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.
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.
- Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB)
- Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC)
- Department of Justice (DOJ)
- Department of Labor (DOL)
- Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)
- Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC)
- Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC)
- Federal Trade Commission (FTC)
- Department of Health and Human Services (HHS)
- Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD)
- Internal Revenue Service (IRS)
- National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA)
- Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC)
- US Department of Agriculture (USDA)
Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB)
Last updated: 6/4/25
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
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:
- President Trump Would Like You To Say Goodbye To Our Food Inspectors (2/12/25)
- NYT: New Details Emerge on Trump Officials’ Sprint to Gut Consumer Bureau Staff (4/27/25)
- TAP: CFPB Slashed to the Bone, Threatening Financial Markets (4/17/25)
- TAP: Hatchet Job on CFPB Even Worse in the Details (4/29/25)
| Date | What happened |
| Feb 9, 2025 | Trump-appointed acting directors of CFPB (Bessent and Vought) ordered stoppages of CFPB enforcement and supervision activity over big banks and financial institutions “The shutdown resulted in mass dismissals, contract terminations, office closures and an agency-wide work stoppage.” (Reuters) |
| Feb 21, 2025 | Cancelled the lease of the CFPB headquarters |
| Mar 28, 2025 | Federal 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.” |
| Apr 17, 2025 | Fox Business reports: ~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. |
| Apr 18, 2025 | NYT: 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.” |
| Apr 28, 2025 | Reuters: 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, 2025 | Bloomberg: 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.” |
Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC)
Last updated: 6/4/25
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
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:
- Real Politicians Stay Bought by Fake Money Tycoons (12/14/22) – On crypto industry lobbying for the CFTC to be its main regulator, rather than the SEC, as the CFTC is dependent on the appropriations process for its budget and therefore more susceptible to congressional lobbying
| Date | What happened |
| Feb 20, 2025 | 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.” |
| Apr 21, 2025 | Trump’s February executive order aiming to bring independent agencies under his control is implemented. |
Department of Justice (DOJ)
Last updated: 6/4/25
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
| Date | What happened |
| Feb 5, 2025 | AG Pam Bondi announced DOJ would be “scaling back enforcement of laws governing foreign lobbying transparency and bribes of foreign officials” and “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.” |
| Feb 7, 2025 | Bloomberg Law reported that 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.” Additionally, from the 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.” |
| Feb 10, 2025 | 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. |
| Mar 25, 2025 | 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, 2025 | 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. |
Department of Labor (DOL)
Last updated: 6/4/25
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:
- What Cuts to the Department of Labor Will Mean for You (Century Foundation, 4/3/25)
- U.S. Sen. Hawley demands Tyson child labor probe. Trump’s cuts to DOL could make that difficult (Missouri Independent, 6/4/25)
| Date | What happened |
| Jan 20, 2025 | DOL 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. |
| Mar 7, 2025 | Reuters: “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). |
| Apr 4, 2025 | Almost forty DOL offices that “inspect mines and other workplaces for safety” are being considered for closure (36 MHSA offices in 19 states). |
| Apr 7, 2025 | Grant programs shuttered for DOL’s Bureau of International Labor Affairs (ILAB), including efforts to combat child labor. AP: 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.” |
Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)
Last updated: 6/4/25
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:
- RDP Trump Environment Tracker
- Climate Action Campaign’s Trump Tracker
- Columbia Sabin Center for Climate Change Law’s Climate Backtracker
- LA Times: Trump is cutting the nation’s environmental programs. Here are the health risks to Americans (4/5/25)
| Date | What happened |
| Feb 3, 2025 | EPA told over 1100 employees they could be fired at any time |
| Feb 7, 2025 | EPA put over 160 workers at the Office of Environmental Justice on leave |
| Feb 14, 2025 | EPA fired almost 400 probationary employees |
| Mar 11, 2025 | Closing EJ Offices. From Climate Action Campaign’s Trump Tracker: “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.” |
| Mar 12, 2025 | Rolling back climate change regulations & changing enforcement priorities. From Columbia Climate Backtracker: “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.” |
| Mar 14, 2025 | Easing enforcement against energy facilities. Politico (via CAC Trump Tracker): “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.” |
| Mar 17, 2025 | Laying off scientists who monitor pollution. From CAC Trump Tracker: “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. |
| Mar 26, 2025 | Offering coal- and oil-fired plants exemptions to regulations. From CAC Trump Tracker: “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 2025 | The 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. |
Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC)
Last updated: 6/4/25
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:
- Trump’s FDIC Hastens the Next Banking Crisis (1/28/25)
- Week Seven: One Nation Under God, Indivisible (3/7/25)
| Date | What happened |
| Jan 27, 2025 | 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 |
| Feb 17, 2025 | 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 |
| Feb 18, 2025 | Trump signed an executive order attempting to bring independent agencies under his control. Truthout: 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. |
| Mar 3, 2025 | “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.” (RDP Corruption Calendar, Week 7) From 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, 2025 | FDIC leadership notified staff it planned to cut a total of 1250 positions, of a total of 6200 at the start of the year. As Bloomberg reports, 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.” |
Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC)
Last updated: 6/4/25
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:
- FERC skimps on winter storm details as staffing cuts threaten future reporting (Utility Dive, 6/3/25)
| Date | What happened |
| Apr 18, 2025 | E&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.” |
Federal Trade Commission (FTC)
Last updated: 6/4/25
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:
- Corruption Calendar Week 10: Bad Signals All Around (3/18/25)
- Release: Trump’s Attempt To Fire Democratic FTC Commissioners Makes Americans Easy Targets For Corporate Abuse (3/18/25)
- The Federal Trade Commission keeps tabs on big business. Trump fired 2 of its members (NPR, 3/20/25)
| Date | What happened |
| Feb 18, 2025 | 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. Truthout: 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. |
| Mar 3, 2025 | The 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.” |
| Mar 18, 2025 | 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. |
Department of Health and Human Services
Last updated: 6/4/25
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:
- DOGE Envisions A Future Without Critical Public Health Services (2/20/25)
- Social thread on cuts (3/27/25)
| Date | What happened |
| Jan 24 2025 | Trump wrongly fired the HHS Inspector General, along with IGs at 16 other agencies |
| Feb 6 2025 | The White House contested reports that leadership at HHS were directed to rank probationary employees in preparation for large layoffs. |
| Feb 13 2025 | 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. |
| Feb 14 2025 | 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. |
| Feb 15 2025 | The Trump administration laid off “around 1000” more employees at CMMS, CDC and the FDA. According to Bloomberg: “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.” |
| Mar 7 2025 | $25,000 buyout offer made to 80,000 HHS employees |
| Mar 27 2025 | 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. |
Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD)
Last updated: 6/4/25
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:
- President Trump Would Like You To Say Goodbye To Our Food Inspectors (2/12/25)
- Updated list of all Trump’s actions that impact housing (Housing Wire, 6/4/25)
| Date | What happened |
| Feb 10, 2025 | 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.” |
| Feb 21, 2025 | AP: 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.” |
| Feb 27, 2025 | AP: “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.” |
Department of the Treasury – Internal Revenue Service (IRS)
Last updated: 6/4/25
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:
- IRS Cuts and the Signal Chat Scandal: The Latest Indicators of the Trump Administration’s Recklessness (3/26/25)
- Week 11: Incomprehensible AI Number-Crunching Slop Sets The Scene Of Trump’s Global Tariff Shakedown (4/4/25)
- Option A: No More Tax Days for the 1 Percent (4/17/25)
- What’s Going on at the IRS? (Lawfare Media, 5/13/25)
| Date | What happened |
| Jan 21, 2025 | Trump singled the IRS out among agencies as being under an “indefinite” hiring freeze (not just 90 days) |
| Feb 20, 2025 | ~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. |
| Mar 2025 | Bloomberg & ABC: ~4700 employees took the Trump administration’s first “deferred resignation program” buyout offer |
| Mar 13, 2025 | The administration replaced the IRS’s top lawyer, Chief Counsel William Paul, as they attempted to use IRS taxpayer data to deport immigrants. |
| Mar 18, 2025 | The Washington Post reported 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. |
| Mar 28, 2025 | RDP’s Corruption Calendar, Week 11: “The International Consortium of Investigative Journalists broke news this week that DOGE-related layoffs at the Internal Revenue Service are disproportionately impacting the unit that specifically audits billionaires.” |
| Early Apr 2025 | Bloomberg:“[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.” |
| Apr 15, 2025 | NYT: “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. |
| Apr 17, 2025 | AP: Reports that 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.” |
| Apr 28, 2025 | GovExec: 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 |
Broader Treasury Department:
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.”
| Mar 25, 2025 | Bloomberg reported that, 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 |
National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA)
Last updated: 6/4/25
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:
- Vehicle manufacturers (particularly those who have faced frequent NHTSA investigations or face scrutiny for their automated features, like Elon Musk)
For more see:
| Date | What happened |
| Feb 24, 2025 | 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. |
| Apr 24, 2025 | 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. |
Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC)
Last updated: 6/4/25
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:
- We Can’t Count on Trump’s SEC to Tell Us If He Is Manipulating the Market (TAP, 5/9/25)
- US SEC buyouts hit legal, investment divisions hardest, data shows (Reuters, 5/16/25)
| Date | What happened |
| Jan 21, 2025 | 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.” |
| Feb 4, 2025 | 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. |
| Feb 10, 2025 | SEC 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.” |
| Feb 10, 2025 | 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 |
| Feb 11, 2025 | 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.” |
| Feb 19, 2025 | 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. Common Dreams: 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. |
| Feb 20, 2025 | “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.” (Patterson Belknap) |
| Mar 10, 2025 | 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, 2025 | SEC 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.” |
US Department of Agriculture (USDA)
Last updated: 6/4/25
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:
- President Trump Would Like You To Say Goodbye To Our Food Inspectors (2/12/25)
- Tracking Food and Drug Safety During the Trump Administration (5/5/25)
| Date | What happened |
| Feb 12, 2025 | USDA’s Food Safety Inspection Service (FSIS) reportedly interrupted its normal hiring processes in response to Trump administration’s hiring freeze |
| Feb 13-14, 2025 | Firings of almost 6000 probationary employees |
| Mar 5, 2025 | Court order demands fired workers be reinstated with 45-day stay |
| Mar 12, 2025 | 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 |
| Mar 19, 2025 | USDA website status update saying they are working to comply with the court order |
| Mar 21, 2025 | RDP: “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.”. |
| Apr 1, 2025 | USDA offers buyout offers to employees (Deferred Resignation Program) – can opt in by April 8 |
| Apr 10, 2025 | E&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, 2025 | Government 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, 2025 | NPR: 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, 2025 | Reuters reports that 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.” |