Elon Musk and his team in the White House reportedly plan to lay off a substantial portion of employees in the U.S. Department of Treasury as part of their ongoing effort to reduce the federal workforce.
In a court filing Tuesday surfaced by Bloomberg Law, the Treasury’s Deputy Assistant Secretary Trevor Norris stated that the department is finalizing plans to comply with President Donald Trump’s executive order calling for the implementation of Musk’s workforce reduction.
Norris notes that the plans will be tailored to each bureau and “in many cases will require separations of substantial numbers of employees.” The “reductions in workforce” are based on seniority and thus will necessarily affect probationary employees more so than others. Treasury has more than 100,000 employees.
The filing is part of the State of Maryland’s lawsuit against the Department of Agriculture that resulted in a temporary restraining order on the Trump administration’s firing of probationary employees across the federal government.
It contains an update on each department’s reinstatement of probationary employees who were fired as part of Musk’s effort.
Norris says of the 7,611 probationary employees that were fired within the Treasury, all but 51 had been reinstated as of Tuesday. The 51 who didn’t return did so voluntarily.
Lori Michalski, the Chief Human Capital Officer for the U.S. The Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), said 312 probationary employees were initially fired, 13 have been reinstated, eight declined to be reinstated and 296 are in the process of being reinstated after HUD initiated the process.
Adam Martinez, the acting Chief Human Capital Officer at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CPFB), said CFPB fired 117 probationary employees and two have already accepted outside employment. The others are in the process of being reinstated.
The lawsuit is part of a wave of legal actions against the Trump administration over Musk’s effort to cut staff and unilaterally cancel funding for departments and grants across the federal government.
