A deadline for federal agencies to submit DOGE firings has passed. Nobody knows what’s in the plans
Federal agencies were required to submit downsizing plans by Thursday night as part of the Department of Government Efficiency’s plan to carry out mass firings across government — but it’s unclear what comes next.
Elon Musk’s DOGE will work with the Office of Personnel Management — the government’s human resources department — to review each agency’s plans before carrying out the firings, according to White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt. But legal scholars say there are countless legal questions surrounding these large-scale firings that remain unanswered.
“Not only are there millions of legal questions cascading out, but the million legal questions change with each different move of the political strategy,” Don Kettl, former dean of the University of Maryland School of Public Policy, told The Washington Post.
Thursday’s deadline coincided with decisions from two federal judges ruling that President Donald Trump’s administration must reinstate thousands of probationary workers who were fired as part of DOGE’s work.
As questions mount, Rice University political science professor Mark Jones tells Reuters the Trump administration is in a rush to carry out these firings before the president’s honeymoon period ends.
“The Trump administration knows that it has a limited time horizon,” Jones told the outlet. “The risk is they cut too much, or they don’t cut strategically, and it has negative blowbacks in terms of the ability of the federal government to function.”
Employment lawyer Kevin Owen argues that Trump wants to make agencies dysfunctional so he can dismantle them further down the road.
“They’re breaking government agencies so that down the road they can point to it and say, ‘That’s not working; we can get rid of it.’ That’s what’s going on here,” Owen told the Post.
Federal employment attorney Debra D’Agostino voiced a similar concern.
“I don’t think they really think through how much we rely on the federal government,” she told the Post. “Our food is safe to eat, our water is safe to drink, we can get on public transportation. There’s many things a government does that we don’t notice on a day-to-day basis, but we’re surely going to notice if they stop happening.”
What is clear, though, is that the White House expects this move to result in a “mass reduction” of the federal workforce.
This reduction will “streamline our broken bureaucracy, save taxpayers millions of dollars and make the government more efficient for all,” Leavitt said.
White House spokesperson Harrison Fields also told The Independent that all of Trump’s executive actions are “lawful, constitutional, and intended to deliver on the promises he made to the American people.”
“Partisan elected officials and judicial activists who seek to legally obstruct President Trump’s agenda are defying the will of 77 million Americans who overwhelmingly re-elected President Trump, and their efforts will fail,” Fields said. “The Trump Administration is prepared to fight these battles in court and will prevail.”
