Nearly 10,000 fired as Trump, Musk step up assault on US agencies

The campaign by US President Donald Trump and his adviser Elon Musk to radically cut back the US bureaucracy spread on Friday, firing more than 9,500 workers who handled everything from managing federal lands to caring for military veterans.

Workers at the departments of Interior, Energy, Veterans Affairs, Agriculture and Health and Human Services had their employment terminated in a drive that so far has largely, but not exclusively, targeted probationary employees in their first year on the job who have fewer employment protections.

The firings, reported by Reuters and other major US media outlets, are in addition to the roughly 75,000 workers who have taken a buyout that Trump and Musk have offered to get them to leave voluntarily, according to the White House. That equals about three per cent of the 2.3 million person civilian workforce.

Trump says the federal government is too bloated and too much money is lost to waste and fraud. The government has some $36 trillion (AED 132 trillion) in debt and ran a $1.8 trillion (AED 6.6 trillion) deficit last year, and there is bipartisan agreement on the need for reform.

But congressional Democrats say Trump is encroaching on the legislature's constitutional authority over federal spending, even as his fellow Republicans who control majorities in both chambers of Congress have largely supported the moves.

The speed and breadth of Musk's effort has produced growing frustration among some of Trump's aides over a lack of coordination, including White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles, sources told Reuters.

In addition to the job reductions, Trump and Musk have tried to gut civil-service protections for career employees, frozen most US foreign aid and attempted to shutter some government agencies such as the US Agency for International Development and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau CFPB almost entirely.

Almost half of the probationary workers at the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and others at the National Institutes of Health are being forced out, sources familiar with the job cuts told Reuters.

The US Forest Service is firing around 3,400 recent hires, while the National Park Service is terminating about 1,000, people familiar with the plans said on Friday.

The tax-collecting Internal Revenue Service is preparing to fire thousands of workers next week, two people familiar with the matter said, a move that could squeeze resources ahead of Americans' April 15 deadline to file income taxes.

Other spending cuts have raised concerns that vital services were in danger. A month after wildfires devastated Los Angeles, federal programs have stopped hiring seasonal firefighters and halted removal of fire hazards such as dead wood from forests, according to organizations impacted by the reductions.

Critics have questioned the blunt force approach of Musk, the world's richest person, who has amassed extraordinary influence in Trump's presidency.

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent on Friday shrugged off those concerns, comparing Musk's so-called Department of Government Efficiency to a financial audit.

"These are serious people, and they're going from agency to agency, doing an audit, looking for best practices," he told Fox Business Network.

Musk is relying on a coterie of young engineers with little government experience to manage his DOGE campaign, and their early cuts appear to be driven more by ideology than driving down costs, budget experts say.