U.S. employees tell how Trump and Musk ‘kicked them to the curb’: ‘We all got the same letter’

With an email, on a Saturday night at nine o'clock or in the middle of a bridge, thousands of federal employees of the U.S. government learned that they had been laid off as part of the project of the president, Donald Trump, and his ally Elon Musk to cut public spending.

Still on the campaign trail, Trump announced that if he were president he would commission the CEO of Tesla and SpaceX and owner of X to "dismantle government bureaucracy, cut excessive regulations and wasteful spending, and restructure federal agencies."

And they have wasted no time, because since Trump returned to the White House on January 20 and Elon Musk took the reins of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), as he called the agency he created for his mission, unemployment in Washington, where the federal agencies are located, has soared because of these layoffs.

In this period, nearly 4,000 people have applied for unemployment benefits in the U.S. capital, according to the most recent data from the Department of Labor.

This figure, moreover, has been on the rise, doubling by the week: from 768 applications registered in the week of the inauguration to 1,695 on February 15.

This is how Trump and Musk fired thousands of federal employees in the U.S.

"I heard about it in the mail. I heard rumors that layoff emails were being sent out, and since I had the computer, I logged on and saw it. I called my supervisors and they told me they didn't know this was going to happen. We are all in shock," explained a Food and Drug Administration (FDA) worker who preferred not to reveal her name after Trump and Musk's firing.

She was told she is on "administrative leave until March 14," although she says she has been asked to return "all equipment" and has been blocked from accessing systems.

Like her, thousands of workers have had their contracts terminated from one day to the next without having time to collect their belongings, close projects and receive "too many explanations": "We all received exactly the same letter," said another federal worker, who was also fired.

She, who also wished to protect her identity, had been working for nine months in an agency of the Department of Health and Human Services. Her dismissal was based on "performance problems," when, she said, she had received "good ratings" from her supervisors.

Most of the people fired were still in the probationary period, a process all workers go through when they enter public service, as Gabriel Hopkins, a worker at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and a member of that agency's union, recounts.

"There is a time, between one and two years, in which you are on probation, and if at the end of that period your performance is not sufficient you can be fired. But in this case we are talking about people who were in the middle of this period and whose performance was being excellent," he denounced.

Hopkins, who has not been fired, although he feels his job "is threatened," is also not working, as his acting director ordered him not to do so until further notice.

"At my agency we've pretty much all been told not to work anymore. If this is supposedly about government efficiency and spending public money correctly, right now we are getting paid for doing nothing," he said.

Many unions at the various agencies, as well as other groups, have already filed lawsuits against the Trump Administration, claiming that their layoffs are illegal because of how they have been processed and urging that they re-admit all workers.

"They are firing civil servants who are the ones protecting the public. Science brings benefits to the people, it improves health, the economy, innovation.... This is what makes America great," the former FDA worker claimed in allusion to Trump's slogan.

Meanwhile, the wave of cuts and pressure continues. Musk over the weekend asked federal employees from different agencies to summarize their tasks in the last week or risk being fired. Failure to respond to that email, he warned, will be considered a resignation.