Trump hawks Teslas, slashes more federal jobs

What happened

President Donald Trump Tuesday held an elaborate Tesla showcase on the White House lawn to support CEO Elon Musk, who he said was being "treated very unfairly" for "being a patriot" and working to slash the size of the federal government as the head of DOGE Services.

Hours later, the Education Department laid off 1,315 employees, effectively cutting its workforce in half ahead of an expected Trump executive order to shutter the department. NOAA also began laying off another 10% of its workforce, or 1,029 weather and storm forecasters, marine scientists and other workers, The Associated Press said.

Who said what

With Tuesday's Education Department cuts, Trump is "effectively gutting the agency that manages federal loans for college, tracks student achievement and enforces civil rights laws in schools," The New York Times said. Eliminating it entirely would take an act of Congress, and Trump is "unlikely" to "find enough support to do so," particularly as recent polls have "consistently shown roughly two-thirds of Americans oppose closing the department."

Subscribe to The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

Sign up

Senior Education Department officials said the layoffs, and closure of offices around the country, "wouldn't affect department functions," The Wall Street Journal said. But "critics said it was impossible to reduce staff so dramatically without affecting the services that states, school districts and students have come to rely on," The Washington Post said.

What next?

Agencies across the government "need to submit plans for large-scale layoffs" by Thursday, as stipulated in Trump's Feb. 11 executive order and a subsequent directive from the Office of Personnel Management, USA Today said. DOGE and other part of the administration have already laid off more than 100,000 probationary workers, gutted USAID and scheduled at least 76,000 cuts at the Veterans Affairs Department.