Washington DC— If you’re following the breakdown of internal government operations in the Nation’s Capital, and you’re having a hard time keeping up with the breathtaking pace of events, you’re not alone.
Confusion and chaos continued to swirl through the functioning apparatus of the U.S. Government Tuesday morning as additional reports surfaced of department closures and personnel lockouts. These reports were coming from many sources and involve virtually all departments and agencies.
There is still much that is not clear and much more partially known that is difficult to clarify. What is clear is Elon Musk and small teams of his surrogates, which have no constitutional authority, or at the very least, lack the normal legal permissions to enter or access secured government buildings and classified computer systems, are hard-hammering and rendering inoperable vital functions of the Federal government.
Their actions come usually without warning and without an official announcement and cause immediate chaos.
But within the chaos and disorderly takeover and takedown of multiple operations a sort of logic is beginning to emerge: anything or anyone posing a threat to the Trump-Musk-DOGE triumvirate is being disabled or cut out of the government machinery altogether.
Objectives contained in the Heritage Foundation Project 2025 manifesto outlines the RIFs of most of Federal employee workforce and elimination of certain agencies altogether, which Elon Musk is steadily implementing.
What we know so far:
FBI: (Removal of Special Agents)
Special Agents having connection with the investigations of Trump’s removal of dozens of boxes of classified documents to Mar-a-Lago in 2021, and the subsequent Special Prosecutor’s investigation report; as well as Special Agent involvement into the investigation of the January 6 insurrection, are being removed from the FBI workforce.
Tuesday afternoon the Agents filed a class action suit against the U.S. Department of Justice with the U.S. District Court of the District of Columbia. The introduction portion of the class action suit reads,
“Plaintiffs are currently employed agents and/or employees of the FBI, who, during the course of their duties worked on, or participated in the investigation of persons suspected of criminal activity related to the January 6, 2021, attack on the United States Capitol building (“the Jan. 6 attack” or “Jan. 6 cases”) at the behest of Donald Trump, and/or the unlawful removal,
retention and storage of classified documents by Mr. Trump (hereinafter “Mar-a-Lago case”). ”
A link to the full brief is here.
Social Security Administration:
The Social Security Website was down temporarily, and Social Security checks were not being processed on Tuesday.
Office of Personnel Management (OPM):
Retirement Processing group has been let go. Retirement applications are not being processed for the Federal workforce.
USAID: Entire USAID workforce has been locked out of their offices as of Monday morning. The Agency is to be subsumed by the Department of Justice. On Monday morning also, disbursement of funding for foreign programs abroad was shutdown.
Department of Education:
A team representing DOGE, the self-appointed fake government department created by Musk, has entered the Department of Education and accessed the records of millions of students receiving special assistance.
Federal Workers Continue to Receive Changes to Reduction in Force warnings
Federal workers received more clarity in email updates with subject line “Fork in the Road”. The deadline to accept the offer by typing “Resign” in a response email remains at February 6, Thursday of this week. However the guidelines keep changing in updates to the “Fork In The Road” email. The original period of payment of wages and benefits was set to expire on September 30, the end of the fiscal year. In the last few days it was shortened to March 14. This is because the Continuing Resolution (CR) agreement between political parties of the House-to keep government operations running will expire on March 15 and since the House of Representatives is locked in a dispute over whether the President is acting within his constitutional authority regarding the actions of Elon musk, it is likely the CR will expire before an agreement is completed. An agreement must be in place to further fund government operations, including Federal employee pay.
Minority Speaker Hakim Jeffries has signaled he will not cooperate with Republican lawmakers on a budget agreement or a new CR if they do not respect or restore previously approved Congressional funding on all programs. The present CR is slated to expire on 14 March 2025. The CR is a procedural agreement between political parties that ensures government funding will remain in place even though the House of Representatives does not complete a Federal budget agreement by the deadline.
USAID: There was a cash crunch at USAID as $50 million in overdue invoices from November and December 2024 have not been paid. This has caused layoffs and work stoppages for contractors which have already paid for work performed and have not been themselves paid outstanding invoices from USAID. This has in turn resulted in layoffs, furloughs, and stop work orders at USAID. Government invoices are paid within 60 to 90 days after work is certified and completed.
The Center for Disease Control (CDC) website went dark as of today. Portions of The National Institutes of Health (NIH) website have been removed.
Rally of Federal Workers at U.S. Treasury Draws Thousands
Federal workers rallied at the Department of Treasury at 5 pm on February 4 over Elon Musk’s unauthorized seizure of disbursement accounts and illegal lockout of Federal employees there and across the Federal bureaucracy.
Senators and Representatives decried the unauthorized access and the seizure of systems and data and encouraged the American people to mobilize against the actions taking place in the halls of government.
See video of rally below.
Update 9:00 pm, February 2025
Axios is reporting 20,000 Federal workers have accepted the resignation letter and opted to quit. This is a mere 1% of the Federal workforce and far below the number of public servants Elon Musk had hoped would resign.
Thee Project 2025 plan calls for a reduction of 75% of the Federal workforce in the first year.
