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Cuts are part of Trump's effort to shrink government

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Judge rules that firings can proceed for now

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IRS had expanded under Trump's predecessor Biden

(Adds report of absorption of USPS in paragraph 15; cuts to

traffic safety agency in paragraph 21)

By Nathan Layne and Andy Sullivan

Feb 20 (Reuters) - A tearful executive at the U.S.

Internal Revenue Service told staffers on Thursday that about

6,000 employees would be fired, a person familiar with the

matter said, in a move that would eliminate roughly 6% of the

agency's workforce in the midst of the busy tax-filing season.

The cuts are part of President Donald Trump's sweeping

downsizing effort that has targeted bank regulators, forest

workers, rocket scientists and tens of thousands of other

government employees. The effort is being led by tech

billionaire Elon Musk, Trump's biggest campaign donor.

Musk was on stage at the Conservative Political Action

Conference in National Harbor, Maryland, when Argentine

President Javier Milei, known for wielding a chainsaw to

illustrate his drastic policies slashing government spending,

handed him one.

"This is the chainsaw for bureaucracy," said Musk, holding

the power tool aloft as a stage prop to symbolize the drastic

slashing of government jobs.

Labor unions have sued to try to stop the mass firings,

under which tens of thousands of federal workers have been told

they no longer have a job, but a federal judge in Washington on

Thursday ruled that they can continue for now.

Christy Armstrong, IRS director of talent acquisition,

teared up as she told employees on a phone call that about 6,000

of their colleagues would be laid off and encouraged them to

support each other, a worker who was on the call said.

"She was pretty emotional," the worker said.

The layoffs are expected to total 6,700, according to a

person familiar with the matter, and largely target workers at

the agency hired as part of an expansion under Democratic

President Joe Biden, who had sought to expand enforcement

efforts on wealthy taxpayers. Republicans have opposed the

expansion, arguing that it would lead to harassment of ordinary

Americans.

The tax agency now employs roughly 100,000 people, compared

with 80,000 before Biden took office in 2021.

Independent budget analysts had estimated that the staff

expansion under Biden would work to boost government revenue and

help narrow trillion-dollar budget deficits.

"This will ensure that the IRS is not going after the

wealthy and is only an agency that's really focused on the low

income," said University of Pittsburgh tax law professor, Philip

Hackney, a former IRS lawyer. "It's a travesty."

Those fired include revenue agents, customer-service

workers, specialists who hear appeals of tax disputes, and IT

workers, and impact employees across all 50 states, sources

said. The IRS did not respond to a request for comment.

The IRS has taken a more careful approach to downsizing than

other agencies, given that it is in the middle of the tax-filing

season. The agency expects to process more than 140 million

individual returns by the April 15 filing deadline and will

retain several thousand workers deemed critical for that task,

one source said.

The Trump administration's federal layoffs have focused on

workers across the government who are new to their positions and

have fewer protections than longer-tenured employees.

Meanwhile, the Trump White House is also preparing to

dissolve the leadership of the U.S. Postal Service and absorb

the independent agency into the Commerce Department, the

Washington Post reported on Thursday.

WAITING FOR DISMISSAL EMAIL

At the IRS's Kansas City office, probationary workers found

all functions had been disabled on their computers except email,

which would deliver their dismissal notices, said Shannon Ellis,

a local union leader.

"What the American people really need to understand is that

the funds that are collected through the Internal Revenue

Service, they fund so many programs that we use every day in our

society," Ellis told Reuters.

The White House has not said how many of the nation's 2.3

million civil-service workers it wants to fire and has given no

numbers on the mass layoffs. Roughly 75,000 took a buyout offer

last week.

The campaign has delighted Republicans for culling a federal

workforce they view as bloated, corrupt and insufficiently loyal

to Trump, while also taking aim at government agencies that

regulate big business -- including those that oversee Musk's

companies SpaceX, Tesla and Neuralink.

The small unit within the National Highway Traffic Safety

Administration that regulates the kind of autonomous cars that

Musk says are the future of Tesla is losing nearly half of its

staff, the Post reported on Thursday.

Musk's Department of Government Efficiency team has also

canceled contracts worth about $8.5 billion involving foreign

aid, diversity training and other initiatives opposed by Trump.

Both men have set a goal of cutting at least $1 trillion

from the $6.7 trillion federal budget, though Trump has said he

will not touch popular benefits programs that make up roughly

one-third of that total.

Democratic critics have said Trump is exceeding his

constitutional authority and hacking away at popular and

critical government programs at the expense of legions of

middle-class families.

Most Americans worry the cost-cutting could hurt government

services, according to a Reuters/Ipsos poll released on

Thursday.

Some agencies have struggled to comply with the rapid-fire

directives Trump has issued since taking office a month ago.

Workers who oversee U.S. nuclear weapons were fired and then

recalled, while medicines and food exports have been stranded in

warehouses by Trump's freeze on foreign aid.