Trump’s plan to slash the federal workforce isn’t the first, it’s just the worst

This president summarily fired tens of thousands of federal employees. This one cut more than 400,000 federal jobs, implementing a hiring freeze and dangling buyout offers to a vast swath of employees. This one opened thousands of government jobs to competition from the private sector. This one went so far as to issue an executive order requiring that all applicants for government jobs pass a loyalty test. Now, in just a few weeks on the job, President Trump—via Elon Musk and his team