In less than a week in office, President Donald Trump is fulfilling many of his campaign promises, including his new order to remove hundreds of government workers. The pace of the new president's sweeping orders reads like a stock market ticker in terms of their surprising speed and the powerful impact they are having on the country.

The government worker purge began as the new president signed hundreds of orders during his first few days in office. President Trump said on his second day in office that he would fire over 1,000 officials, all appointed by his predecessor President Joe Biden.

Trump signed an executive order that would pave the way for him to fire federal workers by reclassifying their job status, which may impact over 100,000 employees, who can lose their jobs.

Civil service positions, however, do not end at the end of any presidential administration, and they can only be fired for “cause.”

The list of axed government workers currently includes, among others, about 160 workers at the National Security Council; DEI workers, since the diversity offices are being closed; and more. The heads of the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) and the U.S. Coast Guard were fired, with their officials.

The Trump administration sent a memo to the federal DEI office staff on Tuesday morning, informing them that they would be placed on paid leave the next day, by 5:00 PM, because their offices were going to close.

At the Coast Guard, Commandant Admiral Linda Lee Fagan, the first female uniformed leader of any armed forces branch, was removed from her office due, in part, to what she said was called by a Department of Homeland Security official, her “excessive” focus on diversity, equity, and inclusion policies.

However, President Trump's new order created a new category of federal employees, called "Schedule Policy/Career.” The new classification of employees states that workers may be fired if they do not “faithfully implement administration policies to the best of their ability.” By connecting government workers to policy in this way, the new administration opens the door to potentially fire many thousands of workers, because all federal employees connect to policy on some level.

In the Justice Department, twenty senior career officers were not fired but instead reassigned to numerous departments, with some moving to the ‘Sanctuary Cities Enforcement Working Group,’ a new group that Trump created to force city and state governments to allow ICE agents to raid businesses, schools, churches, and more.

Axed government employees, union heads, and labor attorneys are reacting to the swath of cut jobs and closed departments. As reported by Reuters, Executive director of the National Federation of Federal Employees Steve Lenkart, whose union numbers 110,000 workers, said he faced “stunned silence” when he spoke to 30 federal employees. "Everyone is on pins and needles,” he said.

Reuters further quoted employment attorney Don Quinn, who represents federal employees, as saying that people who were fired were shocked. “A lot of people did not expect him to act with such a broad stroke," said Mr. Quinn. “And so there's definitely a sense of disbelief. There's fear - people are concerned about their livelihood, people are concerned about their families."

In Federal District Court for the National Treasury Employees Union, which represents 150,000 employees in 37 federal agencies and departments, sued Trump and other administration officials on Monday in federal district court for the District of Columbia, seeking to block the order.

The District of Columbia ACLU also responded to the Executive Order on Schedule Policy/Career federal workers, calling the new order a “power grab” based on “loyalty” to Trump that violates workers' constitutional rights.

In a press release, Scott Michelman, Legal Director of the ACLU of the District of Columbia, said that the federal workforce order “is a power-grab by Trump, expanding his authority to fire employees he perceives as insufficiently loyal. During Trump’s last administration, he bumped up against federal workers who were following the law, rather than indiscriminately following his orders. Federal workers should not be fired because they are more loyal to the U.S. Constitution than they are to the president. That is a threat to both our constitutional values and the rule of law.”

The hiring of federal workers has long been based on merit and not politics. In 1883, Congress took aim at the previous “spoils system” by creating a system for merit-based federal jobs. In 1978, another Congressional vote reinforced this system so professional federal workers would not focus on politics or loyalty to a president, but instead on the country’s needs.

In the ACLU-DC media release, Mr. Michelman adds, “Trump’s Executive Order threatens the First Amendment rights of federal employees. The order’s true goal is to target workers based on their real or perceived disloyalty to the president and his political aims. Before the election, Vice President Vance said that the president should ‘fire every single mid-level bureaucrat, every civil servant’ and ‘replace them with our people.’ Last night’s order paves the way for Trump to fire workers based on what they say on personal social media accounts, their political donation records, or other protected activities. These are all unconstitutional reasons to fire career government workers.”