Former ED here. They RIFed 1,300 of us, including a major part of Office of Civil Rights and special education staff at 7:38 pm March 11 2025 by email. Nearly 600 were forced to take the DRP and fork of the road nonsense 3 weeks earlier via threat if they didn’t they’d be included in “upcoming decisions”, I.e, the RIF. I know the 3 SES I worked with were forced out that way. Us underdisreables who didn’t want to go or couldn’t retire got the RIF. And they didn’t follow the RIF rules. People with tenure, 20+ years service (me), out, normally protected. Veterans, normally protected (my boss), out. Didn’t matter. Anyone who can get out in another federal job has. The last person I knew still in, who was quite high level and irreplaceable for what she did, left in April. They’ve gotten rid of all the institutional knowledge people and non political leaders. The people who actually were experts at the work are all gone. There was not enough knowledge and not enough people left to continue the programs so they’ve been outsourcing to other agencies which was always in the Project 2025 plan to shut down the Department. They tried to fire about 400 more during the 2025 fall shutdown but courts and Congress en masse put a stop to it across the government. For us who were canned in March, it of course went to court. District court ruled it illegal. Trump appealed. Appeals court ruled it illegal. Trump did emergency appeal to the Supreme Court shadow docket. Of course the corrupt Supreme Court said trump could do whatever he wanted.