Roughly 50,000 to 60,000 civilian jobs will be cut in the Defense Department, but fewer than 21,000 workers who took a voluntary resignation plan are leaving in the coming months, a senior defense official told reporters Tuesday.

To reach the goal of a 5% to 8% cut in a civilian workforce of more than 900,000, the official said, the Pentagon aims to slash about 6,000 positions a month by simply not replacing workers who routinely leave.

A key concern is that service members may then be tapped to fill those civilian jobs left empty by the hiring freeze. But the official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to provide personnel details, said Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth wants to ensure the cuts don’t hurt military readiness.

The cuts are part of the broader effort by billionaire Trump adviser Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency Service to slash the federal workforce and dismantle U.S. agencies.

Acknowledging that “some” military veterans will be among the civilians let go, the official would not estimate how many but agreed it could be thousands.

The department is using three ways to accomplish the workforce cuts: voluntary resignations, firing probationary workers and cutting jobs as employees routinely leave. The official said the military services and Pentagon officials are going over the personnel on a case-by-case basis to ensure cuts don’t affect critical national security jobs.

Officials would not say how many Defense Department civilians requested the voluntary resignation plan — also known as the “Fork in the Road” offer — but said more requested it than the number who eventually were approved.

EPA to cut more than 1,000 scientists

The Environmental Protection Agency plans to eliminate its scientific research office and could fire more than 1,000 scientists and other employees who help provide the scientific foundation for rules safeguarding human health and ecosystems from environmental pollutants.

As many as 1,155 chemists, biologists, toxicologists and other scientists — 75% of the research program’s staff — could be laid off, according to documents reviewed by Democratic staff on the House Committee on Science, Space and Technology.

The planned layoffs, cast by the Trump administration as part of a broader push to shrink the size of the federal government and make it more efficient, were assailed by critics as a massive dismantling of the EPA’s longstanding mission to protect public health and the environment.

EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin has said he wants to eliminate 65% of the agency’s budget, a huge spending cut that would require major staffing reductions for jobs such as monitoring air and water quality, responding to natural disasters and lead abatement, among many other agency functions.

Judge reinstates $14B in ‘green bank’ grants

A federal judge on Tuesday blocked the Trump administration from terminating $14 billion in grants awarded to three climate groups by the Biden administration.

The order by U.S. District Judge Tonya Chutkan prevents — for now — the Environmental Protection Agency from ending the grant program, which totaled $20 billion.

Chutkan’s order also blocks Citibank, which holds the money on behalf of the EPA, from transferring the money back to the government or anyone else.

Climate United Fund and other groups had sued the EPA, its administrator Lee Zeldin and Citibank, saying they had illegally denied the groups access to $14 billion awarded last year through the Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund, commonly referred to as a “green bank.” The program was created by the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act to finance clean energy and climate-friendly projects.

Zeldin accused the grant recipients of mismanagement, fraud and self-dealing and froze the grants.

Trump fires Democratic FTC board members

President Donald Trump fired two Democratic members of the Federal Trade Commission on Tuesday, intensifying efforts to exert his administration’s control over independent agencies across the government.

Commissioners Alvaro Bedoya and Rebecca Kelly Slaughter said they’d been dismissed illegally and would sue to block Trump’s order. They also said they consider themselves still part of the FTC, though whether they will still have access to their offices and logistical tools like email going forward was unclear.

Removing Bedoya and Slaughter could free up space on the five-member FTC for new commissioners loyal to Trump and his priorities and policies.

The White House confirmed the dismissals. FTC Chair Andrew Ferguson, a Republican whom Trump designated for the role upon taking office in January, released a statement on X saying he had no doubts about Trump’s “constitutional authority to remove Commissioners, which is necessary to ensure democratic accountability.”

The FTC is a regulator created by Congress that enforces consumer protection measures and antitrust legislation. Its seats are typically comprised of three members of the president’s party and two from the opposing party.

Agents in Hunter Biden IRS probe promoted

Two IRS whistleblowers who testified publicly about investigations into Hunter Biden’s taxes have been promoted to new roles as senior advisers at the Treasury Department.

Gary Shapley and Joseph Ziegler, two IRS employees who testified to Congress as Republicans reviewed the business dealings of then-President Joe Biden’s son, say they were retaliated against for cooperating in the investigations.

Shapley and Ziegler say they were removed from the Hunter Biden case in December 2022 after they told their bosses that the Justice Department and former Delaware U.S. Attorney David Weiss had engaged in a pattern of “slow-walking investigative steps” and delaying enforcement actions in the months before the 2020 presidential election won by Democrat Biden.

Now, Shapley is being promoted to Deputy Chief of IRS Criminal Investigations and Ziegler is assigned to the secretary’s office as a senior adviser for IRS reform.

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent told Fox News on Tuesday that he planned to bring the pair into Treasury and “give them a year to investigate the wrongdoing that’s going on at the IRS.”

Anti-terrorism program loses 20% of staff

A federal program designed to prevent targeted violence and terrorism in the United States has lost 20% of its staff after layoffs hit its probationary staffers.

The Center for Prevention Programs and Partnerships was a redefined version of programs created after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks as a way to identify people who could pose new terrorism threats or carry out violence and prevent tragedies by getting them help. It has a mission enlisting parents, coaches, teachers and ministers to head off trouble before it starts by training them to look for signs of trouble in advance.

Trump allies named to academies’ boards

President Donald Trump moved Monday to stack the boards overseeing U.S. military service academies with conservative activists and political allies, including Michael Flynn and Walt Nauta, who were charged in connection to earlier investigations of Trump and his presidential campaign.

Nauta, a military aide working as a White House valet while Trump was president, was appointed to the board overseeing the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis, Md. Nauta was charged with aiding Trump in obstructing the government’s efforts to retrieve a trove of highly sensitive documents that Trump kept after he left office — one of four criminal cases against Trump that shadowed him during his presidential campaign last year.

Flynn, a retired lieutenant general and a national security adviser to Trump during his first term, was named to the oversight board of the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, N.Y. Flynn twice pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI about his conversations with a Russian diplomat during a wider investigation into contacts between the first Trump presidential campaign and Russian officials. Trump later pardoned Flynn.

Other allies of the president appointed to the oversight boards included Charlie Kirk, a conservative activist whose organization aided Trump in the 2024 election; Dina Powell, a deputy national security adviser to Trump; Sean Spicer, Trump’s first White House press secretary; and Maureen Bannon, the daughter of Steve Bannon who helps run his podcast. Trump also appointed Republican members of Congress and other military veterans to oversee the academies.

Reinstatement of board members challenged

A Justice Department attorney on Tuesday urged an appeals court to suspend judicial orders favoring two board members who were fired by President Donald Trump from their respective posts in the federal government.

A three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit didn’t immediately rule after hearing attorneys’ arguments.

On March 4, U.S. District Judge Rudolph Contreras ruled that Trump illegally tried to fire Merit Systems Protection Board member Cathy Harris. Two days later, U.S. District Judge Beryl Howell ruled that Trump did not have the authority to remove Gwynne Wilcox from the National Labor Relations Board.

The Trump administration is seeking a stay of those orders while they appeal the decisions. The appellate court will hear arguments on the merits of the government’s appeal on a date to be determined.

Government attorneys argue that the judges’ rulings undermine Trump’s ability to lawfully exercise his executive authority.

— From news services