Originally published in the Winter/Spring 2025 edition of the Virginia Defender, issue 76, printed March 26. Reproduced here for accessibility and archival purposes. To find other stories in the Winter/Spring 2025 issue or to download the full PDF, see this post. For other issues dating back to 2012, see the Full Issues page.

By Kat McNeal

Upon his inauguration on Jan. 20, Trump and his administration immediately began extensive, widespread cuts to the federal workforce. This is a deeply uncertain developing situation, with uncertain numbers. There have been multiple pauses, delays and changes to policy due to the many legal challenges involved. But here’s what we know so far:

How it happened

On Jan. 20, Trump signed an executive order establishing a new entity within the Executive Office of the President. It’s a reorganization of the U.S. Digital Service under the new name U.S. DOGE Service. DOGE itself is an acronym meaning Department of Governmental Efficiency. Within the government, it is usually called the U.S.D.S.

DOGE is not a department in the sense of being a cabinet-level body of the federal government, led by a cabinet member appointed by the president and confirmed by the Senate.

Trump picked Elon Musk, a far-right tech billionaire and his biggest campaign contributor, to head DOGE as a Special Government Employee, a category subject to less strict financial disclosure and ethics rules than regular workers.

In interviews and at Trump rallies, Musk has repeatedly stated his desire to cut $2 trillion of federal spending, though in a Jan. 9 Newsweek interview he walked that figure back to $1 trillion, just under one-seventh of the total spending incurred in 2024, which was $6.75 trillion.

DOGE has been tasked with carrying out Trump’s Workforce Optimization Initiative, established by executive order on Feb. 11. The initiative is directed to undertake federal cost-cutting measures, including making massive reductions in the federal workforce and eliminating or combining federal agencies.

For federal workers, the announced cuts are catastrophic in scope. The only baked-in exemptions cover national security, public safety, law enforcement and immigration.

The firings & buyouts

While no official total yet exists on the firings, a report from the business outplacement firm Challenger, Grey & Christmas, Inc. put the figure at 62,530 as of February. This made DOGE the number one cause of job cuts in the country and responsible for a full third of reported layoffs.

According to the government’s Office of Personnel Management, 75,000 people opted to take a buyout option that was offered to nearly every federal employee. This buyout, called the Fork in the Road program or Deferred Resignation Program, offered eight months pay in exchange for resignation by Feb. 6. A judge briefly paused the program after legal challenges by a coalition of unions, but ultimately allowed it to proceed. Unions advised workers not to take the deal, saying that its terms were unclear and the promise of a payout might not be respected.

Everett Kelley, president of the American Federation of Government Employees, said in a statement: “We continue to maintain it is illegal to force American citizens who have dedicated their careers to public service to make a decision, in a few short days, without adequate information, about whether to uproot their families and leave their careers for what amounts to an unfunded IOU from Elon Musk.”

On Feb. 13, the administration ordered agencies to lay off all probationary workers, with limited exceptions. Probationary employees include those in their first year of federal employment and the recently promoted, among others. According to OPM, this population amounts to 220,000 as of last year.

Who is impacted?

The federal government is the country’s largest employer, with some 2.4 million civilian workers, according to the Pew Research Center. If you include postal service employees – the U.S.P.S. is an independent agency not currently subject to DOGE cuts – the number rises to approximately 3 million. This figure amounts to 1.87% of the total workforce of the country. Of the 18 cabinet-level departments, the Department of Veterans Affairs employs the most people.

Federal workers are spread across the country, but 20% of them live in the Washington, D.C. metro area, which includes Virginia and Maryland.

Virginia is the state with the second-highest concentration of federal workers after California. At more than 144,000, they make up about 1.67% of the state’s total population, and they’re spread across every congressional district. In six of the 11 districts, they make up more than 5% of the total labor force. In the 4th District, where Richmond is located, they make up 4.71% of all workers.

There are particularly high concentrations in Northern Virginia, with its proximity to D.C., and the Hampton Roads area, where many civilian employees of the Navy are based.

But the firings and layoffs are so widespread that even if you aren’t a federal worker, or live in an area with lower concentrations of federal workers, you may still see some impacts. Are you looking for a job? You might notice more competition. Do you own a business? Unemployed people don’t do a lot of discretionary spending.

Why is this happening?

While the administration bills the cuts as efficiency-driven cost-saving measures, they serve one primary political purpose: They erode the power of public sector unions.

Sure, there are other reasons. Trump and his peers are genuinely hostile to regulatory bodies like the Environmental Protection Agency or the Securities and Exchange Commission. They are ideologically opposed to public services like those provided by the Department of Education and would rather these entities not exist, so private capital can swoop in (for a price, and incompletely) to fill the gaps. Their base has been chanting “Drain the swamp!” since 2016, railing against an imagined permanent bureaucracy of subversive liberals.

But public sector workers are unionized at a rate of 32.2%. That’s more than five times the organization of their counterparts in the private sector, who come in at 5.9%. And those unions can cause problems for the administration.

In fact, they already have: The American Federation of Teachers; American Federation of Government Employees; Service Employees International Union; American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees; Communication Workers of America; American Foreign Service Association; and the AFL-CIO labor federation already have filed or joined at least eight lawsuits since January.

We’re sure we’ll see more resistance as the situation develops.

Kat McNeal coordinates the Defenders Labor Support Committee.