DOGE is preparing to cut between 50,000 and 60,000 DoD civilian jobs

DOGE is in the civilian workforce. According to reports, the Department of Defense (DoD) is planning to cut between 50,000 and 60,000 civilian jobs. This could be part of the large-scale federal government staffing reduction.

The jobs that are being cut include those of workers who quit on their own earlier this year and will be leaving in the next few months. A defense official said that fewer than 21,000 workers quit on their own. This means almost 40,000 workers who are depending on the jobs will be forced to leave.

The cuts come as a number of other departments have been slashing their workforces under the guidance of the DOGE and Elon Musk. They have been working to decrease government spending. It looks like Trump and DOGE are not giving plans to cut the size of the federal government. 

DOGE’s report convinces the DoD

Since President Trump took office in late January, DOGE has been in charge of staffing and budget changes across the entire federal government. 

Well, DOGE has been really good at pointing out money wastage. In fact, the DoD put out an article that talked about some of the initial findings of DOGE in the Defense Department. The post said that some $80 million was wasted on projects that don’t help DOD do its main job. 

Some of the changes that got extra attention were $1.9 million for training and changing the way diversity, equity, and inclusion are thought about and practiced; $6 million for “bridging divides” at the University of Montana; and $3.5 million from the Defense Human Resources Activity to help diversity and equity groups.

As a result, the DoD’s budget has not been cut by a large amount very often in the past. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth told leaders to make plans to cut the budget by 8% every year for the next five years. 

Hegseth hasn’t commented on the stories of civilian staff cuts, but he did say in early February that he would welcome Musk and DOGE to the Pentagon to make things run more smoothly. 

At that time, he told reporters that the Defense Department and DOGE would work together but not do anything that would harm American operational or tactical capabilities.

However, there are areas that the Trump administration wanted to be exempt from cuts. These areas included operations at the southern border, updating nuclear weapons, and buying one-way attack drones. 

Fired and rehired: Is DOGE really accomplishing anything?

A federal judge’s order last week means that more than 24,000 people who were fired from 18 federal agencies as part of President Trump’s plan to shrink the size of the government are now being hired back.

Bredar, a judge on a federal district court in Maryland, briefly stopped the firing of a lot of probationary workers and told the companies to hire them back. He is the second judge to tell the Trump administration that fired government workers should be hired back.

The Justice Department has appealed both rulings. Three judges from the U.S. Appeals for the 9th Circuit decided on Monday not to stop one of the orders from a federal district judge in California while the case goes on. 

Lawyers for the Justice Department showed statements from human resources directors at 18 different agencies that were affected by Bredar’s order. The people in charge of human resources said that most of the workers who were hired back were put on administrative leave with full pay and benefits. 

In addition, California’s mass firings were questioned in a different case. Lawyers for the Justice Department said that the administrative leave is the first step in a series of steps to reinstate probationary employees and an intermediate measure taken by a number of agencies in order to return probationary employees to full duty status.

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