Trump Administration’s Mass Layoffs of Federal Workers Are Illegal

Since shortly after the inauguration, the Trump Administration has made it a central goal to sharply reduce the number of federal workers, with little regard to the impact on the functioning of basic government services. This effort began with an attempt to encourage voluntary resignations through the so-called “fork in the road” initiative^[1] and continued with the indiscriminate termination of probationary employees. It has now proceeded to large-scale layoffs through “reductions in force” (RIFs).^[2]

The consequences of a depleted workforce are already being felt across the country, from Social Security recipients’ inability to access basic services,^[3] to concerns that core data systems at the Department of Health and Human Services might collapse,^[4] to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s inability to help investigate potential lead poisoning.^[5] These impacts will only increase over time. The Administration reportedly plans additional RIFs with a goal of eliminating another 150,000 positions, on top of the 130,000 employees who have already been laid off or taken buyouts. Personnel losses on this scale are likely to undermine public health,^[6] food and drug safety,^[7] veterans’ access to benefits and care,^[8] and many other critical government functions.

The Administration’s RIFs to date have been characterized by chaos^[9] and miscommunication, and concerns have been raised as to whether they follow the legally required process.^[10] But the risks they present to core government services and functions raise additional legal concerns. Under the Constitution, Congress determines how much money will be spent and on what activities. The Constitution further directs that the President “shall take care that the laws be faithfully executed.” While the President has some discretion in how funding is used in implementing congressional directives, the massive RIFs the Administration is seeking to carry out would so degrade agency capacities that they would effectively end congressionally mandated activities and violate statutory requirements.

In some cases, these RIFs are part of the Administration’s open attempt to dismantle statutorily required agencies like the Department of Education and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau; in other cases, the Administration appears to be seeking to eliminate key government functions without publicly acknowledging it. In fact, internal government documents show that agencies have been explicitly instructed to engage in RIFs to match drastic budget proposals the Administration has not yet even submitted to Congress as part of next year’s budget process, effectively forcing those changes to occur even though they are contrary to current law.^[11]

The haphazard, slapdash nature of the layoffs does not reflect an effort to deliver services more efficiently or perform government functions more effectively. Instead, it appears to be a means of preventing those services or functions from being provided in the first place. As such, the layoffs are best understood as an attempt to make an end-run around Congress by rendering agencies incapable of administering programs the Trump Administration does not like, which is not only potentially devastating to the people who count on those programs but also illegal.

RIFs Will Affect Services That Millions of People Rely On

According to reporting by the New York Times, the Administration plans to cut nearly 150,000 additional employees on top of the 130,000 who have already been cut or taken buyouts, including those motivated to do so by the threat of upcoming RIFs.^[12] While these cuts may include some additional voluntary resignations in addition to RIFs, the steps the Administration has taken — and the plans it has required from agencies — to force employees to involuntarily leave their jobs are unprecedented in both their scale and their potential harm.

Consider three examples of how these cuts affect critical public services:

• HHS. On April 1, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) instituted a RIF of 10,000 employees, part of a broader effort to cut HHS’ overall workforce by 20,000.^[13] These RIFs completely eliminated staff in key parts of the agency.

  For example, HHS reportedly laid off all staff overseeing the Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program (LIHEAP), which provides over $4 billion in annual heating and cooling assistance to very poor households (including many seniors), and all staff responsible for setting federal poverty guidelines, which are central to determining eligibility for programs serving tens of millions of people, including Medicaid and SNAP.^[14]

  In addition, the RIFs cut about 20 percent of staff at the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Layoffs and departures will likely undermine the FDA’s ability to keep the food and medicine supply safe and the CDC’s ability to monitor and respond to outbreaks of infectious disease and meet other responsibilities. (For example, layoffs in the CDC team that responds to potential lead poisoning prevented the agency from responding to reports of lead contamination in Milwaukee schools.)^[15] And RIFs in the HHS IT office could “put vast troves of public health data, including the sensitive health records of hundreds of millions of Americans, clinical trial data, and more, at risk of exposure,” according to current and former agency employees.^[16]

• HUD. The Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) is reportedly considering RIFs that, combined with other personnel actions, would eliminate half of the agency’s 8,300 employees.^[17]

  According to one leaked memo, the department has made plans for cutting the Office of Community Planning and Development, which manages activities including veteran housing, homelessness assistance, and disaster recovery, by 84 percent.^[18] That cut, together with deep planned cuts to staff responsible for rental assistance programs (which help 10 million people afford rent each month),^[19] could lead to sharp increases in homelessness and evictions.

  In addition, housing finance experts have warned of the impact of cuts to the Federal Housing Administration (FHA) on housing affordability, noting that “[w]ithout a responsive FHA, private lenders will likely pull back from lending, jeopardizing new home purchases and housing construction.”^[20]HUD also is apparently planning a 77 percent cut to its Office of Fair Housing and Equal Opportunity, which oversees enforcement of the Fair Housing Act.^[21]

• Department of Education. Alongside the Administration’s stated desire to dismantle the Department of Education, Secretary of Education Linda McMahon announced a RIF of nearly half of the department’s workforce in March, describing it as “part of the Department of Education’s final mission.”^[22]

  Even though eliminating the department would require congressional action, the Administration appears to be using RIFs to end or substantially reduce the capacity of many of its key offices. The Institute of Education Sciences, which produces statistics assessing the state of American education and the data used to calculate Title I funding allocations, has seen its staffing cut by 90 percent.^[23]

  According to a lawsuit filed by 20 states and the District of Columbia, after all Office of General Counsel lawyers specializing in grants were fired and the Office of Elementary and Secondary Education’s grant relations team was “effectively eliminated,” grantees were temporarily unable to access their payments, instead receiving error messages attributing the delays to “severe staffing restraints.”^[24]Also, deep cuts to staffing at the Office of Federal Student Aid have raised concerns about its capacity to oversee the process of disbursing student loans and Pell Grants.^[25]

These are just a few examples of the RIFs that the Administration has already implemented or is reportedly considering. For example, the Department of Veterans Affairs is reportedly planning to cut 80,000 employees;^[26] leaked memos suggest the Internal Revenue Service is planning to cut 40 percent of its workforce;^[27] and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau has attempted to lay off over 80 percent of its staff, although that effort has been temporarily halted by a federal judge.^[28]

RIF Plans Violate Congressional Spending Determinations

As discussed above (see box, “Understanding Reductions in Force”), agencies must follow a particular set of procedures when implementing RIFs, and to the extent that the Trump Administration does not follow them, its actions are subject to legal challenge.^[29] But even if the Administration were to follow RIF procedures to the letter, the “large-scale”^[30] RIFs it is seeking to implement would still be illegal because they undermine Congress’s spending determinations as reflected in appropriations and authorizing statutes. As a lawsuit brought in late April by a group that includes federal employee unions, advocacy groups for veterans, and states and localities argued, the orders calling for RIFs “require agencies to disregard individual authorizing statutes, regulations, and terms that govern each agency, and the requirements of reasoned decision-making.”^[31]

Executive Branch May Not Refuse to Spend Money That Has Been Appropriated

The spending levels set by Congress provide a floor as well as a ceiling: the Executive Branch cannot spend less than what is appropriated — an illegal practice known as impounding funds.^[32] Congress sets spending levels for most federal agencies through annual legislation. For fiscal year 2025, it did so on March 15, 2025, when President Trump signed the full-year appropriations bill into law.^[33] In the bill, Congress provided specific amounts to be spent on various agency programs; these levels specify an amount of activity based on the amount of funding.

The Administration’s massive RIFs will likely result in illegal impoundments of funds. To the extent that agencies have specific funding for salaries of employees, RIFs could result in an impoundment of that funding. Personnel reductions would also likely result in impoundments of other agency funding as well, as there are not sufficient people to operate programs or distribute funding.

There is a legal pathway for the Trump Administration to register concerns with the appropriations levels it agreed to in that bill and seek for funding to be withdrawn. Under the Impoundment Control Act of 1974, Congress established a process for the President to request that certain funding be cancelled and for Congress to consider those requests with expedited procedures in the Senate that prevent a filibuster.^[34] Under that process, the President would send a rescission request to Congress specifying the funding to be rescinded, the reason for rescinding that funding, and the impacts of the rescission.^[35] Congress would then have 45 days to consider the request; if it did not pass a resolution approving the rescission that the President then signed into law, the funding must be spent.^[36] While the Administration is reportedly considering sending a rescission bill to Congress, the reported request would only cover a small number of agencies and small amount of funding (less than $10 billion),^[37] and would not address the legal issues discussed in this report.

Executive Branch May Not Refuse to Carry Out Statutory Responsibilities

Even if an agency somehow spent at the levels set by Congress despite cutting personnel — for example, due to paying employees on administrative leave or other RIF-related costs — the RIFs would still be illegal because the Administration would not be executing the statutory requirements set forth by Congress. The issue is not solely the amount of spending, but how the funds are spent. The deep personnel cuts that the Administration is starting to implement — for example, nearly 20 percent at HHS and nearly 50 percent at Education — would not allow agencies to fulfill congressional directives as reflected in the recently passed funding bill.

As states’ attorneys general argued in their suit over the Department of Education’s actions, “The RIF is so severe and extreme that it incapacitates components of the Department responsible for performing functions mandated by statute, effectively nullifying those mandates.”^[38] Similarly, in granting a preliminary injunction to stop efforts to dismantle the U.S. Agency for Global Media (USAGM) — including through mass layoffs — a federal judge noted that, “it appears that the only operational unit of USAGM is the Office of Cuba Broadcasting, and there is no indication that this office of thirty-three individuals can fulfill USAGM’s broad statutory mandate by itself.”^[39]

The Administration has made no effort to address this legal issue by attempting to show how it could fulfill each of its statutory responsibilities at the reduced staffing levels. In fact, in some cases the Administration has made clear that it will not perform its statutory duties — for example, saying that it is “[c]losing the Department of Education” while engaging in large RIFs at the agency.^[40]

Moreover, the Administration appears to have instructed agencies to engage in RIFs based on policy decisions it intends to put forward in the forthcoming 2026 budget — in other words, to behave as though the Administration’s not-yet-released policy proposals are already law, as opposed to recommendations for future congressional action. According to government-wide guidance discussed in a leaked budget “passback” document from the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) to HHS, agencies’ plans for RIFs in the current fiscal year should “at a minimum, reflect the assumed FTE [full-time-equivalent] levels and administrative efficiencies supported by the FY 2026 President’s Budget request.”^[41] Consistent with the OMB guidance, HHS’ RIFs reflect deep cuts that track the agency’s leaked budget document; for example, proposals to eliminate Head Start and LIHEAP funding are mirrored in cuts to administrative staff overseeing those programs.

Likewise, even as the Administration claims that RIFs are necessary parts of intended agency reorganizations, it is ordering them without having the authority, in many cases, to engage in these types of significant reorganizations without congressional authorization.^[42]

Administration Is Using RIF Process to Subvert the Law

The RIF process exists as a mechanism for protecting workers by ensuring necessary layoffs proceed in a fair and orderly way within the constraints set by congressionally provided funding levels and congressionally mandated activities. The Trump Administration has turned this process on its head, using it to remove federal employees and end federal services and programs in direct contradiction to the laws Congress has enacted. It has done so as part of two interrelated campaigns across the federal government: first, to reduce the size of the federal workforce by any conceivable means as an end unto itself; and second, to stop congressionally mandated activities with which the Administration disagrees by dismantling government programs and functions, cancelling contracts, and blocking grants and other financial assistance.

RIFs are already starting to harm families and communities across the country and threaten the safety of their food, the quality of their education, and their access to key services. The harm will only grow as the Administration fully carries out its plans.

The Administration is within its rights to request that Congress reduce appropriations for staffing or eliminate programs or agencies, no matter what damage this would cause. But unless and until Congress enacts these changes, the Administration cannot legally behave as though Congress has already done so and fail to carry out the law as it currently exists, whether by removing federal workers or by dismantling core programs or functions.