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.