Two top Democrats on the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee are pressing for hard numbers on how many Federal workers have been let go since the start of the second Trump administration in January.
“The American people deserve better from their government,” wrote Sens. Gary Peters, D-Mich., the ranking member of the committee, and Richard Blumenthal D-Conn., the ranking member of the committee’s permanent subcommittee on investigations, in a letter sent to major agency leaders on April 15.
“The public deserves to know how agency leaders have been implementing DOGE purges, how they intend to manage their nonpartisan workforce in the future, and indeed whether they are following the law and established agency rules and policies.”
The letter sent by the senators requests replies from agency heads by April 29 and on an ongoing basis every two weeks after that date.
Numbers requested by the lawmakers include: the number of agency employees before Jan. 20 and their status; separations processed since then; how many people accepted the administration’s deferred resignation program or any other voluntary separation program; and how many employees have been placed on administrative leave.
The letter also asks for details on costs associated with separated employees, and whether any employees were removed and then later reinstated, along with details on processes taken to determine which employees were to be separated.
Sens. Peters and Blumenthal noted the possible use of artificial intelligence and other software to assist in those decisions to terminate certain employees, and asked for details on what technology, if any, was used.
“Efforts to intimidate and traumatize federal civil servants through mass firings, forced leave, email threats, loyalty pledges, and more not only severely undermine the federal workforce morale, retention, and institutional knowledge, but jeopardize the critical, often life-saving services these workers deliver to the American people every day,” wrote the lawmakers.
“While purportedly in the name of increased efficiency, the chaos sown by Mr. Musk’s reckless, arbitrary edicts to the federal workforce will ultimately cost the federal government far more than any imagined savings— generating tremendous amounts of needless waste,” they continued.
The letter comes as the Trump administration has undertaken a concerted purge of the Federal workforce, resulting in court battles that have stretched as far as the Supreme Court. While initial tallies of Federal workforce cuts neared 100,000 in the initial weeks of President Donald Trump’s initial return to office, reinstatements of probationary workers – later overturned by the Supreme Court – and other programs meant to incentivize Federal employees’ voluntary departure have left an incomplete picture of how many Federal workers remain.
Beyond reducing the number of Federal workers, concerns have arisen both in Congress and civilian agencies about the partisan nature of cuts, and said those types of reductions are part of an aim to politicize the civil service and endanger its “vital, nonpartisan work.”
Cathy Harris, chair of Merit Systems Protection Board (MSPB), and Gwynne Wilcox, a member of National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), have emerged as central figures in recent legal battles after they contested the president’s removal of them from quasi-legislative or quasi-judicial roles in their independent agencies. Their case is currently being taken up by the Supreme Court.
“As the steward of your agency, we urge you to take all appropriate action to ensure the integrity of the Department … its workforce, and the services it performs for the American people,” the senators told agency heads in their letter.