Trump’s Purges Are So Chaotic, DOJ Lawyers Can’t Say Who’s Been Fired

The Trump administration doesn’t appear to have a clear idea of just how many federal staffers they’ve let go.

During a rare emergency hearing on President’s Day, Judge Tanya Chutkan asked the government’s attorneys if they could confirm reports that thousands of federal employees had been fired over the weekend. But the Department of Justice lawyers could not answer.

“I have not been able to look into that independently or confirm that,” one government attorney said, reported MSNBC’s Adam Klasfeld.

That sent Chutkan reeling.

“The firing of thousands of federal employees is not a small or common thing,” she said incredulously, according to Klasfeld. “You haven’t been able to confirm that?”

Chutkan then went on to describe the actions of Elon Musk’s DOGE—an agency that has not been congressionally established or funded—as “unpredictable and scattershot,” according to LawFare senior editor Roger Parloff.

In the weeks since Donald Trump was inaugurated, DOGE has reportedly severed thousands of qualified employees from their positions in the federal government. The department has made a point to target probationary employees still within the first year of their roles—though the mass layoffs could potentially affect as many as 200,000 federal employees who fit that criteria.

“Musk hasn’t been appointed or confirmed,” Chutkan said, framing the lawsuit’s argument. “He’s been ‘tasked with’ this [job], all without congressional oversight.”

“That’s why I’m asking: will there be terminations? Where? When?” Chutkan said, according to Parloff.

But the government could only promise to circle back on the issue.

So far, Musk’s team has gained access to and gutted portions of the CDC, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, the Education, Commerce, Defense, and Energy Departments, the EPA, FEMA, NOAA, and, among other agencies, the Federal Aviation Administration, even as the nation experiences an unprecedented uptick in critical aviation crashes.

The White House now claims that Elon Musk—the man who has been using DOGE to cripple the federal government—actually has no power over the pseudo-agency.

A three-page court declaration from the Trump administration, filed on Monday, revealed that the billionaire’s official title is actually “senior adviser to the president,” a position that holds “no actual or formal authority to make government decisions himself.” And he isn’t the head of DOGE, or its employee either.

So if Musk isn’t in charge of DOGE, who is? And if he’s just some adviser with “no actual formal authority,” why is he seemingly involved in eliminating massive government programs, firing thousands of people, and holding press conferences in the Oval Office?

“I’m going to tell [Musk] very soon, like maybe in 24 hours, to go check the Department of Education,” Trump said on Fox just over a week ago. “He’s going to find the same thing…. Then I’m going to go, go to the military. Let’s check the military.”

This declaration may also just be a farce, and Musk could very well be the one at the wheel for DOGE. This ambiguity makes it easier for Musk to feign ignorance and innocence while everyone else lives in fear of what he’ll decide to slash next.

Donald Trump spent his Valentine’s Day weekend firing health workers en masse from the government. 

Thousands of probationary employees in the Department of Health and Human Services were told they would lose their jobs following four weeks of leave, just one day after Robert F. Kennedy was confirmed as health secretary. All affected employees had only worked for the department for one or two years, or had recently been promoted. 

These employees included people working on improving health care, regulating food packaging, or responding to infectious-disease outbreaks. Many of them even had to tell their own bosses that they had lost their jobs, and their termination notices claimed they had poor job performance, according to The Washington Post, which obtained several such letters and spoke with former and current employees. 

“Unfortunately, the agency finds that you are not fit for continued employment because your ability, knowledge and skills do not fit the agency’s current needs, and your performance has not been adequate to justify further employment in the agency,” the messages stated.

Jim Jones, the Food and Drug Administration’s deputy commissioner for human foods, resigned on Monday, citing Kennedy’s remarks about FDA staff and the “indiscriminate firing” of 89 members of the agency’s food program. 

“I was looking forward to working to pursue the Department’s agenda of improving the health of Americans by reducing diet-related chronic disease and risks from chemicals in food,” Jones wrote in a letter to the FDA’s acting chief.  “It has been increasingly clear that with the Trump Administration’s disdain for the very people necessary to implement your agenda, however, it would have been fruitless for me to continue in this role.”

The cuts also hit the National Institutes of Health and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, drawing an outcry from patient advocacy groups. 

“The cumulative effects of threatened cuts to federal health research funding and forced departures at our nation’s premier health agencies will put our global leadership and our nation’s health at risk,” a coalition of such groups, including the Friends of Cancer Research and the American Diabetes Association, said in a statement. 

Kennedy is only just starting his takeover of the department, which means the radical overhaul is only just beginning. In the coming weeks and months, the damage to America’s public health could be catastrophic.

The Trump administration has opted to deflect blame rather than share solutions for the drastic recent uptick in deadly plane crashes.

Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy decided Monday to trash his predecessor Pete Buttigieg at length for a decades-long problem, even as Donald Trump continued to erode federal aviation staffing over the weekend.

In response to a post in which the ex-South Bend, Indiana, mayor asked for details on how many Federal Aviation Administration personnel had been fired under Trump’s watch, Duffy claimed that “Mayor Pete failed for four years to address the air traffic controller shortage and upgrade our outdated, World War II-era air traffic control system.”

“In less than four weeks, we have already begun the process and are engaging the smartest minds in the entire world,” Duffy posted.

“Here’s the truth: the FAA alone has a staggering 45,000 employees,” Duffy continued. “Less than 400 were let go, and they were all probationary, meaning they had been hired less than a year ago. Zero air traffic controllers and critical safety personnel were let go.”

Duffy then went on to blame Buttigieg’s support of eco-friendly initiatives—as well as the department’s decision to allow federal workers to work from home—as rationale for accidents.

“The building was empty!” Duffy wrote.

But that’s not the entire story. Some of the FAA workers who were unexpectedly let go by Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency over the weekend were responsible for maintaining “the critical infrastructure that keeps the air traffic control system operating,” according to CNN aviation correspondent Pete Muntean.

The U.S. has experienced an unprecedented uptick in critical aviation accidents, with four major aviation disasters taking place since Trump took office. Before 2025, the last deadly crash involving a U.S. airliner was in 2009—but despite the disturbing trend, Trump has opted to blatantly and vaguely blame minorities rather than work towards tangible solutions to backfill the air traffic controller shortage.

After a mid-air crash in January between a passenger plane and a U.S. military Black Hawk helicopter over Reagan International Airport killed 67 people, Trump pointed a finger at diversity, equity, and inclusion programs, blaming inclusive work initiatives for the deadly lapse.

“You’re talking about extremely complex things, and if they don’t have a great brain—a great power of the brain, they’re not going to be very good at what they do and bad things will happen,” Trump said at the time.

Former NTSB investigators and safety advisers have pointed to the decades-long air traffic controller shortage as the underlying cause of the crashes, and told Newsweek that the FAA should re-prioritize “aeronautical decision-making.”

Under Buttigieg’s stewardship, the FAA increased hiring, placing 2,000 new employees in the system. But their numbers will just barely replace some 1,100 staff who are either retiring or exiting the high-stress field.

“That’s because nearly half of those hired in any given year will wash out of the program before they get to actually control aircraft after about three years from their initial start date,” CNN reported.

National Air Traffic Controllers Association President Nick Daniels told CNN that the FAA needs to focus on “maximum hiring” for air traffic controllers, warning that it could take as long as eight to nine years to get the department up to snuff.

The National Air Traffic Controllers Association represents some 10,800 certified controllers in the country—but work conditions for them are extreme. Approximately 41 percent of union members are working six days a week, 10 hours a day, to backfill the immense shortage left by some 3,800 open positions.

Other critics have pointed to the executive order-initiated federal hiring freeze as a potential tension point for the FAA.

The order called for a total review of “all hiring decisions and changes to safety protocols” made during the Biden administration, while also alleging the former president “egregiously rejected merit-based hiring, requiring all agencies to implement dangerous ‘diversity equity and inclusion’ tactics, and specifically recruiting individuals with ‘severe intellectual’ disabilities in the FAA.”

“This review shall include a systematic assessment of any deterioration in hiring standards and aviation safety standards and protocols during the Biden administration,” the order read.

Donald Trump’s so-called border czar Tom Homan begged the Department of Justice to provide a reason to “start taking action” against Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez Monday for teaching people in this country about their rights.

During his second appearance on Fox News Monday, Homan once again took aim at the New York congresswoman for her Know Your Rights campaign, which has been educating immigrants on their legal rights when dealing with ICE enforcement.

“She wants to go out saying she’s teaching people their constitutional rights, yeah, you can call it that. We all know what she’s up to. She wants to tell these people how they evade arrest,” Homan said.

Homan’s recent press campaign has involved going on several news programs and proudly declaring that he doesn’t know the law but suspects Ocasio-Cortez has broken it anyway by committing so-called “impedement,” which is not a word.

In the space created by Homan’s stupid question, he is essentially inviting the Department of Justice to invent a reason that he could go after a sitting congresswoman.

“I’m sure a free speech argument can be made. OK, she has every right to say anything she wants. When does it cross a line into aiding and abetting lawbreaking?” asked Fox News host Sean Hannity, simply parroting back everything Homan has been saying since last week. “Would it have to have direct involvement by her, in helping people to evade ICE?”

“That’s exactly the question I posed to the deputy attorney general,” Homan confirmed.

“I asked him to look into it. I says, I know, I know that through my career, someone steps in front of, between you and the person you’re arresting [inaudible], yeah that’s a violation. But at what point do you cross a line on saying you’re educating people, versus, you’re teaching them on how to evade ICE arrest? So, I’ve asked that question to the Department of Justice for clear guidance, so I can share that with the officers of ICE.”

“So we’re looking for that clear direction so we can start taking action,” Homan added.

Homan also appeared on Newsmax’s Finerty, where he called Ocasio-Cortez “the dumbest congresswoman ever elected to Congress.” He suggested that she “does not want ICE to do the job that Congress has mandated them to do, and funds them to do.”

Ocasio-Cortez responded to Homan’s Finerty comments later Monday.

“This is why you fight these cowards. The moment you stand up to them, they crumble,” she wrote on X.

“Homan has nothing. The Fourth Amendment is clear and I am well within my duties to educate people of their rights,” Ocasio-Cortez continued. “He can threaten me with jail & call names all he wants. He’s got nothing else.”

The Fourth Amendment, which prevents unreasonable search and seizure, and requires law enforcement such as ICE to provide a warrant signed by a judge.

Homan’s pathetic press tour railing against Ocasio-Cortez is simple proof that the only reason that the government wouldn’t want you to know your rights is so that they can violate them. The Trump administration hopes that undocumented immigrants won’t know their Fourth and Fifth Amendment rights, so they can execute sweeping immigration raids with little resistance.

But to do so, the Trump administration would have to recategorize teaching the law as breaking it.

Donald Trump is arguing to the Supreme Court that they have already given him “unrestricted power” to fire people.

The White House’s acting solicitor general, Sarah M. Harris, cited the Supreme Court’s July decision giving the president near-total immunity in an appeal Sunday asking the high court to overturn a lower court order blocking Trump’s decision to fire the head of the Office of Special Counsel, Hampton Dellinger. The office is an independent agency whose mission is to safeguard whistleblowers in the government and to enforce some ethics laws.

In July, the Supreme Court ruled that “the President’s management of the executive branch requires him to have unrestricted power to remove them [agency heads] in their most important duties,” Harris said in her filing, arguing that the lower court’s order was “an unprecedented assault on the separation of powers that warrant[ed] immediate relief.”

“This court should not allow lower courts to seize executive power by dictating to the president how long he must continue employing an agency head against his will,” the filing states.

Was the president having “unrestricted power” the intention of the 6-3 Supreme Court majority when it ruled in Trump’s favor on presidential immunity last year? At the time, Trump was trying to skirt federal charges for allegedly mishandling classified documents and attempting to overturn the 2020 election results, an effort that ultimately paid off.

Now, this legal filing not only seeks to cement unlimited presidential power in firing employees, but also challenges Congress’s authority to limit the president’s mass purges. Trump’s efforts to overhaul the federal government would get a big boost if he gets a favorable ruling from his conservative friends on the Supreme Court. The question is whether they think a president should have those powers, or if they think the presidency needs some guardrails.

Thousands of protesters gathered at different cities across the country Monday to declare President’s Day as “No Kings Day,” in protest of the unlawful actions of President Donald Trump and Elon Musk to upend the federal government.

The swath of protests were organized by the 50501 Movement, a name which refers to 50 protests in 50 states on one day. The group, which originated on social media, previously planned a series of demonstrations that took place earlier this month in response to Musk and Trump’s early efforts to overhaul the federal government.

Since then, the fascist duo have only continued their plot to cut popular federal programs and launch mass firings of federal employees.

In Washington, D.C., thousands of people gathered around the reflecting pool beside the U.S. Capitol building. “Hey Congress, grow a spine!” they shouted, according to independent journalist Alejandro Alvarez.

Alvarez wrote that it was likely the largest demonstration to take place in the capital city since Trump was inaugurated last month.

Other protests took place across the country, from Augusta, Maine, to Portland, Oregon, to Sante Fe, New Mexico, to Orlando, Florida.

In New York City, a video from Freedom News TV showed thousands of protesters marching through lower Manhattan, cheering to “Stop the Coup!”

In Boston, Massachusetts, nearly 1,000 people marched through the below freezing temperatures shouting, “No Kings on President’s Day!”

Some of the MAGA faithful are having second thoughts after Trump’s all-out assault on the federal government in the early days of his administration.

Last month, The Wall Street Journal released a poll indicating that a sizeable chunk of Trump voters were looking for “MAGA lite” policies from the president. While 53 percent want significant changes to how the government is run, 60 percent are staunchly against his plan to purge the federal government of long-tenured bureaucrats with MAGA loyalists, 60 percent are against eliminating the Department of Education (one of Trump’s major promises), and a measly 18 percent actually want Trump to overrule Congress to give himself unlimited spending power.

These numbers suggest that even some of Trump’s staunchest supporters wanted more measured approaches to his campaign platform. Now, some of those same voters are feeling worried and disillusioned by the administration actually doing what it said it would do, according to the Journal.

“When we said safer borders, I thought he was thinking ‘let’s stop the drugs from coming into the country,’” Trump voter Staci White said. “I didn’t know he was going to start raiding places. Now I’m like: ‘Dang, why didn’t I just pick Kamala?’”

Emily Anderson called voting for Trump the “biggest mistake of my life,” as she was appalled by his implementation of Guantanamo Bay as a holding facility in his immigration crackdown.

“I feel so stupid, guilty, regretful—embarrassed is a huge one. I am absolutely embarrassed that I voted for Trump,” she said.

“He’s doing 80 miles an hour. I wouldn’t mind if he went around 55,” Trump supporter Gary Dixon told the Journal.

Recently released January 6, 2021 insurrectionists are trying to argue that their presidential pardons should apply to separate crimes they were charged with while they were being investigated for storming the Capitol, The Wall Street Journal reports.

Edward Kelley, who was pardoned after assaulting police at the Capitol, is also hoping to overturn a conviction for conspiring to murder FBI agents who investigated him, forming a “kill list.” He allegedly planned to use drones to bomb the FBI’s Knoxville, Tennessee, branch, and thinks that conviction should be thrown out.

“In this instance, there can be no dispute that Kelley’s case in this court is related to the events of January 6th and is covered by the President’s executive action,” his lawyer Mark Brown wrote in a motion on January 27.

Fellow rioter Andrew Taake, who served six months in prison for spraying officers at the Capitol with bear spray, was released from prison on January 27 even though he still had outstanding charges for solicitation of a minor in 2016. It took Houston police more than a week to track him down.

The lawyer for David Daniel, who is facing child pornography charges, stated that “pretty much all” of the evidence of his client’s pornography crimes stemmed from Daniel’s house being raided due to his January 6 involvement, which, the attorney argues, means those charges should be null and void since he was pardoned for his actions on January 6 four years ago.

“Anything that flowed from that case, given the pardon, should be excluded and inadmissible at trial,” Daniel’s lawyer William Terpening told the Journal.

This is a frightening line of argument—a literal get-out-of-jail-free card for dangerous, vindictive people who already got one from President Trump. Time will only tell how their unearned reintegration into society will impact the country if their requests are granted

Donald Trump’s border czar Tom Homan is desperate for the Department of Justice to scrape up some reason he can go after Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez for making people aware of their rights.

During an appearance on Fox News last week, Homan suggested that Ocasio-Cortez might be in trouble over a webinar she’d held about immigrants’ legal rights when dealing with ICE.

“At what level is that impedement? Is that impedement? I’m not an attorney, I’m not a prosecutor. Is that impedement?” Homan asked, sounding increasingly untethered.

“Is that impeding our law enforcement efforts? And if so, what are we going to do about it? Is she crossing the line? So, I’m working with the Department of Justice and finding out. Where is that line that they cross? So, maybe AOC’s gonna be in trouble now,” Homan said.

Ocasio-Cortez dismissed Homan’s prattling. “‘MaYbe shE’s goiNg to be in TroUble nOw,’” she wrote in a post mocking him on X. “Maybe he can learn to read. The Constitution would be a good place to start.”

In a statement, Homan insisted he had actually read the U.S. Constitution, in which case, he must be simply choosing to ignore it.

There is no legal problem with informing individuals of their rights, like the Fifth Amendment right to remain silent, or the right to refuse ICE entry without a warrant signed by a judge. Still, the border czar doubled down on his comments when pressed on his threats against the New York congresswoman during CNN’s State of the Union on Sunday.

“Are you suggesting that she should be prosecuted?” asked CNN host Dana Bash.

“I’m suggesting that I would ask the Department of Justice, where’s that line on impediment, right? That’s a broad statute. So I know impeding, or someone stopping in front of me and putting their hands on my chest that you’re not coming in here to arrest that guy, that’s clearly impeding. But at what line—where’s the line on impeding?” Homan said.

“I’m asking the Department of Justice, who are the prosecutors and decide who they prosecute, and what the standards of that prosecution is. I simply says [sic], at what point is that impeding? Because you can call it ‘Know Your Rights’ all you want. We all know the bottom line is, the bottom line is how they evade law enforcement. Don’t open your door. Don’t answer questions.”

Unfortunately for Homan, and his plan to enact inhumane mass deportations, both of those methods are entirely legal.

During another appearance on Fox News Monday, Homan repeated his assertion that Ocasio-Cortez was trying to teach undocumented immigrants to “evade” ICE, and said that he’d request the DOJ let him know whether she’d crossed the “line.” Rather than requesting that she be investigated, it seemed that Homan was desperate for them to conjure some evidence that she had violated the law. Spoiler alert: She hadn’t.