Employees at energy and environmental agencies are bracing for deep cuts to their workforces and sweeping restructuring after the Supreme Court toppled a lower court’s injunction that had paused the Trump administration’s plans.
The White House is vowing to plow ahead and staffers across the government are awaiting news about their agencies’ next steps following a Supreme Court order issued Tuesday that paves the way for layoffs to proceed.
That move impacts more than a dozen agencies — comprising EPA; the National Science Foundation; the departments of Energy, the Interior, Commerce and Agriculture; and others — where a California district judge halted President Donald Trump’s layoff plans in May.
“There’s a lot of apprehension, but people have no idea what’s going to happen,” said Nicole Cantello, president of a union local that represents employees in EPA’s Chicago-based regional office.
Employees at the Interior Department are also nervous and uncertain, said one employee at that department who was granted anonymity because they fear retaliation.
“Some people are like, ‘Oh god, it’s gonna start tomorrow,’ and other people are like, ‘Maybe next week,’” that person said. Staffers there are “primed for a [reduction in force] at this point.”
‘Priority for the administration’
The administration plans to quickly resume its wide-ranging layoffs and restructuring.
“We see the ruling as the Supreme Court reaffirming that the president has complete authority to direct the executive branch, and with that, we will be reducing and simplifying the size of the federal government,” a senior White House official said Wednesday.
The Trump administration early this year directed agencies across the government to draft plans for “large-scale” cuts to their workforces and plans for reorganizations. That drastic overhaul was due to be finalized by Sept. 30, although it’s unclear whether the litigation will impact the timing.
Agencies had their plans “basically ready to go” prior to the court’s injunction, the White House official said. The next moves will proceed “agency by agency,” but “the goal of reducing the size of the federal government will be front and center.”
Individual agencies will be “awaiting guidance, but they are going to be pursuing [reductions in force] consistent with all applicable legal requirements for their individual agencies,” the official said. “We’re going to be operating immediately. This is a priority for the administration. You don’t want an unnecessary bureaucracy.”
Trump administration lawyers previously urged the Supreme Court to intervene, arguing that the executive branch was forced to keep “large numbers of employees on the payroll without necessity” and was blocked from “taking needed steps to make the federal government and workforce more efficient.”
Feds await downsizing details
Several energy and environment agencies did not respond or declined to comment on their plans moving forward.
Interior Department spokesperson J. Elizabeth Peace said in an email, “As a matter of Department policy, we do not comment on personnel matters.” Michael England, a spokesperson for the National Science Foundation, said that agency declined to comment. The departments of Energy, Agriculture and Commerce did not respond to requests for comment.
EPA staffers in that agency’s science office are among the most apprehensive, Cantello said, after the agency announced plans to restructure its science staff.
That plan “was stopped in midstream, and now everyone thinks things will start up again,” she added.
EPA management’s plans to reorganize “will completely dismantle its ability to do its mission, so people are really afraid about the future of the agency,” Cantello said.
Energy Department employees also fear deep cuts to their staff. An internal document reviewed by POLITICO’s E&E News earlier this year showed the department weighing deep program cuts and deeming approximately 56 percent of its staff as “essential.”
Interior employees were preparing for layoff announcements prior to the court’s injunction, and they’re now preparing for those plans to get back underway, the Interior employee said.
Critics of the Supreme Court’s order Tuesday include unions and other groups that challenged the layoff plans in court. They also included Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, who penned a 15-page dissent that followed the majority’s two-page order.
Over the past century, presidents “who have attempted to reorganize the Federal Government have first obtained authorization from Congress to do so,” Jackson wrote. “The President sharply departed from that settled practice on February 11, 2025, however, by allegedly arrogating this power to himself.”
The Supreme Court, Jackson wrote, has “demonstrated enthusiasm for greenlighting this President’s legally dubious actions in an emergency posture.” She added that overturning the injunction will allow “harmful upheaval” while “the lower courts evaluate its lawfulness.”
The legal battle over Trump’s attempt to downsize the workforce is far from over.
The dispute over the administration’s mass-layoff directive will continue although the injunction has been lifted. And additional legal challenges to agencies’ individual layoff plans are expected to follow once those are released.
