The Trump administration directed federal agency heads Wednesday to turn in a plan for “large-scale” headcount reductions by March 13 — as the president told his first cabinet meeting he wanted to purge government workers who are “scamming our country.”
The memo, sent jointly by the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) and Office of Personnel Management (OPM), tells agency leaders to work with the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) to make cuts to the “bloated, corrupt federal government” by methods including firing “underperforming employees,” closing unneeded regional offices and not renewing contracts.
The memo comes after DOGE overseer Elon Musk threatened twice to fire government employees who didn’t respond to an email asking for five things they did in the last week.
“Pursuant to the President’s direction, agencies should focus on the maximum elimination of functions that are not statutorily mandated while driving the highest-quality, most efficient delivery of their statutorily-required functions,” the memo reads.
The document also includes suggestions that agencies eliminate duplicate management layers, reduce “non-critical jobs,” implement automation of simple tasks, and reduce the use of outside consultants.
The agencies are then directed to present future organizational plans by April 14, which will be implemented on Sept. 30 ahead of the start of fiscal year 2026.
Positions in law enforcement, border security, national security and immigration enforcement are excluded from the order.
Musk, who sat in on the cabinet meeting Wednesday despite not even being the official head of DOGE, said he had no specific target number of employees to cut from government jobs — saying only that “we wish to keep everyone who is doing a job that is essential and doing our job well.”
“But if the job is not essential or they’re not doing the job well, they obviously should not be on the payroll,” added the Tesla and SpaceX boss, reiterating that he wants to “find a trillion dollars in savings.”
Trump chimed in that Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lee Zeldin had already volunteered he would be cutting “65% or so” of his staff, which includes around 17,000 full-time employees.
The president also praised Musk for “working so hard” at DOGE despite having “businesses to run” and “sacrificing a lot.”
Musk, who was given the floor to speak first to reporters Wednesday, showed up to the cabinet meeting in a black t-shirt reading “Tech Support,” which he claimed was a reference to DOGE’s mission to be mere “tech support” for government agencies to get maximum efficiency.
“The overall goal here with [DOGE] is to help address the enormous deficit. We simply cannot sustain a country [with] $2 trillion deficits,” said Musk, adding that he would continue to work — despite receiving “a lot of death threats” — to ensure America doesn’t go “bankrupt.”
“We do need to move quickly if we’re to achieve a trillion-dollar deficit reduction in financial year 2026,” the billionaire said. “It requires saving $4 billion per day every day from now on through the end of September.”
The 53-year-old also defended the email sent Saturday that asked for five things federal employees did in the last week, calling it a “pulse check.”
Musk insisted that it was a “reasonable expectation” to ask government employees to come up with five accomplishments — and added that he was trying to find “fictional individuals that are collecting a paycheck.”
OPM sent out a memo Monday saying Musk’s email was “voluntary” and that replying to it would not mean automatic resignation, like the DOGE head indicated.
But Trump continued the firing threats in Wednesday’s meeting, saying that the million-plus federal employees who didn’t respond are “on the bubble” and “maybe they’re going to be gone.”
The president said the plan is to sift through government agencies to identify people who are unlawfully working two jobs or are no longer supposed to be on government payroll.
“We have a lot of people that were scamming our country,” Trump said. “We have a lot of dishonest people. We have a lot of people that took advantage of different situations, and we’re not going to let that happen.”
