Trump’s Hiring Freeze and Musk’s Government Purge Risk Destabilizing Critical Services, Experts Warn

President Donald Trump’s hiring freeze, combined with Elon Musk’s aggressive push to purge federal employees, may create a crisis that neither of them can easily fix, a legal analyst warned Thursday.

Trump recently signed an executive order imposing a broad hiring freeze across federal agencies, while Musk—tasked with leading the administration’s “government efficiency” efforts—is identifying employees for removal or forced resignations.

According to The Atlantic’s Tom Nichols, Trump’s decision to halt hiring could backfire if vacant positions create major operational issues, as he has effectively blocked himself from filling them. Nichols argued that many Americans fail to grasp how the government functions, leading to misguided support for sweeping cuts.

“There’s this goofy notion that somehow, again, as you said, people are just sitting around, watching Netflix and plodding around their homes,” Nichols said. “It’s such an inane approach to reducing the federal workforce, which can be reduced.”

Nichols acknowledged that the government can be downsized, but warned that there are more strategic ways to do it without destabilizing essential services. He pointed out that many federal employees were already planning to retire, and some are now opting for forced resignation agreements that include payouts—ultimately costing the government more money.

“Then you’re going to have situations and agencies where people have retired in place, and you can’t replace them because you don’t have hiring authority,” Nichols explained. “Because, of course, that’s the point of this, to just empty out offices.”

This, he warned, could cripple vital agencies. “This could affect every agency, from, you know, stuff that deals with nuclear weapons all the way down to, you know, whether your checks get delivered every month from the government,” he said.

MSNBC host Katy Tur noted that the administration had initially included air traffic controllers in the resignations, only to backtrack after a tragic plane crash in Washington, D.C.

Nichols compared the situation to a precarious game: “You don’t want to keep pulling sticks out of this giant Jenga pile to start trying to figure out where the one place is where things start to come unraveled, and the whole thing falls down.” Tur criticized the approach as reckless, likening it to Musk’s chaotic takeover of Twitter.

“It’s so clunky. It’s not done with any precision. And part of it is, you know, it’s kind of like if you’re going to do a takeover of a tech company. Just fire as many people, as Elon Musk did with Twitter. Just fire everybody. See what stops working, and then I can rebuild that thing and make it work again.” But, she stressed, the government is not a tech company.

“I mean, this is like, are you going to get your Social Security check?” she warned. With the administration pressing forward with its cost-cutting measures, concerns are mounting that the government’s ability to function could be severely compromised.