Washington, D.C. – Democracy Forward responded today to a new memo published by Office of Management and Budget Director Russell Vought, which asks all government agency heads to prepare a plan to significantly reduce their workforce. 

“This Administration continues to find new lows in their steps to harm people and communities across the country who are served by the nation’s non-political civil service. You cannot say you support people and the efficient delivery of government services while running roughshod over the very protections that are designed to make our government function without corruption and with competence. Today’s memo is the latest attack on the very people who work every day to provide essential services, keep our air and water clean, keep our communities and our nation safe, and care for people in vulnerable circumstances,” said Skye Perryman, Democracy Forward President & CEO. “Democracy Forward will continue to use every legal tool at our disposal to protect against this Administration’s assault on the American people and those who serve them.” 

“After spending the past five weeks gutting and hamstringing federal agencies and working to destroy civil servants’ ability to serve the American people, this new memo is nothing more than a continuation of Trump and Musk’s ongoing assault on government and the people who rely on it,” said Rob Shriver, Managing Director of Democracy Forward’s Civil Service Strong. “By exempting the political appointees from this analysis, while injecting them directly into the hiring process for career civil servants, the memo makes clear that its goal is hurting people in the name of cronyism, not improving efficiency. In fact, this memo doubles down on a series of ill-conceived initiatives previously launched by the President and DOGE.”

The new memo comes weeks after a January 27 instruction from OMB, which sought to freeze federal grant disbursements, which put essential services across the nation in jeopardy. Yesterday, in response to a suit filed by Democracy Forward on behalf of the National Council of Nonprofits, the American Public Health Association, Main Street Alliance, and SAGE, the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia granted a preliminary injunction of the OMB’s freeze.

For more information about Democracy Forward, please visit democracyforward.org. 

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