WASHINGTON - President Donald Trump and his adviser Elon Musk's campaign for radical cuts to US government employees expanded further on Friday with the job losses of thousands of employees working in sectors ranging from the country's nuclear arsenal to veterans care.
About 1,200 to 2,000 Energy Department employees were laid off, including hundreds of employees in the office that oversees nuclear weapons stockpiles, people familiar with the matter told Reuters news agency on Friday.
This was added to a wave of cuts in departments such as Veterans Affairs, the Department of Education, and the Small Business Administration.
Officials from the Office of Personnel Management, which oversees federal employment, met with agencies on Thursday, advising them to fire employees on probation, according to a person familiar with the matter.
According to government data, about 280,000 employees, out of the federal government's total of 2.3 million civilian employees, were hired over the past two years, meaning most are still on probation and could be more easily laid off.
The actions at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau signal that a broader range of people than just probationary employees have been targeted, the sources said, and that some fixed-term employees' contracts have been terminated.
President Trump says the federal government is too bloated and that a lot of money is being lost through waste and fraud. The federal government's debt is about $36 trillion and it had a deficit of $1.8 trillion last year. There is also bipartisan agreement on the need to reform the government.
But Democratic lawmakers say President Trump is violating the legislature's constitutional authority over federal spending, even though his Republican colleagues, who have majorities in both houses of Congress, have generally supported the measures taken.
"I believe Secretary Collins when he says there will be no impact on the delivery of care, benefits and services to veterans with this plan," Republican Rep. Mike Bost, who chairs the House committee that oversees the Department of Veterans Affairs, said in a statement Friday, referring to the department's head, Secretary Doug Collins. The department said Thursday it was laying off more than 1,000 employees.
The full extent of the layoffs is still unclear, but at least about 6,000 employees across seven departments and agencies have been laid off this week, according to reports from Reuters news agency and other media outlets. (A2 Televizion)
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