- The Elon Musk-championed Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) could end its mass firings of federal employees in the next two or three months, President Donald Trump said in a Monday Cabinet meeting. Despite fears the cuts will have negative economic and security impacts, Trump argued they were necessary. “I have no idea how it plays out in the public,” he said. “But it’s something that has to be done.”
President Trump has suggested the Department of Government Efficiency may be nearing its halfway point in conducting mass firings of federal workers.
Trump addressed Cabinet members and DOGE boss Elon Musk in a Monday meeting, saying he expects DOGE to have culled the workforce to levels of his liking in the next few months.
“We’re getting down to a point we think probably over the next two or three months, we’ll be pretty much satisfied with the people that are working hard and want to be members of the administration and our country,” Trump said.
“Our country was riddled with fat,” he added, “and we’re getting rid of the fat.”
DOGE has facilitated the elimination of about 25,000 federal probationary workers since its Jan. 20 inception, according to court documents, part of Trump and Musk’s aim to dramatically shrink the scope and power of the federal workforce.
Experts’ bone to pick with DOGE
While Cabinet secretaries near-unilaterally praised the work of DOGE in the meeting, experts and economists have sounded the alarms on the adverse impact of the mass cuts. In February, the U.S. Department of Agriculture fired and then tried to rehire employees assigned to combat the spread of bird flu, leading public-health experts to warn of the personnel chaos disrupting the department’s productivity.
Similarly, the Department of Energy last month sought to rehire hundreds of nuclear-bomb specialists after firing them weeks earlier. The administration has also eliminated 17 inspectors general, including the inspector of the Department of Defense. Theresa Payton, a former White House chief information officer under President George W. Bush, said the mass firings of those with insider government knowledge have potentially made the U.S. vulnerable by creating an opportunity for Russia and China to recruit possible informants.
Others worry about the economic impact of the cuts, warning the influx of federal workers looking for jobs and the elimination of private-sector government contracts could adversely impact the market.
“It’s not as simple as just, ‘We think there’s fraud, let’s cut waste, let’s cut expenses,’” investor Danny Moses, who predicted the 2008 market crash, told Fortunelast week. “And it’s not just about the federal workers, and it’s not just about the expenses out of those programs. It’s about the contracts with the private sector.”
Trump seemed to downplay the critiques of the special advisory to Cabinet members and press.
“It’s not necessarily a very popular thing to do,” he said in the meeting. “I have no idea how it plays out in the public… but it’s something that has to be done.”
The White House and DOGE didn’t respond to Fortune’s requests for comment.
The DOGE days of summer
Regardless of when DOGE will complete its workforce reductions, the advisory was always on a timeline. In the Jan. 20 executive order announcing the creation of DOGE, Trump said the special advisory would end July 4, 2026.
Trump’s estimated completion of DOGE’s firings would more or less coincide with the end of Musk’s status as a special government employee, which grants him certain permissions and access, but limits his work to only 130 days a year. By that math, Musk’s tenure would end on May 30. However, there are few outlined consequences for an official whose work exceeds this period, as the continuation of the status is enforced by the appointing official, in this case, Trump.
“If an SGE unexpectedly serves more than 130 days, they remain an SGE for the remainder of that period,” according to a March 2024 ethics briefing from the U.S. Department of Commerce. “But, during the next 365-day period, the appointing official should reevaluate whether the SGE should still be designated as an SGE.”
Though Trump and Musk have presented a united front in continued plans for spending cuts, the president reined in DOGE’s chainsaw-like approach following a Cabinet meeting on March 7, saying cuts should be made with a “scalpel” rather than a “hatchet.”
“I don’t want to see a big cut where a lot of good people are cut,” Trump said. “I want the Cabinet members to keep the good people, and the people who aren’t doing a good job, who are unreliable, don’t show up to work, et cetera, can be cut.”
