JUANA SUMMERS, HOST:
President Trump wants a smaller government workforce, and in his first four months, he's tried many things to achieve that. But how many people has he actually gotten out of government so far? As NPR's Andrea Hsu reports, it's hard to say.
ANDREA HSU, BYLINE: A couple of weeks ago, a special visitor to the White House put a version of that question to Trump's press secretary, Karoline Leavitt.
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KAROLINE LEAVITT: Bobby-Lynn (ph)?
BOBBY-LYNN: How many people has he fired?
HSU: It was bring your child to work day.
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LEAVITT: (Laughter) How many people has he fired?
HSU: And this child got a lesson in political spin.
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LEAVITT: Thus far, actually, we have not had anyone fired with the exception of one individual who did leave their job.
HSU: In fact, President Trump has fired quite a number of people, members of independent agencies, a bunch of inspectors general, even the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Now, what is true is that many more people have left their jobs, most of them in exchange for pay and benefits through September. Here's how Trump put it last week.
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PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: More than 75,000 bureaucrats have voluntarily left their taxpayer-funded jobs.
HSU: Many people told NPR they didn't want to quit but did so because they feared being fired if they stayed. And by the way, that 75,000 number Trump mentioned is from February. It's likely several times larger by now. Even with agencies like USAID, which Trump has essentially dismantled, it's hard to say how many people are gone. That's because much of what Trump has done, halting its work and freezing international aid grants, has been challenged in court.
SKYE PERRYMAN: Most employees, I believe, are on some type of paid leave.
HSU: Skye Perryman is president of Democracy Forward. That's a legal organization that has filed scores of lawsuits trying to stop Trump's actions. And so far, anyway, they've had some success. In one big case, a federal judge in San Francisco halted the mass layoffs at about 20 different agencies, including ones like Health and Human Services, which had already told 10,000 people they were losing their jobs. Perryman says Trump can slash the workforce, but the way he's doing it is illegal.
PERRYMAN: So if you are going to decimate agencies that are fulfilling a purpose, a lawful purpose that Congress has mandated, that requires congressional approval.
HSU: And Trump had not gotten that. Now his administration is asking the Supreme Court to intervene. But for now, his hopes for cuts of 40% to 50% at many agencies are on hold. And also on hold is a lot of the work that people were doing, as thousands of them are now being paid to stay home. And then there are people in an even more bizarre state of limbo.
LAUREN DUECK: My name is Lauren Dueck, and I was the director of communications at NOAA's satellite division.
HSU: That's part of the Department of Commerce. Dueck and hundreds of other probationary employees or more recent hires were fired in late February and early March, but then reinstated under court order, and then fired again when an appeals court lifted that order. Now that court is still considering whether the firings were legal. Meanwhile, nobody Dueck knows has gotten paperwork showing they've been terminated.
DUECK: It's been almost two months, and no one has seen any progress on getting this paperwork done.
HSU: Dueck says that's kept some people from getting new health insurance, collecting unemployment, even starting a new job.
DUECK: We've been calling regularly. Lots of different people have called many times to try and get them to answer any of these questions.
HSU: The Commerce Department did not respond to NPR's questions about what's going on here either.
DUECK: If they're going to fire us, at least just fire us. Like, let us go on and move on to other things.
HSU: Like finding a new job with less uncertainty.
Andrea Hsu, NPR News.
(SOUNDBITE OF MASEGO SONG, "YOU NEVER VISIT ME") Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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