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Blog Post | December 15, 2025

TRACKER: Cuts to Corporate Enforcement Capacity

Emma Marsano Henry Burke

Corporate CrackdownEthics in GovernmentIndependent Agencies

This tracker was originally published in June 2025, but has been regularly updated. The last update took place on December 15th, 2025.

This tracker records cuts made by the Trump-Musk administration to enforcement capacity at agencies responsible for overseeing corporations’ activities and identifying wrongdoing. 

“Enforcement capacity” refers to staffing and funding dedicated to monitoring, oversight, investigation, and preparation of cases against corporations for breaking the law. Cuts to and attacks on enforcement capacity can include firings, buyout offers, funding cuts, reorganizations, and other steps the Trump administration has taken to date. 

Why Enforcement Capacity? 

Multiple organizations, including our collaborators at Public Citizen, are doing the important work of tracking existing enforcement cases against corporations underway across agencies—and the alarming rate at which enforcement cases are being dropped under the second Trump administration. Others have noted that new enforcement actions are being announced at a much slower rate. 

This tracker is intended to complement those efforts, looking not at individual cases that are already underway, but at the staffing, funding, and regulatory powers available to agencies to continue oversight of and investigations into corporate wrongdoing to lay the groundwork for future enforcement cases. 

Tracking capacity is less clear-cut than tracking individual enforcement actions themselves, but we believe it is an important part of understanding how the Trump administration is dismantling the ability of the federal executive branch to stand between the public and corporate greed and abuses. Only by understanding what this administration is destroying, and how, can we formulate strategies to respond —and rebuild the government’s enforcement capacity under a future administration. 

We at RDP have long argued through our Corporate Crackdown portfolio that enforcement capacity is one of the most powerful levers available to the executive branch to protect and support constituents’ wellbeing. By utilizing existing enforcement powers to crack down harder on corporate extraction, pollution, worker abuses, and other malfeasance, the executive branch can practice impactful populist politics while materially benefitting the public, rather than helping the rich and large corporations amass wealth at everyone else’s expense. 

Additionally, corporate enforcement is incredibly lucrative for the federal government—in addition to the harmful behavior they deter, agencies like the IRS, SEC, FTC, and DOJ Antitrust Division have routinely collected several times their budgets in corporate penalties over the years by forcing corporations to pay up when they break the law. 

The federal government’s ability to serve the public is dependent on its political willingness and material ability to enforce the law against corporations and their executives. We hope this tracker can support efforts to understand how the Trump administration is chipping away at those powers—and to reinstate and protect those powers in the future.  

Broad Efforts to Curtail Enforcement Capacity 

The Trump-Musk administration has taken several broad actions to reduce federal agencies’ capacity in general, and its enforcement abilities, in addition to taking more targeted steps to attack enforcement capacities of specific agencies. Among these overarching actions are:

  • Jan 28, 2025: Office of Personnel Management launched the deferred resignation program, offering federal employees multiple months of paid leave to resign from their roles.
  • Feb 19, 2025: Trump signed an executive order attempting to bring independent agencies under his control. This effort at overseeing the work of agencies designed to have regulatory power independent from the leadership of the executive branch seems clearly designed to curtail their impact in enforcing regulations that mainly affect industry and large corporations.
  • May 12, 2025: Trump’s DOJ released a new corporate enforcement policy that, while using the rhetoric of targeting ten categories of white-collar crimes, offers corporations a clear pathway (complete with a flowchart) to avoid prosecution through self-disclosure after wrongdoing. Head of the DOJ Criminal Division, Matthew R. Galeotti, announced this policy in a speech that claimed, without evidence, that corporate prosecutions had “come at too high a cost for businesses and American enterprise” under the Biden administration.
  • July 8, 2025: SCOTUS ruled agencies could proceed with mass firings of federal employees.
    • September 12, 2025: District judge in a case challenging the firings issued his final ruling, deeming the firings unlawful but saying SCOTUS had made clear with shadow docket rulings they would allow them to stand. 
  • October 29, 2025: The Trump Administration’s attempt to fire 3,600 federal employees during the government shutdown is halted by a federal judge.

  • November 21, 2025: The compromise to reopen the government included provisions to rescind the 3,600 RIFs issued to federal workers across agencies throughout the government shutdown, though these jobs are only protected until January 2026. 

Agencies Included in the Tracker

The tracker currently includes the following agencies; we will add more as our work on this topic continues and as the Trump administration’s attacks on the executive branch progress. 

  1. Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB)
  2. Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC)
  3. Department of Justice (DOJ)
  4. Department of Labor (DOL) 
  5. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) 
  6. Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC)
  7. Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC)
  8. Federal Trade Commission (FTC)
  9. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS)
  10. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD)
  11. Internal Revenue Service (IRS)
  12. National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA)
  13. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC)
  14. US Department of Agriculture (USDA)

Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) 

Last updated: 12/15/2025

Role: CFPB was created in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis to protect Americans from abusive financial actors, including Big Banks, debt servicers and collectors, and predatory lenders. An end to CFPB enforcement is an invitation to corporations to gleefully exploit consumers looking to fairly participate in our economy and utilize various financial products . 

Who’s affected: 

  • People with credit cards and bank accounts
  • People affected by racist discrimination by financial institutions
  • People using by novel, predatory, financial products
  • Prospective homeowners seeking home loans
  • Student borrowers
  • People who use app-based financial products and fintech, like Venmo or PayPal

Who benefits: 

  • Large banks and financial institutions and their executives
  • Fintech companies
  • Mortgage loan providers and other lenders 
  • Tech giants, retail companies and corporations expanding into financial services 
  • Elon MusK
    • AP: “Problems with mortgages will be the top priority, while issues involving medical debt, student loans and digital payments will receive less attention […] The change in focus could benefit Musk’s efforts to offer financial services through X, his social media company. He has long wanted to allow users to make peer-to-peer payments using his platform, and he announced in January that X would be working with Visa.”

For more see: 

DateWhat happened
February 9, 2025American Prospect: Trump-appointed acting directors of CFPB (Bessent and Vought) ordered stoppages of CFPB enforcement and supervision activity over big banks and financial institutions
“Russell Vought, the Project 2025 architect and White House budget director who took over as acting CFPB director on Friday, expanded a shutdown of the bureau’s activity in a Saturday night memo, in ways that conflict with established law. He then attempted to defund the CFPB, only to find that it was already funded for the rest of the fiscal year.”
February 21, 2025NYT: Trump officials cancelled the lease of the CFPB headquarters  
“At the headquarters of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, faint shadows above the entrance are all that remain of the letters that once spelled the agency’s name. In the Trump administration’s broad dismantling of the federal government, the consumer bureau was one of the first agencies to fall, its offices shuttered and all 1,700 workers sent home. “CFPB RIP,” Elon Musk wrote on social media on Feb. 7.”
March 28, 2025Federal judge grants request to “reverse agency’s sudden shutdown,” preventing the Trump administration from dismantling the agency (for now) 
In a temporary injunction, Judge Amy Berman ordered that all terminated employees be reinstated, and ordered the administration not to fire any more CFPB employees or delete any agency data or records. However, she warned in her order, “There is a substantial risk that the [Trump administration] will complete the destruction of the agency completely in violation of law well before the Court can rule on the merits, and it will be impossible to rebuild.”
April 17, 2025Fox Business:: Approximately 1,500 CFPB employees slated to be cut, leaving ~200 at the agency; employees started receiving layoff notices.
TAP: This included 200 of 250 members of the Enforcement division. 
April 18, 2025NYT: Judge halts the firings. 
“Judge Jackson issued an oral order, followed by a written one, barring the government from carrying out that plan until at least April 28, when she plans to hold an evidentiary hearing on the issue. Her ruling came in a lawsuit brought by the consumer bureau’s staff union and other parties.” 
April 28, 2025Reuters: Appeals court panel reinstates temporary ban on mass firings.
“A U.S. appeals court on Monday reinstated a temporary ban on mass firings at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, allowing workers to keep their jobs for now despite the Trump administration’s plan to shrink the agency’s workforce by 90%.”
June 2, 2025Bloomberg: CFPB leadership asks enforcement staff to write memos on pending enforcement actions, as push to make massive staff cuts continues.
“The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is asking examiners and enforcement attorneys to write memos on pending matters that many employees believe will be used to close investigations and justify extensive staffing cuts, multiple people familiar with the matter told Bloomberg Law.” 
August 12, 2025Politico: Trump-appointed federal judge clears the way for “restructuring” at CFPB. 
“A federal appeals court panel has cleared the way for the Trump administration to largely dismantle the work of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, lifting a lower-court judge’s injunction that had preserved the agency’s structure — and barred mass layoffs — for months.”
November 11, 2025Politico: The Department of Justice’s Office of Legal Counsel Declares Statutory CFPB Funding Method Illegal. 
“The Trump administration has formally determined the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’s current funding mechanism is unlawful, a move that puts the agency on track to close in the coming months when its existing cash runs out. […] The administration said it now considers the CFPB legally barred from seeking additional money from the Federal Reserve, which is the agency’s typical source of funding”

Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC)

Last updated: 12/15/2025

Role: Initially founded to regulate futures contracts for agricultural commodities, the CFTC now oversees the U.S. derivatives markets which includes trading in futures, swaps and options. The agency’s enforcement division investigates and prosecutes cases of fraud and manipulation in commodity transactions. As the definition of commodity has expanded to include digital assets such as Bitcoin, the CFTC also polices fraudulent activity in that domain.

Who’s affected: 

  • People who stand to be defrauded and exploited by financial services companies
  • Petroleum, precious metals and other commodity traders
  • Farmers who rely on futures markets
  • Retail digital asset traders 
  • People who gamble using so-called “prediction markets”

Who benefits: 

  • Hedge fund managers, crypto executives, and other finance executives who will experience less pushback and resistance when breaking the law in their pursuit of profits

For more see: 

DateWhat happened
February 20, 2025Bloomberg: CFTC fires “about a dozen probationary employees” in line with Trump-Musk efforts to downsize the federal government. 
Terminated employees reportedly included “attorneys in the agency’s enforcement and market oversight divisions.”
April 21, 2025Investment News: Trump’s February executive order aiming to bring independent agencies under his control is implemented. 
July 17, 2025Reuters: The CFTC begins firing dozens of staff. 
“The U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission on Wednesday began staff firings that are expected to affect over two dozen people, according to an agency source, after the Supreme Court last week cleared the way for mass government firings. Employees from the CFTC’s enforcement, market oversight, administration and data divisions are expected to be affected as part of a more general reorganization at the regulator, the source said.” 
August 26, 2025Bloomberg: CFTC is down to one commissioner, of its usual five, after four step down amid Trump attacks. 
“The CFTC has overseen a head count reduction of at least 15% since the beginning of the Trump administration and its enforcement wing may see even greater staffing cuts, according to the agency’s fiscal 2026 budget request. Congress hasn’t clarified whether it intends to give the agency more resources to take on the lift of drafting new crypto regulations and potential enforcement actions.”
November 19, 2025Decrypt: CFTC Chair Nominee Mike Selig refuses to comment on whether the agency requires more resources despite increased regulatory responsibilities and recent staff firings. 
“During a generally friendly Senate confirmation hearing Wednesday, CFTC Chair nominee Mike Selig refused to say the agency needs more resources, even as the CFTC is poised to take on new duties in regulating the crypto market. And while not directly pushing back on the idea of non-Republican commissioners at the CFTC, as required by law, Selig would not commit to advocating for their inclusion.”

Department of Justice (DOJ)

Last updated: 12/15/2025

Role: DOJ is responsible for enforcing federal laws and protecting civil rights.

Who’s affected: 

  • People negatively impacted by white collar crime, including fraud, wage theft, and embezzlement
  • People forced to pay higher prices due to corporate consolidation and monopoly power, if the DOJ Antitrust Division is less able to hold corporations accountable 

Who benefits: 

  • Large corporations and their executives  

For more see: 

DateWhat happened
February 5, 2025Bloomberg: AG Pam Bondi announced DOJ would be “scaling back enforcement of laws governing foreign lobbying transparency and bribes of foreign officials” 

and also “disbanded the National Security Division’s corporate enforcement unit, a high-priority initiative of Biden-era Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco, and reassigned team members to their earlier posts.” “Bondi also directed the DOJ’s money laundering office to prioritize cartels and transnational crime.” 
February 7, 2025Bloomberg Law:The DOJ issued a directive to “all 93 US attorneys two business days to explain why prosecutors they’ve hired in the past two years who aren’t focused on Trump priorities such as immigration and public safety should be retained.”

This implies the threat of elimination of attorneys focused on areas like white collar crime: “Recent hires who don’t fall into those three specified categories would potentially include prosecutors specializing in white collar, civil fraud, and civil rights investigations.”
New York Law Journal: “[T]he department is reassigning attorneys from white collar units to focus on immigration enforcement, with similar changes are under way at the FBI and the Departments of State and Defense.Third, various DOJ supervisors have been reassigned to low-level positions; should a significant number of such former supervisors resign rather than accept these new positions, their departures could impact the Department’s ability to staff matters adequately. The combined effect of these developments has been to deprioritize white collar enforcement dramatically at the federal level.”
February 10, 2025Winston: Trump issued an executive order directing AG Bondi to cease new investigations and enforcement actions into foreign lobbying and bribery of officials and review all currently ongoing investigations.
March 25, 2025Bloomberg: Deputy AG Todd Blanche issued a memo outlining proposed cuts to the DOJ. The memo includes plans to close the antitrust division’s field offices in San Francisco and Chicago, which would undercut the division’s important work to challenge corporate consolidation and extraction from consumers

The cuts would also involve “reassigning” some personnel from the Tax Division, which some have argued could effectively stop the division from fulfilling its function of enforcing federal tax law (which, in concert with IRS cuts, could significantly impact the federal government’s ability to collect taxes and prosecute tax cheats, most prominently corporations and the wealthy). 
May 12, 2025DOJ released a new corporate enforcement policy that, while using the rhetoric of targeting ten categories of white-collar crimes, offers corporations a clear pathway (complete with a flowchart) to avoid prosecution through self-disclosure after wrongdoing. 
June 16, 2025Bloomberg: “Justice Department to Eliminate Tax Unit as Workforce Shrinks.” 

“The Justice Department plans to eliminate its tax division and transfer the enforcement work to the respective criminal and civil divisions as part of a broader reorganization of the department.”
June 16, 2025Bloomberg: The Justice Department announced 4,500 employees accepted the Trump Administration’s buyout offer. 

“Approximately 4,500 Justice Department employees have accepted the Trump administration’s offer to participate in its deferred resignation program, according to new budget documents. The DOJ’s budget request to Congress for next fiscal year proposes eliminating 5,093 positions, which includes approximately 4,500 that are already vacant as a result of the administration’s effort launched under Elon Musk to scale back the federal workforce and spending, according to a summary released by the Justice Management Division’s budget staff.”

Department of Labor (DOL) 

Last updated: 12/15/2025

Role: The Labor Department’s mission is to “foster, promote, and develop the welfare of the wage earners, job seekers, and retirees of the United States; improve working conditions; advance opportunities for profitable employment; and assure work-related benefits and rights.”

Agencies within DOL, like the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) and the Mine Safety and Health Administration (MSHA), are responsible for ensuring the safety of workplaces, holding law breaking companies accountable through inspections and fines, and enforcing whistleblower protections related to violations of workplace safety requirements. 

Who’s affected: 

  • Workers, particularly those in dangerous industries and those trying to fight wage theft by employers
  • Workers at companies with federal contracts who will face less protection from discrimination based on race, gender, and other protected identities

Who benefits: 

  • Employers (like the many corporate executives who have donated millions to get Trump in office) who won’t be forced to comply with safety laws, fined when they fail to keep workers safe, or held accountable for stealing workers’ wages

For more see: 

DateWhat happened
January 20, 2025DOL received the Trump Office of Personnel Management (OPM) memo with instructions to review probationary employees. Approximately 170 people were terminated according to DOL’s Chief Human Capital Officer Sydney Rose in court documents with termination dates of March 7, 2025.
March 7, 2025Reuters: “The U.S. Department of Labor has reinstated about 120 employees who were facing termination as part of the Trump administration’s mass firings of recently hired workers, a union said on Friday.”

CBS News: All 170 probationary employee firings were rescinded, effective March 7 (reported March 17). 
April 4, 2025AP: Almost forty DOL offices that “inspect mines and other workplaces for safety” are being considered for closure (36 MHSA offices in 19 states). 
April 7, 2025AP: Grant programs shuttered for DOL’s Bureau of International Labor Affairs (ILAB), including efforts to combat child labor. 

The Trump administration “has canceled millions of dollars in international grants that a Department of Labor division administered to combat child labor and slave labor around the world.” 
June 5, 2025TAP:  Trump nominees to DOL have history defending corporations and attacking workers. 

“Jonathan Berry, Trump’s nominee for the Department of Labor’s solicitor—its chief legal representative—was arguing in court as recently as this January (while still in private practice) that the 1974 congressional act that extended the minimum wage to domestic workers was unconstitutional. Trump’s key appointees to the DOL’s Wage and Hour Division—the division charged with making sure businesses don’t violate minimum-wage and overtime laws—appear to be strangers to the very idea of enforcing those laws.”  
June 17, 2025DOL: Trump administration announces intention to cut OSHA staff by 20%. 

“Secretary Chavez-DeRemer testified before the House Committee on Education and the Workforce on June 5, 2025, about the Trump administration’s proposed 2026 budget cuts for the DOL, including significant reductions for OSHA and MSHA.The proposed budget aims to cut OSHA’s funding by $50 million and reduce its workforce by 223 positions, shifting focus to compliance assistance over direct enforcement.” 

Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) 

Last updated: 12/15/2025

Role: The EPA is responsible for developing and enforcing regulations to carry out anti-pollution laws written by Congress. 

Who’s affected: 

  • All of us, as the future of life on earth throughout ecosystems is threatened by corporate pollution-driven climate change, and the EPA works to ensure clean water and clean air and reduce people’s exposure to toxins like lead, asbestos, forever chemicals, and pesticides.
  • In particular, communities around the country that are treated as “sacrifice zones,” where the worst effects of industrial pollution are concentrated and create health hazards

Who benefits: 

  • Corporations (and their executives) who continue to profit with fewer restrictions on their actions, as they continue to exacerbate climate change and harm communities and ecosystems

For more see: 

DateWhat happened
February 3, 2025NYT: EPA told over 1100 employees they could be fired at any time 
February 7, 2025The Hill: EPA put over 160 workers at the Office of Environmental Justice on leave
February 14, 2025The Hill: EPA fired almost 400 probationary employees
March 11, 2025Climate Action Campaign: Closing EJ Offices. 

“EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin ordered the closure of environmental justice offices at the agency’s headquarters and at all 10 regional offices and eliminate all related staff positions “immediately.” The reversal comes just days after the EPA reinstated environmental justice and civil rights employees put on leave in early February.” 
March 12, 2025Columbia Climate Backtracker: Rolling back climate change regulations & changing enforcement priorities. 

“EPA Announces Plans to Reconsider Dozens of Climate Change Regulations. The Agency’s announcement lists thirty-one actions it plans to take, including reconsidering dozens of existing climate regulations, reviewing the 2009 endangerment finding, terminating the agency’s environmental justice efforts, and realigning enforcement priorities.” 
March 14, 2025Politico : Easing enforcement against energy facilities. 

“EPA has instructed staff to ease up on enforcement and compliance actions against energy facilities and to stop basing any agency actions on environmental justice, according to a memo obtained by POLITICO.” 
March 17, 2025CAC Trump Tracker: Laying off scientists who monitor pollution. 

“Leaked documents describe plans to lay off as many as 1,155 scientists from labs across the country. These chemists, biologists, toxicologists and other scientists are among the experts who monitor air and water quality, cleanup of toxic waste, and more.” Cuts of this kind, if implemented, would have a downstream effect on enforcement capacity, as fewer scientific determinations about pollution levels that could support enforcement actions would occur. 
March 26, 2025CAC Trump Tracker: Offering coal- and oil-fired plants exemptions to regulations. 

“The EPA invited coal- and oil-fired power plants to apply for exemptions to limits on mercury and other toxic pollutants under the Clean Air Act. Mercury is an extremely dangerous pollutant…” Inviting corporations to apply for exemptions creates a workaround whereby existing regulations will be waived, undercutting the impact of environmental laws and preventing enforcement actions from occurring. 
April 2025The EPA released agency plans including an emergency fuel waiver to allow continued sale of more polluting, higher-ethanol fuel, and offered “flexibility for pesticide users and growers” in protecting endangered species. 
June 12, 2025Washington Post: “EPA just delayed reporting safety data on 16 toxic chemicals.” 

“The Environmental Protection Agency announced this week that it will push back the deadline for reporting unpublished health and safety data for 16 toxic chemicals — some of which are linked to cancer or developmental problems in babies — used in everyday products and manufacturing. The move signals a shift from the Biden administration’s approach to regulating harmful chemicals under the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA), a sweeping law aimed at protecting public health.”
June 16, 2025CNN: “The Environmental Protection Agency has told staff overseeing the country’s industrialized Midwest — a region plagued by a legacy of pollution — to stop enforcing violations against fossil fuel companies, multiple sources told CNN.
September 5, 2025CNN: “The Environmental Protection Agency has moved to suspend more than 100 staffers who signed a letter of dissent against the Trump administration’s policies in July, a representative of the union covering the agency’s staff told CNN on Friday.”

“The EPA previously moved to fire a handful of employees late last week, but now it is taking disciplinary action against more than 130 employees also suspected of signing the letter, the representative said. These employees were sent letters indicating they would be suspended for 14 days without pay.”
September 29, 2025The Conversation: “Combining EPA data on staffing changes with conservative estimates of the pending cuts, the initiative has calculated that 25% of EPA staff are already out of the agency.” 

“That calculation does not include other announced cuts, including a third round of deferred resignations taking effect at the end of September 2025 and December 2025. Those cuts may see the departure of similar numbers of full-time equivalents as in the past two rounds – approximately 500 and 1,500. The agency has also reportedly planned to be cutting as much as two-thirds of research staff. With those departure figures included, the initiative estimates that approximately 33% of staffers at the agency when Trump took office will be gone by the end of 2025.”

Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC)

Last updated: 12/15/25

Role: The FDIC is an independent agency that insures deposits in financial institutions up to $250,000. To prevent bank failures and ensure faith in the United States’ financial institutions, the agency enforces laws, rules, and regulations on “unsafe or unsound banking practices, breaches of fiduciary duty, and violations of final orders, conditions imposed in writing or written agreements.”

Who’s affected: 

  • Anyone  with money in an FDIC-insured bank 
  • People at risk of being defrauded by banks and financial institutions

Who benefits: 

  • Financial institutions and their executives

For more see: 

DateWhat happened
January 27, 2025WaPo: FDIC rescinded 200 job offers

for examiners due to the Trump administration hiring freeze, at a time when the agency is already short-staffed, making its role of monitoring banks for viability and compliance with the law even more challenging 
February 17, 2025Bloomberg: FDIC fired ~170 probationary workers,

in addition to losing around 500 to deferred resignation “buyouts” the Trump–Musk administration has offered, representing about 10% of the agency’s staff
February 18, 2025 Truthout: Trump signed an executive order attempting to bring independent agencies under his control.

The order states that “going forward, ‘the president and the attorney general, subject to the president’s supervision and control, shall provide authoritative interpretations of law for the executive branch.’ The order goes on to require that “all executive departments and agencies” — including those granted some independence from the presidency by Congress — ‘shall submit for review all proposed and final significant regulatory actions to the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA) within the Executive Office of the President before publication in the Federal Register.’” This effort to centralize review of regulations passed by independent agencies could lay the groundwork for reduced enforcement activity, as the agencies lose autonomy from the administration over how to pursue their regulatory agendas and the enforcement cases that follow from them. 
March 3, 2025RDP: “FDIC rescinded a Biden-era policy which scaled up scrutiny of large bank mergers.” 

“The prior policy subjected bank mergers leading to assets over $50 billion to public hearings and feedback, while also requiring deals that would have resulted in banks with assets over $100 billion to be intensely examined. The reversal eliminates the public’s role in a process that aimed to strengthen financial stability and protect consumers from documented harms, including reduced access to credit, increased costs of bank services and branch closures.” 
Public Citizen: “While personnel cuts at the FDIC will mean fewer people monitoring bank risk-taking, President Trump’s executive order on independent agencies aims to bring these agencies under closer White House control, limiting the ability of the FDIC and other financial regulators to act on the risks they do identify.”
April 21, 2025Bloomberg: FDIC leadership notified staff it planned to cut a total of 1250 positions, of a total of 6200 at the start of the year. 

The email also said, “If not enough FDIC staff agree to leave voluntarily, the agency will conduct a formal reduction in force effort beginning May 13.”
May 7, 2025Bloomberg: “Trump Has Cut Thousands of Wall Street Cops While Markets Wobble.” 

“Donald Trump’s administration is set to shrink the ranks at the top US financial regulators by more than 2,300 workers, a group that includes bank examiners, criminal investigators and economists.”
November 14, 2025Bloomberg: FDIC Under Trump Shrinks Workforce by More Than 1,300 Positions 

“The Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. previously intended to eliminate more than 1,200 positions, or around 18% of agency personnel, under the Trump administration’s plan to slash the federal workforce. The final number for 2025 will be slightly higher, according to the people who requested anonymity to discuss internal FDIC matters.”

Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC)

Last updated: 12/15/2025

Role: “The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, or FERC, is an independent agency that regulates the interstate transmission of electricity, natural gas, and oil. FERC also reviews proposals to build liquefied natural gas (LNG) terminals and interstate natural gas pipelines as well as licensing hydropower projects. […] As part of that responsibility, FERC: […] Enforces FERC regulatory requirements through imposition of civil penalties and other means.”

Who’s affected: 

  • People and ecosystems affected by errors and disasters with pipelines and other parts of the energy supply chain 

Who benefits: 

  • Oil companies, pipeline operators, and other corporate actors routinely attempting to cut corners without consequences for poisoning communities and the planet

For more see: 

DateWhat happened
April 18, 2025E&E News: “The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission will likely lose 9 percent of its employees as part of the Trump administration’s efforts to shrink the federal workforce, Chair Mark Christie said Thursday.” 

“Fifty-five employees out of the agency’s 1,500 have opted for deferred resignations, Christie said. The administration has also offered early retirements and implemented a government-wide hiring freeze.” 
July 7, 2025E&E News: “FERC proceeds cautiously with Trump-ordered ‘sunset’ for energy rules.”

“The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission is poised to start rulemaking to “sunset” certain regulations, according to a draft “notice of inquiry” obtained by POLITICO’s E&E News.”
September 5, 2025Politico: “‘Brain drain’ at FERC hits legal and policy staff”

“Former FERC Chair Mark Christie said in April that the agency was on track to lose 9 percent of its staff this year due to voluntary resignations. As of September, the figure is 11 percent, with 175 voluntary departures among the agency’s 1,500 employees.”

Federal Trade Commission (FTC)

Last updated: 12/15/2025

Role: “The Federal Trade Commission enforces a variety of antitrust and consumer protection laws affecting virtually every area of commerce, with some exceptions concerning banks, insurance companies, non-profits, transportation and communications common carriers, air carriers, and some other entities. The agency leverages its resources and targets its enforcement efforts at practices that cause the greatest harm to consumers.”

Who’s affected: 

  • Consumers forced to pay higher prices as corporations amass more monopolistic power across industries (e.g. people with diabetes subjected to price gouging, because there’s not enough staffing at FTC to hear a case against pharmacy benefit managers illegally raising the price of insulin)
  • Small businesses and entrepreneurs that are blocked from entering new markets, squeezed out of existing markets, or subjected to predatory pricing practices

Who benefits: 

  • Large corporations that will see fewer challenges to their ability to concentrate market power and wealth, and their already-wealthy executives

For more see: 

DateWhat happened
February 18, 2025Truthout: Trump signed an executive order attempting to bring independent agencies (two of the most prominent of which are the FTC and SEC) under his control.

The order states that “going forward, ‘the president and the attorney general, subject to the president’s supervision and control, shall provide authoritative interpretations of law for the executive branch.’ The order goes on to require that “all executive departments and agencies” — including those granted some independence from the presidency by Congress — ‘shall submit for review all proposed and final significant regulatory actions to the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA) within the Executive Office of the President before publication in the Federal Register.’” This effort to centralize review of regulations passed by independent agencies could reduce enforcement activity as the agencies lose autonomy  over how to pursue their regulatory agendas and subsequent enforcement actions. 
March 3, 2025The Verge: “At least a dozen probationary staffers at the Federal Trade Commission were terminated last week, The Verge has learned.

The terminations took place across the agency, according to two sources familiar with the matter, one of whom said that included both the Bureau of Consumer Protection and Bureau of Competition.”
March 12, 2025CNN: “FTC asks to delay Amazon trial over staff shortages following Musk-led cuts”

“The US Federal Trade Commission asked a federal court in Seattle on Wednesday to delay a September trial in its case alleging Amazon misled consumers over its Prime subscription service, citing “severe resource shortfalls in terms of both money and personnel.”Jonathan Cohen, an attorney for the FTC, told US District Judge John Chun during a hearing that the agency faces a “dire resource situation” amid cost cutting measures enacted under President Donald Trump’s administration. “We have lost employees in the agency, in our division and on our case team,” Cohen said.”
March 18, 2025NYT: Trump attempted to illegally fire the two Democratic members of the FTC.

There is no legal basis for ending the seven-year terms of these Biden-appointed commissioners early, as independent agencies like the FTC are intended to be independent of executive branch whims between administrations. 
May 15, 2025Law360: “FTC Chair Says Staffing Cuts Needed After Hiring Spree”

“Ferguson said when he took over as chair, the commission was paying employees with carryover funds from the previous budget, which he said is not sustainable or responsible. The FTC currently has 1,221 full-time employees, down from 1,315 at the start of the fiscal year in September. He said the goal is to bring the number down to 1,100, largely through attrition, voluntary retirement offers and the deferred resignation program, while trying to avoid layoffs. Ferguson’s written statement did acknowledge that a targeted “reduction in force” could potentially be employed.”
July 18, 2025AP: “A federal judge has restored a Democrat to the Federal Trade Commission, ruling that President Donald Trump illegally fired her earlier this year in his efforts to exert control over independent agencies across the government”

“The decision allows Rebecca Kelly Slaughter to resume her duties as commissioner. The FTC website had been updated by Friday morning to show that Slaughter is among four sitting commissioners.”
September 22, 2025NYT: SCOTUS reversed the federal judge’s ruling and allowed Commissioner Slaughter to be fired.

“In an emergency order, a divided court announced that it would allow President Trump, for now, to fire Rebecca Kelly Slaughter, a F.T.C. commissioner, and that it would hear argument in the case in December, a signal that a majority of the court is ready to revisit a landmark precedent limiting presidential authority.”

Department of Health and Human Services

Last updated: 12/15/2025

Role: The Department of Health and Human Services consists of 13 sub-agencies, with the National Institutes of Health (NIH), the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), the Indian Health Service (IHS), the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), and the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMMS) being the five largest and best-known. These agencies enforce policies related to food and drug safety, among others. 

Who’s affected by cuts: 

  • Elderly, immunocompromised, and racially and economically marginalized people are at elevated risk from contagious diseases
  • All food consumers
  • People who access healthcare through Medicare, Medicaid, and the Affordable Care Act (ACA)
  • Native American communities with IHS Programs
  • People with Alzheimer’s, HIV, and cancer who are reliant on ongoing research and innovation to improve treatments

Who benefits: 

  • Big pharma
  • Big tobacco
  • Insurance companies 

For more see: 

DateWhat happened
January 24 2025NYT: Trump wrongly fired the HHS Inspector General, along with IGs at 16 other agencies
February 6 2025WaPo: The White House contested reports that leadership at HHS were directed to rank probationary employees in preparation for large layoffs.
February 13 2025NPR: RFK Jr. was confirmed as Health Secretary, and previewed plans to systematically fire at least 600 employees at NIH and an unspecified number at FDA.
February 14 2025Stat: 5200 firings—almost 6% of the Department’s workforce—are announced to HHS leadership, with directions that fired employees would lose access to work systems by the end of the day.
February 15 2025Bloomberg: The Trump administration laid off “around 1000” more employees at CMMS, CDC and the FDA. 

“around 1,000 termination notices went out to employees at the NIH over the weekend […] Cuts were also made at HHS’s Administration for Children and Families, which funds child care and Head Start programs.”
March 7 2025PBS: $25,000 buyout offer made to 80,000 HHS employees
March 27 2025GovExec: HHS Secretary Robert Kennedy announced he would cut the department’s overall workforce by 20,000. HHS has already eliminated half that number, through a combination of layoffs, deferred resignations, and early retirements; the rest will reportedly be reached through another round of layoffs. 
June 2, 2025Healthcare Dive: “HHS releases more detailed 2026 budget disclosing scope of cuts”
October 10, 2025Axios: “Trump officials say plan to layoff at least 4,100 federal workers has begun”

“The latest: In the court filing responding to a union suit to stop the layoffs, senior OMB adviser Stephen Billy confirmed that RIF notices have either already gone out or would be going out to an estimated 1,100 to 1,200 employees in Health and Human Services, 1,446 in Treasury and 466 in Education.”
October 14, 2025Reuters: “CDC set to lose quarter of staff with latest layoffs, union says”

“Layoff notices sent over the weekend to U.S. CDC staff would see the agency lose almost a quarter of its workforce since President Donald Trump, took office this year, the union representing them said on Tuesday. The CDC notified some 1,300 employees they would be laid off on Friday night only to rescind around 700 on Saturday. The Department of Health and Human Services blamed a “coding error” for the notices it said went out mistakenly.”

Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD)

Last updated: 12/15/2025

Role: HUD administers programs which provide housing and community development, and also enforces federal anti-discrimination laws to attempt to ensure fair housing practices.
 

Who’s affected: 

  • Low-income people reliant on HUD support for housing 
  • Communities in need of more housing 
  • Transgender people experiencing unstable housing and seeking access to shelters
  • Communities of color and people with disabilities experiencing predatory and discriminatory renting and housing practices by landlords and companies
     

Who benefits: 

  • Real estate developers, corporate landlords, and others seeking to profit from exorbitant rents and discriminatory housing practices

For more see: 

DateWhat happened
February 10, 2025NY Post: Secretary Scott Turner announced a halt to enforcement of HUD’s Equal Access Rule, a 2016 rule formally entitled “Equal Access in Accordance With an Individual’s Gender Identity in Community Planning and Development Programs,” which Turner’s HUD has taken to referring to as the “Gender Identity Rule.”

An Obama-era rule designed to prevent discrimination of transgender people seeking access to single-sex housing shelters based on their gender identities. As Politico reported, the rule “directed HUD grantees to amend their policies to grant equal entry to individuals based on their self-identified gender identity without requiring documentation or asking intrusive questions.”
February 21, 2025AP: Leaked documents indicate plans to slash 4000 positions, primarily targeted HUD employees “who support disaster recovery, rental subsidies, discrimination investigations and first-time homebuyers.” 

According to the head of the union representing HUD employees, as Bloomberg Law reported, cuts would also affect “employees in the offices that enforce civil rights laws, compile data about the housing market.”
February 27, 2025AP: “President Donald Trump’s administration has begun terminating grants to organizations that enforce the Fair Housing Act by taking complaints, investigating and litigating housing discrimination cases for Americans across the country, according to documents and information obtained by The Associated Press on Friday.”

More info from Time: “On Feb. 27, HUD and DOGE terminated 78 grants in 33 states totaling more than $30 million that provided congressionally-approved funding for fair housing organizations, according to the National Fair Housing Alliance (NFHA). Rather than developing housing, these nonprofits work to combat housing discrimination, enforce fair housing laws, and educate people on their rights.”
June 6, 2025Bloomberg: “US Housing Agency Vulnerable to Fraud After DOGE Cuts, Documents Warn” 

“The confidential report from the US Department of Housing and Urban Development’s Office of General Counsel warns that the loss of lawyers due to staff cuts and early resignations is “significantly increasing litigation risk and the risk of fraud, waste and abuse” across housing programs.”
September 22, 2025NYT: “Trump Appointees Roll Back Enforcement of Fair Housing Laws”

“The emails are among dozens of pages of internal communications, memos and other documents reviewed by The New York Times that show efforts by the Trump administration to limit enforcement of the Fair Housing Act, the landmark civil rights law that has prohibited discrimination in housing for nearly six decades.”

Department of the Treasury – Internal Revenue Service (IRS)

Last updated: 12/15/2025

Role: The IRS collects taxes and initiates investigations and audits into individuals and companies suspected of violating tax laws.

Who’s affected: 

  • People dependent on government services that will be under-funded as a result of the budget shortfall that could come from cutting IRS capacity to collect taxes from the wealthy and corporations

Who benefits: 

  • Wealthy people and corporations who will have an (even) easier time dodging taxes

For more see: 

DateWhat happened
January 21, 2025Tax Policy: Trump singled the IRS out among agencies as being under an “indefinite” hiring freeze (not just 90 days)
February 20, 2025Pro Publica: ~7000 probationary employees at the IRS received letters “telling them they were being fired for poor performance.”

A judge later ordered them reinstated. After they were reinstated, the Treasury Department put them on paid administrative leave, rather than allow them back to work. (The judge who issued the order reinstating the workers contested this move, saying it did not meet the terms of his order).

The workers targeted in these initial cuts came disproportionately from the IRS unit “that specifically audits billionaires,” and the Taxpayer Advocate Service.
March 2025Bloomberg & ABC: ~4700 employees took the Trump administration’s first “deferred resignation program” buyout offer
March 13, 2025NYT: The administration replaced the IRS’s top lawyer, Chief Counsel William Paul, as they attempted to use IRS taxpayer data to deport immigrants.
March 18, 2025Wapo: the Trump administration plans to cut “nearly 20,000 agency employees, specifically targeting new hires in taxpayer services and enforcement divisions” by May 15, 2025.

To date, cuts have resulted in the IRS dropping multiple ““investigations of high-value corporations and taxpayers.” The announced cuts also disproportionately target the Taxpayer Advocate Service, an “internal watchdog” unit that provides support to taxpayers navigating technical and financial issues or struggling to pay their taxes.
March 28, 2025International Consortium of Investigative Journalists: DOGE-related layoffs at the Internal Revenue Service are disproportionately impacting the unit that specifically audits billionaires.” 
April 15, 2025Bloomberg:“[A]t the start of April, a notice went out to many of those workers [the ~7000 fired in February and later reinstated, but put on administrative leave]: Be prepared to return to ‘full duty’—if only temporarily—by April 14, it said. Just in time for Tax Day.”
April 15, 2025NYT: “About 22,000 employees at the Internal Revenue Service have signed up for the Trump administration’s latest resignation offer, according to four people familiar with the matter, an exodus that could weaken the agency’s ability to collect taxes.”

In combination with previous rounds of “deferred resignations” and layoffs, these cuts would mean the IRS losing about a third of its work force.
April 17, 2025AP:  IRS plans to end its new Direct File Program, allowing people to file their taxes for free online

after “intense blowback to Direct File from private tax preparation companies that have made billions from charging people to use their software [who have] spent millions lobbying Congress.”
April 28, 2025GovExec: IRS seeks to terminate its taxpayer experience and DEI staff, whose role is to ensure taxpayers have their civil rights respected and are protected from discrimination
August 21, 2025GovExec: “IRS is canceling its layoff plans, will ask some it fired or pushed out to return”
September 3, 2025CFO Brew: “‘Screaming into the void’: IRS staff cuts lead to fewer audits, more frustration” 

“The Yale Budget Lab, making the assumption that IRS layoffs will result in less compliance, estimates that staff losses like the ones seen this year will significantly increase the size of the “tax gap,” or the difference between what taxpayers owe and what the IRS actually collects. Layoffs of 22,000 IRS personnel, it posits, will add an additional $160 billion to the tax gap by 2026, which currently sits at $700 billion. (The IRS is set to lose around 26,000 staffers this year.)”
September 4, 2025Federal News Network: “House lawmakers advance steeper IRS cuts than what Trump proposed.”

“The House Appropriations Committee voted 35-28 to advance the financial services and general government funding bill for fiscal 2026. The bill, which is now headed for a full House vote, would give the IRS a $9.5 billion budget next year, a 23% cut from current spending levels.The Trump administration in June proposed giving the IRS $9.8 billion in FY 2026 — about a 20% cut from current spending levels.
In addition, House lawmakers rejected the Trump administration’s request for more than $850 million to help the IRS hire an additional 11,000 call center representatives and roll out new automation tools to assist taxpayers.”
October 14, 2025Federal News Network: “IRS layoffs that were ‘off the table’ this summer now deepen short-staffing concerns”

“The IRS, midway through preparations for next year’s filing season, is once again facing staffing cuts, now that the Trump administration has sent layoff notices across the federal workforce. The Trump administration, in court filings posted last Friday, said it laid off approximately 1,446 employees at the Treasury Department — as part of a broader reduction-in-force that targeted about 4,200 federal workers.”
December 1, 2025Yahoo! Finance: “After Eliminating 25% Of Its Staff, The IRS Is Turning To AI Agents. ‘It Would Be Negligence’ Not To Use AI Tools” 

“The IRS laid off or lost a quarter of its workforce between January and May, dropping from 103,000 to around 77,000 employees, according to the October Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration report. Now, it’s turning to artificial intelligence to help fill the gaps.”

Broader Treasury Department: 

Last updated: 12/15/2025

Role: “The Department of the Treasury manages federal finances by collecting taxes and paying bills and by managing currency, government accounts and public debt. The Department of the Treasury also enforces finance and tax laws.”

March 25, 2025Bloomberg: according to court documents in a related case, Treasury is planning to lay off a “substantial” number of employees to align with Musk’s efforts to shrink the federal government 
April 9, 2025FedNews: “Treasury plans to cut up to 50% of IRS enforcement staff, 20% of other components”
“At Treasury’s Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, employees have just received an incentive offer for anyone who volunteers for early separation or early retirement. Employees who apply for the incentive and who are then accepted will receive five months of payment as a lump sum, OCC leadership said Wednesday in an all-staff email.”

National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA)

Last updated: 12/15/2025

Role: The NHTSA is responsible for setting and enforcing vehicle safety standards, with the goal of reducing traffic injuries and fatalities on US roads. 

Who’s affected: 

  • Pedestrians, cyclists, drivers, and anyone else sharing roads with Teslas, Waymos and other cars, particularly those with  self-driving features, which have already killed over 50 people, by one count, and injured many more.

Who benefits: 

For more see: 

DateWhat happened
February 24, 2025Detroit Free Press: NHTSA sees a 4% cut to staffing (from a baseline of approximately 800 employees). 

Of the employees laid off, many of them worked specifically on automated vehicle safety, meaning they were specifically the team overseeing Tesla. 
April 24, 2025FT: NHTSA announces it will gut existing automated vehicle safety rules, making it easier for vehicle manufacturers to put their experimental cars on the road. This was a longtime demand of Elon Musk and Tesla. 
July 17, 2025Reuters: “The U.S. auto safety agency is shedding more than 25% of its employees under financial incentive programs to depart the government offered by the Trump administration, according to data provided to Congress seen by Reuters.

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, part of the Transportation Department, is shrinking from 772 employees as of May 31 to 555 under the program. The Federal Highway Administration and Federal Transit Administration are also both losing more than 25% of their staff.”

Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC)

Last updated: 12/15/2025

Role: The SEC’s mission is “to protect investors, maintain fair, orderly and efficient markets, and facilitate capital formation.” Specifically, the SEC is responsible for bringing enforcement actions against corporations that violate laws governing how different types of securities are bought and sold—more recently including cryptocurrencies.

Who’s affected: 

  • Individual investors who receive no restitution as a result of dropped enforcement cases

Who benefits: 

  • Crypto companies no longer subject to tough oversight (including the new cryptocurrency Trump’s family members launched) 

For more see: 

DateWhat happened
January 21, 2025NYT: SEC Chairman Mark Uyeda signaled a shift away from enforcement actions targeting crypto companies 

when he announced a “Crypto Task Force” intended to create a regulatory framework for the industry, criticizing the previous administration’s “reli[ance] primarily on enforcement actions” to address crypto firms breaking the law.

NYT: “The task force is a rebuff to what the crypto industry saw as the heavy-handed approach taken by Gary Gensler, the previous S.E.C. chair.”
February 4, 2025NYT: SEC scaled back a crypto enforcement unit that had consisted of 50 lawyers and staff, moving some lawyers to other departments within SEC, and moving one of the unit’s “top lawyers” out of the enforcement division entirely.
February 10, 2025SEC removed a requirement for investors to report certain personally identifiable information to the Consolidated Audit Trail (CAT) system. 

Democratic SEC Commissioner Caroline Crenshaw: This move will impair “regulators’ ability to understand suspicious activity, unwind events, or stave off market disruptions. […] It leaves unanswered the most basic questions. For example, will it be more difficult for regulators to spot fraud? How much harder will it be to identify certain types of market manipulation? Will it be more difficult to identify and address concerns relating to certain foreign ownership? Will it be more difficult to identify and compensate the victims of swindlers? In times of market disruption and ongoing fraud or manipulation, loss of time means loss of money and loss in market confidence. There is no question that this decision is a loss for markets and investor protection.”
February 10, 2025NYT: Trump issued an executive order to pause implementation of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act—a law banning companies from bribing foreign officials—which the DOJ and SEC are jointly responsible for enforcing
February 11, 2025NYT: SEC Chairman Uyeda directed the SEC’s legal team to pause enforcement of “a rule that would require thousands of publicly traded companies to provide investors with detailed information about the impact of their businesses on climate and the environment.”
February 19, 2025Common Dreams: Trump signed an executive order attempting to bring independent agencies (two of the most prominent of which are the FTC and SEC) under his control.

The order states that “going forward, ‘the president and the attorney general, subject to the president’s supervision and control, shall provide authoritative interpretations of law for the executive branch.’ The order goes on to require that “all executive departments and agencies” — including those granted some independence from the presidency by Congress — ‘shall submit for review all proposed and final significant regulatory actions to the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA) within the Executive Office of the President before publication in the Federal Register.’”
This effort to centralize review of regulations passed by independent agencies could lay the groundwork for reduced enforcement activity, as the agencies lose autonomy from the administration over how to pursue their regulatory agendas and the enforcement cases that follow from them. 
February 20, 2025Patterson Belknap: “The SEC announced that it would replace the Enforcement Division’s Crypto Assets and Cyber Unit with a Cyber and Emerging Technologies Unit (CETU). As reflected in its name, CETU will move away from crypto enforcement actions and instead focus on fraud facilitated by emerging technologies, such as artificial intelligence.” 
March 10, 2025Patterson Belknap: SEC issued a rule “revoking the authority of the Director of the Division of Enforcement to issue formal orders of investigation”—a step that is necessary for SEC to be able to issue subpoenas, in order to investigate corporate wrongdoing and bring enforcement actions. 
May 19, 2025SEC Chairman Atkins addressed the ~15% staff reduction at SEC. Reuters reporting indicates that the Offices of Chief Counsel and Enforcement were among the hardest hit.

The Corporate Counsel: “Chairman Atkins said that headcount had decreased by 15% since the current fiscal year began last October. He also said that at its height last year, the SEC had a total of 5,000 employees and 2,000 contractors, and that today it is down to approximately 4,200 employees and 1,700 contractors.
Chairman Atkins didn’t specify the extent to which particular offices and divisions were impacted by staff departures, but a couple of Reuters reporters did a little digging via FOIA and came up with their own numbers. According to their reporting, the Office of the Chief Counsel took the biggest hit, with nearly one in five staffers (19.5%) departing! Investment Management (16.7%), Trading and Markets (14.7%), and Enforcement (13.0%) were also hit hard. Corp Fin did relatively better, with only 8.7% of its staff opting to head for the exit.”
June 6, 2025Law360: “SEC Seeks To Cut Enforcement Staff To 2010 Levels” 

“The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission could see its lowest level of enforcement attorneys since the first Obama administration if Congress approves the agency’s requested budget, with the proposal indicating that even more workers could leave the SEC in the next fiscal year.”
September 29, 2025Quartz: “The SEC will fast-track Trump’s push to scrap rules on quarterly earnings reports.”

“Wall Street’s top watchdog will fast-track President Donald Trump’s plan to scrap quarterly company reporting as part of a deregulation drive on businesses, its chief has said.”

US Department of Agriculture (USDA)

Last updated: 12/15/2025

Enforcement Role: The USDA is responsible for enforcing laws related to food safety, GMOs, animal welfare, and use of public lands for food production.

Who’s affected: 

  • Anyone consuming food produced and circulated in the country
  • Workers at meatpacking and other food processing facilities that will be subject to less oversight and fewer enforcement actions when they allow workers to be injured and hurt on the job, and allow contagious diseases like bird flu to be spread

Who benefits: 

  • Big Ag and corporate food systems actors who will be subject to less oversight and consequences for cutting corners and making food less safe to consume

For more see: 

DateWhat happened
February 12, 2025GovExec: USDA’s Food Safety Inspection Service (FSIS) reportedly interrupted its normal hiring processes in response to Trump administration’s hiring freeze 
February 13-14, 2025NPR: Firings of almost 6000 probationary employees
March 5, 2025NPR: Court order demands fired workers be reinstated with 45-day stay 
March 12, 2025US News: USDA eliminated two advisory committees—the National Advisory Committees on Microbiological Criteria for Foods and on Meat and Poultry Inspection— that were dedicated to food safety, undercutting efforts to enforce food safety regulations
March 19, 2025USDA website status update saying they are working to comply with the court order
March 21, 2025RDP: “USDA Announced It Will Allow Meat Processing Facilities To Accelerate Their Line Speeds. 

Brooke Rollins’ USDA announced a new policy that allows the department to issue waivers to meat processing plants who want to increase the speed at which they process meat and poultry. […] Apart from leading to severe health side effects for meat packing workers, speeding up line work could also spread diseases, such as bird flu.”.
April 1, 2025USA Today: USDA offers buyout offers to employees (Deferred Resignation Program) – can opt in by April 8
April 10, 2025E&E News: ~12,000 USDA employees have accepted resignation offers. 

~1,200 of these workers were at the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service.
April 23, 2025Government Executive: “USDA’s National Animal Health Laboratory Network office, which manages a network of labs throughout the county that provide disease surveillance and can quickly meet diagnostic needs during outbreaks, has lost half of its staff responsible for quality assurance and proficiency testing nationwide.”
May 3, 2025NPR: USDA begins hiring for 73 open positions 

including “scientists, budget analysts, technicians, inspectors and a veterinarian to carry out its mission to protect the health, welfare and value of America’s plants, animals and natural resources,” despite also paying for the public servants who had previously occupied those positions to stay home via the deferred resignation program. 
May 14, 2025Reuters: 98 of 167 food safety scientists have resigned from the USDA’s Agricultural Research Service, which “detect[s] pathogens, prevent[s] foodborne illness, and identif[ies] chemical and other contaminants in food.” 
June 2, 2025Politico: “USDA faces billions in cuts…The Trump administration is looking to cut nearly $7 billion from agriculture funding for fiscal 2026.”
July 24, 2025Guardian: “Outcry as US agriculture department to cut salaries and relocate staff. Experts warn ‘half-baked’ restructuring will further erode support for US farmers and hamper wildfire response”
September 25, 2025IPM News: “USDA’s DEI Purge: How Trump and Rollins are reshaping American agriculture”
December 12, 2025GovExec: “USDA received overwhelmingly negative feedback on its reorg plan from employees, lawmakers and locals governments” “The department solicited comments and those who wrote in said a potential exodus of staff and loss of local interaction would prove harmful to farmers.”  
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