Maria Recio| Special to American-Statesman
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WASHINGTON — The Trump administration's dismantling of the size and scope of the federal government led by Texas-based billionaire Elon Musk is hitting the Lone Star State hard.
For 25-year-old Jeffrey Okereke, it’s personal.
In his first job after graduating from the University of Texas at San Antonio, he enjoyed his work at the IRS in Austin as a tax examination technician, a job he felt would set him off on his career.But when Okereke was called to his supervisor’s office last month, he and other probationary employees with a year or less of service were told they were being terminated.
“I’ll be honest, I started crying a little bit,” Okereke told the American-Statesman. “I had a good experience while I was there. The future isn’t always guaranteed.”
Texas has the fifth largest concentration of federal workers in the nation — 130,000 — according to the Congressional Research Service, as agencies from the IRS, with a large Austin contingent, to the Veterans Administration and the Education Department are being dramatically downsized.
President Donald Trump announced immediately after his inauguration that he would be reducing the size of the federal government and appointed Musk — the CEO of Tesla, Space X and X, formerly Twitter — to head an advisory board, the Department of Government Efficiency, known as DOGE, which began an aggressive reduction in bureaucracy, first by offering job buyouts and then firing workers.
However, two federal courts in lawsuits brought by 20 Democratic state attorneys general and federal employee unions ruled against the administration and ordered the reinstatement of the probationary workers for having been fired illegally.
On March 17, the Trump Administration, which is appealing the rulings, said it had reinstated nearly 25,000 employees, although it is a short-term reprieve since most of the fired workers at 18 federal agencies were immediately put on administrative leave, with pay. Firings are expected to continue but following workforce rules known as Reduction In Force, or RIFS, according to union officials.
“Part of the cruelty of the original firing was people were kicked out on the street with no notice,” said Eddie Walker, president of an Austin chapter of the National Treasury Employees Union which represents 1,500 of the Austin-based IRS workers. (The IRS is part of the Treasury Department.)
“Now at least they have a cushion to regroup. But of course, we expect they’ll be gone and thousands more of us will follow as long as they follow the law and RIF people over a period of months; their wish is to see as many of us gone as possible.”
Texas has the most IRS employees in the country, 4,700, according to the World Population Review, an online database that gathers information from government and institutional sources.The IRS nationally cut over 7,000 probationary workers and has reinstated over 6,300 of them according to court records. In Austin, it is about 100 workers who were terminated, reinstated and then put on administrative leave.
Okereke, who lives in Pflugerville and is part of Walker’s union chapter, is one of them. While he is now expecting to be paid, albeit for a short term, he is job hunting. “I’d rather be working,” he said.
Related: Here's why Texas students, lawmakers fear uncertainty from razing US Education Department
At the Veterans Affairs Department, it is also a challenging outlook with the administration aiming to cut 80,000 jobs, The Associated Press reported, citing an internal memo. In the first round, the department cut1,683 probationary workersalthough they have been reinstated in compliance with the court order.
As of 2024, Texas has the largest number of veterans in the country — 1.5 million — according to the Texas Economic Development Corporation.
Veteran Affairs administrator Doug Collins said the goal of the job cuts is to achieve efficiency.
“We are focused on saving money so it can be better spent on veteran care,” he said. Agency spokesperson Jennifer Roy told the American-Statesman that the Central Texas Veterans Health Care System has 4,570 employees and that “a small number” of probationary workers were dismissed. They have been reinstated as per the court order but still face termination.
Don Edge, president of a chapter of the American Federation of Government Employees that represents more than 6,500 Veteran Affairs workers in San Antonio and the Rio Grande Valley, told the Statesman that “A lot of what we’re dealing with is uncertainty."
And Trump’s March 20 executive order that all but eliminates the Education Department has also created uncertainty for the school programs it manages, from support for disabled students to bilingual classes that are funded by the federal government.
For Austin’s Democratic congressmen, it’s a maddening process.
“This isn’t about efficiency, it’s the Trump/Musk Department of Government Evisceration,” U.S. Rep. Lloyd Doggett told the Statesman. “Firing thousands is about undermining Social Security, privatizing veterans’ health care, encouraging tax evasion, and invading our personal privacy. It’s really a sideshow in a multi-ring circus of deception designed to create the illusion of chainsaw savings with no accountability for the real waste, fraud and abuse that is DOGE itself.”
U.S. Rep. Greg Casar, D-Austin, said,"Donald Trump and Elon Musk are stealing from veterans, students, seniors, and working people to pay for tax cuts for billionaires. I am doing everythingin my power to fight back against these attacks on our community.”
Republican U.S. Rep. Pete Sessions of Waco, who co-chairs the DOGE Caucus in the House, however, told the Statesman that he sees the process differently and thinks the way to downsize is to assess what needs to be done.
“That’s why I strenuously encourage people to get back to work,” he said, referring to the COVID-19 pandemic-era rules that allowed employees to work remotely. “Then, make the determination" of the cuts needed.
Trump has ordered federal workers back to the office.
Sessions thinks the Veteran Affairs Department has been understaffed and said he has talked with Collins, the VA secretary and former congressman, about it. But he is generally supportive of the DOGE approach.
On the Education Department, Sessions is adamant that it does not need 10,500 workers but could manage with 500 employees with the funding for programs reverting to the states.
In Texas, the state's top three officials — Republicans Gov. Greg Abbott, Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick and Attorney General Ken Paxton — have welcomed the gutting of the Education Department and were invited to the White House for Trump's signing of the executive order.
But an increasingly vocal group of critics are warning of dire consequences as the rollout of federal cutbacks continues.
U.S. Rep. Joaquin Castro, D-San Antonio, told reporters Friday of his reaction to the elimination of the Education Department and a lack of federal oversight of funding that “This is going to be devastating to San Antonio schools and Texas schools. People who have the least are going to get hurt the hardest.”
