Russell Vought, President Donald Trump’s Director of the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), is ordering federal agencies to formulate plans for a reduction in workforce, likely terminating many thousands of government employees in addition to the ones who have already been fired since Trump took office five weeks ago.
The Associated Press, which first reported the new development Wednesday, calls it a “a sweeping realignment of American government.”
“The federal government is costly, inefficient, and deeply in debt,” Vought, the architect of Project 2025, said in his memo. “At the same time, it is not producing results for the American public.”
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The AP reports Vought’s memo, co-authored by Charles Ezell, acting director of the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) “expands the Republican president’s effort to downsize the federal workforce, which he has described as bloated and impediment to his agenda.”
PBS Newshour’s Lisa Desjardins reports that President Trump “says that EPA Secretary Lee Zeldin plans to cut 65% of the workforce there,” which, she added, would be about 10,000 people.
During the 2024 campaign, Trump repeatedly denied any knowledge of either Project 2025 or those who worked on it. Over 140 former Trump administration officials were part of the project, CNN reported.
“Some on the right – severe right – came up with this Project 25,” Trump said in July. “And I don’t even know … they’re sorta the opposite of the radical left … I don’t know what the hell it is … some of the things – they’re seriously extreme.”
In a social media post, OPM announced the “guidance” and pointed to a memo, but the link does not appear to be valid.
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