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Trump admin fires thousands of federal workers

Shrinking the size of the federal government — literally.

The Supreme Court recently gave President Donald Trump the green light to proceed with thousands of layoffs in an attempt to slash the overall size of the federal government.

Since the early days of his second term, Trump has signaled his intent to eliminate redundant bureaucratic jobs and return power to the states. In February, he signed an executive order calling for department heads to “promptly undertake preparations to initiate large-scale reductions,” with then-DOGE leader Elon Musk suggesting that the federal bureaucracy had grown too large and wasn’t “responsive to the people.”

That same month, Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) announced “a total downsizing from 82,000 to 62,000 full-time employees.”

“We aren’t just reducing bureaucratic sprawl,” he said. “We are realigning the organization with its core mission and our new priorities in reversing the chronic disease epidemic. This Department will do more – a lot more – at a lower cost to the taxpayer.”

Similarly, Education Secretary Linda McMahon fired about half of her staff in March, applauding Trump’s efforts to eventually shutter the Department of Education (ED).

However, that plan quickly ran into a roadblock with federal judges blocking the mass layoffs. U.S. District Judge Melissa DuBose, for example, denied that the president had “the authority to order, organize, or implement wholesale changes to … agencies created by Congress.” In her decision, she wrote that reducing the size of the HHS would be “to the detriment and peril of all who live in the United States” and ordered an injunction against downsizing. Another district judge, Myong Joun from Boston, ruled that the ED must reinstate all staff who were fired.

Last week, the Supreme Court reversed the lower courts’ rulings against Trump, clearing the way for the administration to go through with previously announced layoffs. The HHS promptly finalized the elimination of thousands of jobs (the Department declined to specify the exact number), while the ED proceeded with the firing of 1,400 staffers.

“Today, the Supreme Court again confirmed the obvious: the President of the United States, as the head of the Executive Branch, has the ultimate authority to make decisions about staffing levels, administrative organization, and day-to-day operations of federal agencies,” Secretary McMahon explained.

Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson wrote the dissenting opinion, blasting her colleagues’ “demonstrated enthusiasm for greenlighting this President's legally dubious actions in an emergency posture.”

“No one seriously disputes that, if implemented, Executive Order No. 14210 [Trump’s executive order calling for mass reductions to the federal workforce] will lead to enormous real-world consequences,” she added.

While the media and other opponents have singled out the phasing out of the ED as an attack on public education — “Without explaining to the American people its reasoning, a majority of justices on the U.S. Supreme Court have dealt a devastating blow to this nation’s promise of public education for all children,” Skye Perryman, CEO of Democracy Forward, declared — Trump countered in a Truth Social post on Monday that he was simply “returning the functions of the Department of Education BACK TO THE STATES.”

“The Federal Government has been running our Education System into the ground, but we are going to turn it all around by giving the Power back to the PEOPLE,” he wrote. “America’s Students will be the best, brightest, and most Highly Educated anywhere in the World.”

Ultimately, this debate represents a clash between two opposing worldviews: one that sees government “help” as mandatory, and another that trusts “We the People” to govern themselves.

Americans have been debating these issues for decades. “This is the issue of this election,” Ronald Reagan declared back in 1964, “Whether we believe in our capacity for self-government or whether we abandon the American revolution and confess that a little intellectual elite in a far-distant capitol can plan our lives for us better than we can plan them ourselves.” In this debate, we must educate our fellow citizens, who may be wary about shrinking the size and scope of the federal government, about why it’s more conducive to freedom and almost always more efficient to provide government services at the state and local levels. We’re not abandoning education and health; we’re simply saying those responsibilities belong as close to home as possible.

Trump’s critics, especially, should understand this: Do they really want Linda McMahon setting school curriculum for 50 states? Wouldn’t they rather RFK have less power?

Big-government leftists love to tout “democracy,” but how democratic are we, really, when unelected bureaucrats far outnumber our elected officials? By significantly reducing the size of our bloated federal government, we can empower every American to have a greater say in how their government operates; let’s not leave that power in the hands of a distant elite.

Sign the petition below to support the call for an Article V convention to end government overreach.

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Created:	2025-07-16 18:36 GMT
Updated:	2025-07-23 07:00 GMT
Published:	2025-07-16 18:00 GMT
Converted:	2025-11-11 12:06 GMT
Change Author:	Jakob Fay
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