider. But in this case, what the Trump administration is asking agencies to do is to cleave off entire departments, offices, divisions, teams, whatever you want to call it, from these different agencies.

And so you don't have to calculate who gets to stay if the answer is nobody. Oh, wow. So, Corey, one of the departments that has seen the deepest cuts this week is the department you cover, the Department of Education. We understand that it was announced layoffs of about 50% of the workforce. And when I saw those numbers, I will say that just seems like a seismic change. Can you articulate to us what exactly is being cut? They are essentially cutting the department in half. The areas of the department that are being hit hardest, there are a handful of them.

Number one is the Office for Civil Rights. This is the large clutch of attorneys who are stationed all over the United States, whose job it is to enforce federal civil rights laws on behalf of the nation's students. We know that they have told at least 240 of these OCR employees they will be losing their jobs. That appears to be roughly half of the Office for Civil Rights. We're also seeing huge cuts in federal student aid, which is the part of the education

department that administers the massive federal student loan portfolio. The FAFSA that often high schoolers apply for? I mean, the irony here is that we saw under the Biden administration what happens when FSA drops the ball with FAFSA. It was a disaster. I remember that. And what I'm hearing from multiple sources inside FSA is things could get bad all over again and maybe a lot worse because they have lost so many people. And it's also worth saying here, Asma, they have essentially gutted the entire research

division of the education department. And this can feel a little abstract to listeners, but I cannot tell you how important these people are. They essentially study what works in classrooms. Most of that research was cut and their staff this week was gutted. And I will also point out just with the greater context that part of that almost 50% reduction comes from these reduction in force notices that were sent out. But there were also a number of people at the education department that took the deferred resignation offer

that was sent earlier this year, and more took out the buyout program that was offered. So the reduction in force here is kind of a last ditch, big picture effort to make these changes. But when we talk about layoffs and talk about changes, it's more than just that. And I think the education department is a great example. When we talk about the cuts at the Department of Education, I think it's important to contextualize them.

President Trump and his Education Secretary, Linda McMahon, have been vocal about wanting to shutter the entire Department of Education. They have not been shy about their intentions. I told Linda, Linda, I hope you do a great job and put yourself out of a job. I great job and put yourself out of a job. I want her to put herself out of a job, education department. So we're ranked number 40 out of 40 schools, right?

We're ranked number one in cost per pupil. So we spend more per pupil than any other country in the world. And we're ranked at the bottom of the list. We're ranked very badly. And what I want to do is let the states run schools. I believe strongly in school choice. But in addition to that, I want the states to run schools. And I want Linda to put herself out of a job. So there was a lot said there. Corey, can you just unpack some of it for us?

Let me just focus in on this talking point that has been around for decades among Republicans, that education really does belong to the states. The word education doesn't appear in the Constitution, and the Department of Education is not actually that old. It was created in 1979. I think the thing to keep in mind though is that the Education Department does not have that much power when it comes to state and local education decisions. State and local funding for schools, only about 10% on average comes from federal government. Really, the rest comes from states and local property taxes. The role of the federal government in education, besides managing the federal student loan portfolio, which is its own huge and enormous separate thing, it administers two huge and enormously important funding streams

that were created by Congress. One, helps schools educate kids living in low-income communities. These schools, because of the way we've always funded our schools using local property taxes, these schools often don't have nearly as much money at their disposal as wealthier suburban schools. So the federal government pitches in a little extra. The other funding stream is for the federal law known as Individuals with Disabilities Education Act. It helps pay for what have become really expensive special education services for kids with disabilities. These two funding streams are provided by and administered by the education department, and then it also safeguards the civil rights of students. All right. Let's take a quick break and we'll have more to discuss in just a moment.

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working towards democracy, equity and justice at ajws.org. And we're back. And Cory, just before the break, we were talking about President Trump's desire to get rid of the Department of Education entirely. But is that even plausible? I mean, doesn't the president, any president, need congressional approval to eliminate a department?

Technically, yes, he does. But he's just cut the size of the department in half. And I think we're quickly approaching a space where it's possible that a Trump administration can pare down the department so much that what's left, I could easily imagine him simply trying to relocate to other government agencies. You move the Office of Federal Student Aid and the student loan portfolio, move it over to the Treasury Department. You know, you take the administration of IDEA, the funding for

students with disabilities, you move that over to Health and Human Services. And you quickly reach a point where suddenly there's really not much Education Department left. Stephen, we've spent a lot of time on today's show talking about the Department of Education, but it is not the only department that has seen a reduction in force recently. What other cuts at other agencies are you tracking? Well, that's right. I mean, almost every part of the federal government is being asked to participate in this reduction plan.

I mean, there are a few places that are exempt, you know, and few specialties that are exempt, like law enforcement, for example. But there are a number of agency plans that we have either heard about publicly so far, or have had confirmation of from employees inside of those agencies. For example, Monday, NASA said it was going to be closing the Office of Technology Policy and Strategy, the Office of the Chief Scientist and the Diversity, Equity, Inclusion and Accessibility branch of the Office of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion with about 23 people affected with more cuts to come. We also have reporting from colleagues across the NPR newsroom about the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration planning to cut a sizable portion of its workforce. Data from the Environmental Protection Agency. Other agencies so far

haven't named specifics about how they are going to cut and who they are going to cut but have given targets. The Social Security Administration says they want to slim down by about 7,000 jobs. The Department of Veteran Affairs said in a memo they want to return to their 2019 end strength numbers of about 400,000 employees, which would mean cutting 80,000 people. A lot of these things are going to take time to figure out between voluntary separations and buyouts and identifying what you can and can't cut without violating the law or getting Congress involved. And so it's going to be a case where we're not going to wake up tomorrow morning and suddenly the federal government

is going to be 10% smaller and everybody's going to be out of a job, but it is going to be a lengthy process that really depends based on agency to agency and even office to office within those agencies. So once all of these reduction plans that are due today are submitted, what is, in your view, President Trump's final mission here? When does he declare mission accomplished? Right? Like what is the end goal? You know, I don't hear the president say, I want to cut the federal workforce by a specific percentage from this administration. No, and you're not going to hear one.

That's because at its core, this is a political aim and a philosophical goal of trying to shrink down the government and eliminate the people and programs that President Trump does not believe should be part of the federal government. And you can't really put a number on that. It's important to note that today's deadline is just for phase one of this plan. As all of these plans are being implemented and reduction in force notices are going out or restructuring is being done. Reduction in force notices are going out or restructuring is being done.

Next month, federal agencies are supposed to submit another plan to show how they are further consolidating things down. If there are any cuts to building footprints, you know, as we've reported, the federal government has made plans broadly to cut up to a quarter of its real estate footprint across the country. So the next round of plans includes, can you move people in offices outside of Washington DC, out into the country where things are less expensive? Can you consolidate offices into sort of hubs

of federal government office space in major areas? And then there are gonna be check-ins once a month throughout the rest of this fiscal year, which ends in the end of September, of what are you doing? How is the cutting going? If you have a direct interaction with the public service, is what you're doing honoring that service? Are you being efficient?

Are you helping people? So it is an ongoing process that will run at least through the rest of this budget year, which ends September 30th. But as I mentioned, the end goal is getting rid of things that Donald Trump doesn't think the government should be doing and the Republicans think government should be doing, not a hard cap or a number. All right, well, I feel like there's lots more

for us to keep an eye on and keep discussing, but we are gonna leave it there for today. Corey, thank you so much for joining us. You're welcome, Arson. I'm Asma Khalid, I cover the White House. And I'm Stephen Fowler, I cover the restructuring of government. And thank you all, as always,

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