Cuts and Consequences

The Trump administration has now cut thousands of employees from the federal workforce without clear plans to keep essential services functioning, and attempted to freeze billions of dollars of federal spending. But the numbers just aren’t adding up.

The bulk of the administration’s cuts have been attempted through executive orders and the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE). It’s been a messy process. Many of Trump’s executive orders prompted lawsuits and subsequent actions by federal judges who declared the orders unlawful. And DOGE has struggled to give clear answers about what it’s accomplishing. Among other errors, it claimed to cancel contracts that were, in fact, already canceled, and inflated or double counted other figures.

Meanwhile, the executive branch is claiming that taxpayers are benefitting. But Americans aren’t on the same page. Instead, the mass layoffs led by DOGE have only just begun upending the lives of families and communities while they face rising costs from other administration policies. And essential government services are stalled, with fewer and fewer people running them—in Washington and across the country.

Amid the chaos, state officials have been the ones responsible for fighting back on behalf of their citizens. This week, Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes hosted a town hall to hear from Arizonans about the impacts that the federal cuts were having on their everyday lives. “It is not efficiency, it is destruction,” Mayes said.

Mayes was joined by Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison, New Mexico Attorney General Raúl Torrez, and Oregon Attorney General Dan Rayfield. Together, they have been a part of seven lawsuits filed against the Trump administration so far. They are planning to hold more town halls across the country to highlight the wide-ranging impacts that the administration’s actions are having. “We are going around this country to listen to you,” Rayfield said.

“We are going to make sure that this country’s promise is delivered on through a democratic electoral process, not some guy who issues executive orders because he feels like it on one given day,” Ellison said.

New York Gov. Kathy Hochul this week also hosted a roundtable discussion with federal workers impacted by layoffs. “After my two decades of military service, including four combat tours, I never imagined that one day I’d be terminated from my job at the VA and treated like nothing more than a number in a spreadsheet,” one of the workers said.

Kansas Gov. Laura Kelly also expressed concern about DOGE’s work this week. “I’m all for efficiencies. We look for it all the time in state government,” she told reporters. “But you do it in a thoughtful, thorough process, and make sure you’re not throwing the baby out with the bath water.”

This Week in Democracy

• A federal judge in Rhode Island issued a new order on Thursday in litigation over the White House’s attempt to freeze federal funds. The judge extended previous court orders blocking the Trump administration from withholding federal funds from states.

  A States United poll released last week found that a vast majority of Americans agree that President Trump should respect court rulings—including ones like Thursday’s that say his administration’s actions are illegal or unconstitutional.

  ➡️ READ: Sharing the Facts On Americans’ Views About Government Respecting Court Rulings

• Recent independent analyses have found that the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) has vastly overstated its impact. As a result, DOGE has had to revise its self-titled “Wall of Receipts” multiple times, creating confusion about which programs and contracts have been cancelled. Nevertheless, in his Tuesday address to Congress, Trump praised the work of DOGE, claiming that it had identified and canceled billions of dollars of government “waste.”
• In a new court filing, the Justice Department said that it would “review” the prosecution of Tina Peters. The former clerk of Mesa County, Colorado, was convicted by a grand jury last year for compromising her county’s election equipment in 2021. She was later sentenced to 9 years behind bars.
• The Trump administration is continuing to make plans to fire thousands of federal employees—but is also continuing to face roadblocks from the courts. Agencies facing proposed cuts include the Department of Veterans Affairs, the Social Security Administration, and the IRS.

  On Tuesday, a federal judge ruled that Trump had illegally fired a member of an independent agency that protects federal workers from partisan interference and ordered that she be reinstated. The next day, that same agency ordered more than 5,000 fired employees at the Department of Agriculture to be reinstated to their positions, saying that the department had “engaged in prohibited personnel practices.”

  On Thursday, another federal judge ruled that Trump had illegally fired the chair of the National Labor Relations Board and ordered that she be reinstated, too. “An American President is not a king,” the judge wrote. Trump has appealed the ruling.

  A group of 20 state attorneys general also sued the administration to block it from firing any more probationary federal employees. The states are also asking the court to reinstate those who have been let go.

• The Trump administration is preparing an executive order to close the Department of Education “to the maximum extent appropriate and permitted by law.” (Only Congress has the power to formally eliminate federal agencies.) The administration’s stated rationale for closing the department—to “bring the schools back to the states”—is misleading, since states already control day-to-day school operations, curriculum standards, teacher certification, and educational policy.

  ➡️ READ: Sharing the Facts About State Authority and Education

State of the States

In Wisconsin, a professional audit of the 2024 election found that vote-counting machines had a 100% accuracy rate—not one vote was miscounted, altered, or missed. Wisconsin law requires a post-election audit to be conducted after every general election. This audit was the largest in the state’s history, re-counting more than 300,000 ballots for accuracy.

Meagan Wolfe, the head of the Wisconsin Elections Commission, said that the audit should “dispel any misinformation or disinformation about the security of electronic voting systems.”

“My hope is that this reassures persons on all sides of the political aisle that voting tabulators are doing their jobs accurately,” Ann Jacobs, the chair of the commission, wrote on X.