President Trump and Elon Musk's Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) have waged war on the federal bureaucracy by firing thousands of workers across several agencies. On Tuesday, the president signed an executive order to eliminate what he described as "waste and bloat" in the government while imposing strict limits on new hiring. He called it a "critical transformation" of Washington, DC, and framed the move as a necessary step forward for the nation.
The latest data from the New York Times shows at least 9,000 federal workers, including foreign aid workers, inspectors general, Jan. 6 investigators, and diversity, equity and inclusion workers, have been cut from the government:
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Targeted for agency dismantling: At least 8,700
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D.E.I. workers: At least 280
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Jan. 6 and Trump investigators: At least 33
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Government watchdogs: At least 22
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Other staffers: At least 224
Courts have slowed some of DOGE's firing efforts, but on an agency level, here's what NYT has reported so far:
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Upward of 7,000 on leave or fired from USAID
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More than 1,700 halted work at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau
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4 fired from FEMA
Trump and Musk have made it clear that USAID will be wound down: "We spent the weekend feeding USAID into the wood chipper," Musk wrote on X last week.
As Trump and Musk's DOGE continue to drain the DC swamp—and begin dismantling the "off-the-books" shadow government (read: here)—internet search trends for "Criminal Defense Lawyer" and "RICO Laws" have erupted in the DC metro area and surrounding counties, including Northern Virginia and Maryland, according to new internet search trends uncovered by Rasmussen Reports head pollster Mark Mitchell. These spikes strongly suggest that federal workers in the area are scrambling to secure legal counsel.
"Over three times more people in DC are googling "Criminal Defense Lawyer" than anywhere else in the US!" Mitchell wrote on X.
The "Criminal Defense Lawyer" search term in the DC metro area has surged.
The swamp is lawyering up because "most federal employees maintain statutorily protected rights to appeal firings, layoffs, suspensions, and other adverse actions agencies take against them to Merit Systems Protection Board," according to the website Government Executive.
See this.
DC bureaucrats are growing increasingly anxious that the grift may be coming to an end.
Draining the swamp is long overdue. It's an actual mandate the American people gave Trump, and now the swamp creatures are lawyering up.
Democrats still fail to read the room as their relevance fades into the abyss, with the Overton Window shifting drastically to the center-right.
. . .