Trump and Musk’s Great Purge: The Largest Government Layoffs in U.S. History
By Justin Jest – Gonzo Journalist, Reluctant Realist, Connoisseur of Chaos
The war on government is no longer metaphorical. It’s happening in real-time.
9,500 federal employees gone. 75,000 more bought out. Entire agencies gutted, foreign aid wiped off the map, scientists, regulators, and policy analysts fired en masse. The federal government isn’t just downsizing—it’s being disemboweled. And at the helm of this slow-motion bureaucratic massacre? Donald Trump and his billionaire executioner, Elon Musk, with the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) acting as their personal wrecking ball.
Welcome to the largest government workforce reduction in modern U.S. history.
THE NUMBERS: HOW MANY PEOPLE GOT THE AXE?
Trump and Musk’s bureaucratic blitzkrieg has already wiped out at least 9,500 employees, with another 75,000 taking buyouts—bringing the total carnage to nearly 85,000 federal workers gone in just weeks.
Some agencies got hit harder than others:
- Department of Energy (DOE): Up to 2,000 workers cut, including 325 nuclear stockpile managers. Hope no one was relying on experienced staff to oversee America’s nuclear arsenal.
- Department of the Interior: 2,300 employees cut, leaving 500 million acres of public land with even less oversight than before.
- U.S. Forest Service: 3,400 employees fired in one day.
- Department of Veterans Affairs (VA): 1,000+ employees terminated. Veterans groups are livid, predicting slower claims processing and overwhelmed VA hospitals.
- Department of Education: Fired staff were told their “performance” was an issue—even though they weren’t given evaluations.
- Health and Human Services (HHS): 5,200 public health workers gone, including 1,300 at the CDC. Scientists who track deadly pandemics? Fired.
- Homeland Security (DHS): FEMA, already stretched thin, just lost hundreds of employees right before disaster season.
- IRS: Thousands of IRS staff on the chopping block just as tax season begins. Expect delayed refunds and a whole lot of chaos.
- U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID): 95% of its workforce is being eliminated. That’s not a workforce reduction—that’s an execution.
This is not normal. These numbers dwarf anything seen under Reagan, Clinton, Bush, or Obama. It’s a massacre of the federal workforce at a scale never attempted before.
“DRAINING THE SWAMP” OR JUST BURNING IT DOWN?
The justification? Efficiency. Waste reduction. Government is too big.
That’s the official line, but here’s the reality:
This is ideological warfare.
Trump and Musk aren’t trimming the fat. They’re shredding the muscle, sawing through bone, and letting the carcass bleed out in the sun.
And the reason is clear: They hate these agencies.
This isn’t about cutting costs. If it were, they wouldn’t be axing nuclear security experts, disease control specialists, or disaster response coordinators. This is about kneecapping the agencies they see as ideological enemies.
✔️ Veterans care? Less oversight. More privatization.
✔️ Education? They want to dismantle the department entirely.
✔️ Environmental regulation? The fewer regulators, the easier it is to gut climate policy.
✔️ Public health? If fewer scientists track pandemics, they don’t have to listen to bad news.
✔️ Foreign aid? Trump never cared about diplomacy.
Trump isn’t streamlining the government. He’s rigging it so it no longer functions.
ELON MUSK: AMERICA’S UNELECTED CEO
Let’s talk about the real man behind the curtain: Elon Musk.
DOGE—Trump’s Department of Government Efficiency—is Musk’s brainchild. A tech billionaire with zero government experience is now personally overseeing the mass termination of public servants.
Musk already fired 80% of Twitter’s workforce. Now, he’s applying the same playbook to the U.S. government.
And it’s happening with almost no oversight.
🚨 Reports claim Musk’s team has accessed government systems they shouldn’t have. Treasury databases, IRS enforcement records, even sensitive national security files. 🚨
Does he have clearance for this? No.
Is anyone stopping him? No.
Will Republicans in Congress care? Absolutely not.
Musk’s fingerprints are all over this. He’s not just advising—he’s personally orchestrating the biggest workforce reduction in U.S. history.
WHAT THIS MEANS FOR YOU
Let’s fast-forward six months.
🌀 A hurricane wipes out Louisiana. FEMA, now understaffed, takes twice as long to respond.
🧑⚕️ A pandemic wave resurges. But thousands of CDC and NIH scientists are gone.
🌲 Wildfires rage through California. But the Forest Service just lost 3,400 employees.
🏥 A veteran in Texas needs urgent medical care. The VA is so overwhelmed he waits weeks for an appointment.
💰 Your tax refund? Expect months of delays—the IRS isn’t fully staffed anymore.
📈 The economy crashes. The regulators that could have stopped it? Fired.
This isn’t some distant possibility. This is baked into reality now.
When the next major disaster hits, America will feel these cuts.
A BATTLE FOR THE FUTURE OF GOVERNMENT
This is bigger than Trump.
What’s happening right now is a fundamental reshaping of American governance.
🛑 For over a century, federal workers have been protected from political purges.
🛑 That’s what stopped every new president from firing everyone and replacing them with loyalists.
🛑 Trump just smashed that norm to pieces.
If this becomes the new standard, then every time the White House flips, thousands of public servants will be purged.
That means:
🔻 Less expertise.
🔻 More corruption.
🔻 A government that stops working for the people and starts working for whoever wins the next election.
This is the endgame of the war on government. It’s not about fixing things. It’s about breaking them so badly that people stop believing government can work at all.
FINAL THOUGHTS: A WARNING BEFORE THE NEXT CRISIS
The next disaster is coming.
The next pandemic is inevitable.
The next economic crash will happen.
And when it does, we will see just how much damage Trump and Musk have done.
By then? It’ll be too late.
🚨 Pay attention.
🚨 Speak up.
🚨 Because this is how governments collapse.
