• Trump's plan to reshape the federal workforce is underway.
• Some federal workers told BI they voted for Trump thinking he would help the economy and struggling Americans.
• While they support cutting government waste, some don't think all federal workers should be targeted.

Many federal workers have expressed outrage and despair at President Donald Trump's workforce mandates — but what about those who filled in the bubble next to his name on the ballot?

"I voted for Trump. I wanted to see some positive change," a federal employee of 17 years told Business Insider, adding that they didn't know that change would put them at risk of losing their job.

While some of the hot-button issues Trump is tackling, like eliminating DEI initiatives and cutting spending, may resonate with right-leaning workers, policies like remote work and cutting the government's head count haven't traditionally been partisan matters.

As of Thursday, about 75,000 federal employees had accepted the President's buyout offer. That's about 3.75% of the federal workforce, inching closer to the White House's goal of reducing the federal staff count by 5% to 10%.

Four federal employees who say they voted for Trump spoke to Business Insider about their feelings on Trump's approach to the federal workforce. BI granted their requests for anonymity and verified their identities.

Trump voters said they support the cost-cutting mission

While the federal workers BI spoke with don't fully support certain policies affecting them, some stand by the overall mission to reduce government waste.

One federal worker told BI that they don't understand why some government agencies have so many employees.

"They're uncovering a lot of waste and abuse there," the worker said about DOGE. "I just can't believe some of the stuff that they're finding which is a total waste of taxpayer money."

Elon Musk, who leads DOGE — a Trump-created commission aimed at slashing government waste — has vowed to target a range of existing federal programs, including expired spending authorization that goes to veterans' healthcare and NASA.

"This is the reason why people voted for Trump," the worker told BI. "Because what is the government doing? Why aren't they forthcoming? Why? People want answers."

While the worker said they understand why some people may be annoyed to return to the office full-time, they said: "Somebody needs to put their foot down."

Another federal worker said they disagree with focusing on federal workers without better understanding the various programs and the need for federal employees to keep them going. That said, they see value in looking at where money is being spent, and they're overall supportive of Trump.

For example, the worker said they support the administration's approach with the US Agency for International Development. Trump and Musk have both called USAID out for wastefulness and supporting liberal causes. A federal judge blocked Trump's funding freeze on the agency and his attempt to put thousands of workers on leave.

USAID spent $32.5 billion in global aid in 2024. About a quarter of the money went toward humanitarian efforts, another quarter to health and population initiatives, and additional funds were directed toward governance and administrative expenses.

"I think overall we're going to end up better off with him as a president," they said.

Some had concerns about targeting the federal workforce

The 17-year federal employee said they voted for Trump thinking he would help the economy and struggling Americans. Now, the worker said they feel like the president is making things worse by putting federal workers' livelihoods at risk.

"Do Trump and Musk know the whole situation of every federal building? I don't think they're making proper choices," the worker said.

They added that while they agree with Trump's goal to cut government waste, they don't agree that cutting the federal workforce and requiring all employees to return to the office full time is an effective approach.

Another federal worker who said they voted for Trump twice "had hope that he would fulfill his promises," but that hope disappeared after the administration's deferred resignation offers. The Office of Personnel Management offered federal employees the option to resign and receive pay through September, but this offer is now on pause due to ongoing litigation.

One worker said the way they've gone about the federal workforce changes is a "little disconcerting." The worker said while they understand Musk is only there for so long, it seems like they're "getting rid of people very quickly."

The worker also has concerns about returning to work in person because they moved out of DC. The worker said it would be a financial burden to return to the office.

A federal worker said they reached out to their senators and congressman and told them that "demonizing the federal workforce is not good." They said federal workers have performance reviews, meet with supervisors, and act in compliance with their mission.

"Don't take it out on us just because of the bad behavior of the prior administration," the worker told BI, adding that they haven't changed their stance on supporting Trump because "it shouldn't have come to this."

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• Some workers said Trump's federal grant freeze threw government agencies into disarray, creating confusion.
• At agencies like FEMA, some tried to get payments out the door before the 5 p.m. ET Tuesday deadline.
• "The general chaos is grinding things to a halt," one SBA employee told Business Insider.

The Trump administration's "temporary pause" on federal grant and loan awards sparked a range of reactions from rank-and-file workers within the federal government, from frustration to outright surprise.

Speaking before a federal judge temporarily prevented the freeze from taking effect, one Federal Emergency Management Agency employee who spoke to Business Insider Tuesday morning was blindsided by news of the funding freeze.

"The grants are frozen, is that what you said?" she asked.

Another FEMA employee described working with colleagues to try to cut checks for aid as quickly as possible. "We're trying to get as much obligated as we can before 5 p.m. today," the employee said Tuesday. But the employee was skeptical everything would get done; granting FEMA aid is a multi-stage process and some claims hadn't advanced far enough to be approved by the oncoming deadline.

Another federal worker said the freeze endangered two congressional grants to private foundations as well as a grant to their own agency. "They were put on hold today," the employee said. "No payments in or out."

For others, the freeze simply adds to the mounting issues facing the federal workforce. "We are thinking about the impact but there's no official word," one federal worker said. They said that Trump's return-to-office order, the resignation of colleagues, and attempts to scrub language surrounding DEI were taking precedence.

All of the workers were granted anonymity in order to speak freely about their work. Their employment was confirmed by BI.

One former federal worker and Biden administration official, who left the government two weeks ago, said that even a brief pause can have outsize impacts. Short delays, they said, lead to much longer delays, particularly when private workers who contract with the federal government can't be paid.

Two employees at the Small Business Administration said they hadn't been given any indications about how their work would be impacted. The SBA gives out loans to businesses to aid in job creation and recovery from emergencies.

It's been "mostly just chaos, with all the HR changes," one of the SBA employees said. "The general chaos is grinding things to a halt as people don't know what is going to come next."

Minutes before the freeze was set to take effect, U.S. District Judge Loren L. AliKhan temporarily blocked the action. The administrative stay pauses the freeze until Monday.

The decision to withhold funds isn't unprecedented. In 2017, shortly after President Trump first took office, ProPublica reported that the Environmental Protection Agency was stopped from making grants and signing new contracts.

However, the size and nature of the most recent freeze, with only Social Security and Medicare benefits and direct benefits to individuals exempted, is notable.

On Tuesday morning, nonprofit organizations filed a lawsuit in an attempt to stop the freeze, and six attorneys general announced they plan to sue. At a press conference on Tuesday morning, Sen. Chuck Schumer called the freeze "unconstitutional" and "illegal."

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• Donald Trump's new DOGE commission, tasked with cutting spending, has floated laying off federal workers.
• Government employees said they were preparing by networking and freshening their résumés.
• Amid the concerns with DOGE, some employees said there could be benefits to its aims.

Federal employees are reporting mixed feelings about President-elect Donald Trump's new Department of Government Efficiency and its ideas to cut costs by laying off workers and enforcing return-to-office mandates.

Some are worried, some are optimistic, and most are considering their other career options, 10 people who spoke with Business Insider said. Most asked for anonymity for fear of professional repercussions.

"We're just workers. We work in a nonpartisan way," one Department of Health and Human Services employee said, adding that they were nervous, especially because they recently bought a home. "It kind of feels like we're being villainized."

On the other hand, Jesus Soriano, who's been a program director at the National Science Foundation for 13 years and is president of the agency's American Federation of Government Employees union, said that while employees were scared, there were "reasons for optimism with DOGE."

Trump said his picks to lead the unofficial commission, Tesla CEO Elon Musk and the former GOP presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy, "are technologists."

"They have — both of them in their own fields — translated science into products that have tremendous impact on the public and that contribute to America being a preeminent powerhouse," he said.

Musk is the CEO of Tesla, SpaceX, and other various companies, and Ramaswamy started a tech-focused pharmaceutical company called Roivant Sciences.

In the wake of the DOGE Commission, many government workers said they were updating their résumés, networking more, or assessing new career options — regardless of their political beliefs.

"Everyone is putting their ducks in a row," a Department of Housing and Urban Development administrative worker of 10 years who worked under Trump's first term told BI. "You can't be lackadaisical, regardless that the government may take forever to do something. You better be one step ahead at all times."

While it's still unclear how exactly DOGE would cut government spending, Musk and Ramaswamy have pledged to eliminate some government agencies, which could mean laying off thousands of federal workers, and compel others who have been working from home to return to the office.

The federal government is the largest employer in the US, paying more than 2 million civilian workers. The Departments of Veterans Affairs, Homeland Security, and Defense are among the top employers, with workers earning average salaries near $100,000. Just under half of all workers across 24 agencies were telework-eligible as of May 2024, according to an Office of Management and Budget report.

"Requiring federal employees to come to the office five days a week would result in a wave of voluntary terminations that we welcome: If federal employees don't want to show up, American taxpayers shouldn't pay them for the Covid-era privilege of staying home," Musk and Ramaswamy wrote about their cost-cutting plans in a recent op-ed in The Wall Street Journal.

Brian Hughes, a Trump-Vance transition spokesperson, told BI the administration "will have a place for people serving in government who are committed to defending the rights of the American people, putting America first, and ensuring the best use of working men and women's tax dollars." He didn't offer any details on cuts.

Soriano, the National Science Foundation program director, said government workers were "still scared." He said five colleagues he'd talked to were actively seeking new jobs or opting to retire.

Increased efficiency is a welcomed idea. In-office mandates, not so much.

Trimming government spending and improving efficiency is an idea often discussed on both sides of the political spectrum.

President Ronald Reagan pursued a similar goal with the Grace Commission, a team of 160 private-sector executives who proposed more than 2,000 cost-cutting measures. President Bill Clinton also attempted to reduce federal spending and improve government efficiency with the National Performance Review, led by federal employees.

The efforts had mixed results. Many proposals from the Grace Commission that relied on congressional acts didn't end up happening, while executive orders were successful in reducing the head count of federal workers. Clinton's panel similarly succeeded in cutting 300,000 federal workers but managed to get only a quarter of proposals that required legislative action through Congress.

An operations manager at the US Postal Service who has worked in the department for 27 years told BI every company had inefficiencies, and "that's what we all strive to decrease."

He has concerns, however, about people stepping in to make suggestions for the Postal Service without having "tribal knowledge" of the department.

"If you're just going to be appointed to this type of commission or committee with no knowledge of what exactly the Postal Service does, then that could potentially be a problem," he said.

DOGE's intent to eliminate remote work is also a concern for some workers. The HUD employee, who'd been working remotely, said return-to-office enforcement would "absolutely" be enough to cause them to resign. They're preparing for layoffs under DOGE by looking at other employment opportunities, and they said their colleagues at HUD were taking similar steps.

Joyce Howell, an attorney at the Environmental Protection Agency — who's been at the agency for more than 31 years and serves as executive vice president of its AFGE union — said the incoming administration had stoked concern about layoffs at the EPA and fears that its mission could be compromised.

"We have town halls once a month, and we've actually broken our Zoom account in terms of the number of people attending," she said of union meetings.

Musk and Ramaswamy wrote in the Journal op-ed that the commission would target more than $500 billion in what they called unauthorized government spending. They said federal employees who were laid off would be offered early retirement. At a town hall in October, Musk said he would consider giving laid-off workers up to two years' severance.

An employee at the Food and Drug Administration said it wasn't that easy: "We're here to support a mission. We have families to feed, and it's not as easy as just quitting our jobs," the FDA employee said.

"We're just normal, everyday people — we're being portrayed as inefficient, lazy people," they added. "It feels like they're coming for us just for their own agenda, not realizing that we're the backbone of the federal government."

Another federal-government lifer said many workers like them — people who'd been there for years — were nervous they might be the first to go. The career tenure of a median federal government worker was 6.5 years in 2024, according to Bureau of Labor Statistics data, well above the median 3.5 years private workers have spent in their roles.

One senior official at the Commerce Department said they anticipated a civil-servant brain drain. "The scientists are the most concerned," the official said, with those in climate, meteorology, and environmental science particularly worried.

The Department of Education has meanwhile been singled out as an entire agency that could be on the chopping block.

Sheria Smith, the president of the AFGE union at the Department of Education and a civil rights attorney at the agency, said department elimination was "on the lower end of concerns" because it would take time and need to go through Congress.

Rather, being turned into a "Schedule F" workforce, which allows government agencies to reclassify workers and remove certain protections that make them easier to fire, could mean employees who aren't "aligned with the executive wholly" could be laid off based on performance.

And given the widespread denigration of the Education Department and return-to-office threats, people are most likely looking for other work. "I'd be surprised if they weren't," Smith said.

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