As President Donald Trump’s first 12 months again in the White House winds down, he has already reworked and upended the federal government.
He has used political purges, mass federal layoffs and drastic spending cuts to neutralize dissent and aggressively implement his second-term agenda.
At the similar time, he has additionally ordered the Justice Department to analyze and prosecute his political opponents. And he has sidelined or dismissed dozens of impartial watchdogs that maintain companies accountable.
Trump allies preserve that he’s merely utilizing all of the instruments at his disposal, underneath an expansive view of govt energy, to enact insurance policies that the American individuals endorsed after they voted to return him to the White House in 2024.
But his critics declare he has taken a bulldozer to the federal government, with generally intentional cruelty, resulting in probably irreparable hurt.
“What we’ve seen happen to our government has been extraordinary and unprecedented,” mentioned Max Stier, president of the Partnership for Public Service, a nonpartisan nonprofit group that focuses on bettering the federal government. “There is a lot at stake right now for the American people. It’s a battle over the nature of our government.”
Here’s how Trump reworked 4 distinct parts of the federal government’s operations throughout the chaotic first 12 months of his second time period.
The Trump administration made it a top priority, from day one, to considerably cut back the ranks of the federal workforce. The effort was led in half by billionaire Elon Musk and his Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE.
Since 1966, the variety of federal employees has hovered between 2.7 million and three million, in response to government statistics. (It was 3.02 million in January when Trump took workplace). Trump and Musk claimed sweeping layoffs have been wanted to get rid of waste and streamline a bloated government.
The 12 months was punctuated by mass layoffs, partisan firings, early retirements and incentivized resignations. It’s troublesome to nail down a exact quantity for what number of federal jobs have been shed underneath Trump, however the Partnership for Public Service estimates it’s about 212,000.
“The administration has totally upended the basic value that government service is about serving the public,” mentioned Stier, the group’s president. “There are profound costs for the American people. And for those who were fired, they’re not only losing their livelihood, they are losing their purpose.”
The Trump administration claims DOGE saved $214 billion final 12 months, although the accuracy of that determine has been widely disputed. When Musk left the administration in May, Trump mentioned DOGE had succeeded with its mission to “detect fraud, slash waste, and modernize broken and outdated systems” whereas eliminating “unbelievably stupid and unbelievably bad” federal applications.
“President Trump was given a clear mandate to eliminate waste, fraud and abuse from the federal government,” White House spokeswoman Liz Huston mentioned in an announcement. “In less than a year in office, he has made significant progress in making the federal government more efficient to better serve the American taxpayer.”
A spokesperson for the Office of Management and Budget mentioned the Trump administration “is working overtime to slash red tape and wasteful spending” and that billions of {dollars} have been reduce from “woke, wasteful, and weaponized programs, with much more to come in the years ahead.”
Among the hardest hit companies was the Internal Revenue Service, which misplaced 1 / 4 of its 100,000-person workforce in 2025. Other companies have been shut down altogether, like the US Agency for International Development, or are in the technique of being dismantled, like the Department of Education.
However, labor unions and liberal activists mounted a considerably profitable effort to push again, together with throughout the current government shutdown.
They secured courtroom orders blocking DOGE layoffs, reinstating staff, and pausing threatened firings throughout the shutdown. But a few of these victories have been overturned by greater courts. Some employees mentioned the infinite chaos led them to surrender on their federal careers and search for new jobs.
Caitlin Lewis, founding father of CivicMatch, which connects federal employees to new alternatives in state or native governments, mentioned there have been greater than 12,600 sign-ups to date, since the platform was launched after Trump’s 2024 victory. On common, she mentioned, there was one profitable job placement each different day
In addition to chopping federal jobs, the Trump administration has cancelled or paused lots of of billions of {dollars} in federal spending and grants.
House Democrats estimate that the Trump administration has withheld $410 billion in congressionally authorised funds. This contains $150 million to fight homelessness, $55 million to help minority-owned companies, $30 million for local libraries, and $3 million to handle lengthy Covid.
Cuts at the National Institutes of Health triggered a crisis at universities that depend on federal grants. Justice Department cuts left native officers scrambling to fund gun violence prevention applications that they mentioned have been efficient.
Shuttering USAID – which performed a serious function combating malaria, smallpox and cholera abroad – might contribute to 14 million deaths in the subsequent 5 years, in response to a examine printed in The Lancet medical journal.
At the IRS, staffing losses and finances cuts are creating an ideal storm.
The Treasury Department inspector normal said in a September report that the 2026 submitting season is “at risk” due to sizable cuts to groups that deal with customer support and repair tax-return errors. The watchdog warned in October that the finances cuts will result in “major management challenges” in 2026.
“Taxpayers will be frustrated, less likely to have problems fixed, and end up paying more monies in penalties and interest if they owe, and will be owed more interest if their refunds are delayed,” mentioned IRS worker Alex Berman, a Philadelphia-based chief with the National Treasury Employees Union.
He added: “This costs us all, as taxpayers.”
Enacted by the Republican-run Congress and supported by the White House, the cuts clawed again billions of {dollars} in promised funding for IRS auditors who hunt for tax fraud. Estimates fluctuate, however consultants say this might result in $350 billion to $900 billion in lost revenue by 2036.
Within hours of Trump’s inauguration, he began pushing the limits of presidential energy and the rule of legislation. He mentioned he was restoring stability after years of weaponization. His critics mentioned he was gravely abusing his office.
He granted pardons or commutations to all of the 1,500 individuals charged or convicted of crimes associated to the January 6, 2021, riot, liberating lots of of violent felons from jail. He followed this with a flurry of controversial pardons throughout the 12 months, rewarding political allies.
Trump additionally signed greater than 215 govt orders in 2025, outpacing former President Joe Biden’s complete four-year tenure. Many of those far-reaching orders have been shortly blocked by courts for being unconstitutional — together with one which sought to punish a selected legislation agency that had caught Trump’s ire, which a federal choose said was a “shocking abuse of power.”
“This year tested the rule of law in a way we’ve never seen before in this country,” mentioned Joanna Lydgate, CEO of States United Democracy Center, a nonpartisan group that allied with Democratic states that sued the administration over troop deployments and local weather change program cuts.
There have been additionally unlawful deportations, warrantless immigration arrests, and a contempt probe into whether or not Trump officers disobeyed courtroom orders.
Still, Trump usually received when circumstances made their method to the Supreme Court. The conservative justices overturned lots of his lower-court losses, together with in main circumstances that expanded his firing powers and aided his immigration crackdown.
“We’re obviously not going to win everything,” Lydgate mentioned. “But filing cases, obtaining relief, even if it’s initial, and delaying implementation of policies has been critical to communicating to the public what’s at stake.”
Some authorized consultants imagine Trump’s most egregious offense was efficiently pressuring the Justice Department to indict his political opponents, together with former FBI Director James Comey, his former nationwide safety adviser John Bolton, and New York Attorney General Letitia James.
He additionally ordered the Justice Department to analyze countless others.
But there are additionally indicators that the nation’s system of checks and balances is withstanding underneath the strain of Trump’s boundary-pushing.
A federal choose threw out the fees towards Comey and James in speedy time, concluding that Trump’s handpicked prosecutor was unlawfully appointed. Federal grand juries refused to re-indict James or to approve fees towards defendants in different circumstances that critics mentioned have been pushed by politics.
“So far, the constitutional system has demonstrated resiliency, but it’s still early,” mentioned Ross Garber, a lawyer who specializes in political investigations and impeachment. “The judiciary has issued rapid rulings in some difficult cases, and has checked the executive in some very high-profile matters.”
Traditional avenues for government oversight additionally eroded underneath Trump.
He fired in-house watchdogs at many companies, installed MAGA loyalists to run workplaces which might be supposed to stop partisanship in the federal workforce, and brought “independent” companies underneath his management.
This was obligatory, Trump argued, to root out “deep state” liberals and Biden-era holdovers that may undermine him. But many officers that Trump purged mentioned their work was motivated by patriotism, not politics.
“We were doing the job,” mentioned Michael Missal, the former inspector normal for the Department of Veterans Affairs, who was fired by Trump in January.
Missal mentioned that in his almost 9 years as the VA’s inside watchdog, his workforce uncovered $45 billion in financial savings. (He was one in all the a number of fired IGs that mounted an unsuccessful courtroom battle looking for reinstatement.)
“We were finding fraud, waste, and abuse. There was confidence that our work was critical. We were evidence-based,” Missal mentioned. “Congress will not be able to do effective oversight if they can’t rely on inspectors general. If there are partisan individuals at IG offices, the Hill can’t rely on them.”
Some of Trump’s picks to exchange these watchdogs have been extra partisan and fewer skilled with oversight than previous IGs – together with a former GOP lawmaker accused of ethics violations and an anti-abortion activist. The Senate confirmed a number of of those nominees on a party-line vote in December
Inspectors normal usually depend on whistleblowers to report wrongdoing. But Trump loyalists at the moment are operating the usually nonpartisan Office of Special Counsel, which processes whistleblower complaints. (Trump’s first pick to run the workplace withdrew after reporting on his racist and Nazi-friendly texts.)
This has led some whistleblowers to reconsider participating with the company.
The Trump administration can also be reportedly implementing a brand new rule to strip whistleblowers of some protections, additional weakening oversight.
“The proposed rule is legally dubious, but it can deter people from blowing the whistle,” mentioned Jeremy Abay, a whistleblower lawyer. “The legal uncertainty has the same force as the letter of the law. Are you really going to put your career at risk in the hope that a judge will later agree with you?”