Federal workers are being used as pawns in the shutdown

Federal workers have He was used to a certain kind of dread During the past year. 2025 was non-stop: first came “fork“An email from Elon Musk’s so-called Government Efficiency Department, which was quickly followed by numerous layoffs by the Trump administration.

As of July, more than 150,000 federal employees have resigned from their positions since President Donald Trump took office for the second time. according to The Washington Post. Tens of thousands were also expelled.

For the past few months, it seemed as if this bloodshed was over, but that all changed on Friday.

Thousands of employees at eight government agencies were subjected to RIFs, or reductions in force — the government’s formal process for laying off federal workers. According to the court filing From the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) on Friday, this latest round of layoffs affects more than 4,000 federal employees. The court filing also alleged that the administration targeted the Treasury Department and the Department of Health and Human Services further, hacking 2,500 jobs at the two agencies and The entire Washington, D.C., office of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The Department of Education has killed almost its entire team that deals with special education, CNN reported on Tuesday. At the Environmental Protection Agency, the Department of Energy, and the Department of Housing and Urban Development, cuts ranged from a A few dozen to several hundred jobsaccording to the same filing.

Every day is an adventure

“People are afraid. Who says their goal is to hurt people?” One IRS worker says, Refer to special speeches given by Russell Foothead of the Office of Management and Budget and principal architect of the Heritage Foundation 2025 project, who was Public face From cutting jobs. “If any normal human being says, ‘My goal is to hurt families,’ there should be police on that person’s doorstep.”

“It’s very frustrating,” one FDA employee tells WIRED. “Clearly this official would act illegally to try to make agencies or offices they don’t like suffer more.” (The Trump administration has used government resources, such as websites, to blame Democrats for shutting down what critics claim was a violation Hatch Acta law prohibiting the use of public assets for political messages.)

“Every day is an adventure: new foreign offices, new memoirs,” says one DHS worker. “It’s constantly being monitored on where to focus and what to stop, start and maintain.” (All of these employees have been granted anonymity so they can speak frankly about their experiences.)