"Am I shaking?"... U.S. civil servant, "Lots fired" seat.

Photo Source: Yonhap News

Fears of 'massive layoffs' grow among more than 2 million U.S. federal officials.

CNN reported on the 10th local time that the federal civil service community is agitated before President-elect Donald Trump's inauguration in January next year.

The status of U.S. federal officials is protected by law, but former President Trump has said he will replace officials who do not comply with his wishes during the campaign.

The plan is to reclassify general public officials with guaranteed status into political positions and fire them, and fill the vacancy with loyalists.

Earlier in 2020, at the end of his first term, Trump also declared an executive order "Schedule F" that would allow him to reclassify ordinary public officials into political positions.

Schedule F was abandoned after the inauguration of the Joe Biden administration, but Trump recently vowed to revive schedule F on his first day in office.Trump's pledge to 'eliminate inefficiencies within the federal government'

is also one of the factors fueling anxiety in the federal civil service community.

Trump has said he will set up a "government efficiency committee" to streamline the bloated federal government and appoint Tesla CEO Elon Musk as head.

In a related development, U.S. media are predicting that Musk will push to fire a large number of federal officials.

Just as Musk fired more than 3,000 people, more than half of all employees, after acquiring Twitter (now X and X) in 2022, he can wield the blade of dismissal against federal officials.

In fact, Musk recently posted an image of himself holding a sink on X in the background of the White House, leaving a message, "Let that sink in."

This is interpreted as a message using one of Trump's campaign slogans, "Drain the Swamp."

President-elect Trump describes federal officials as Swamp, which means stagnant water or deep-rooted evils, or Deep State, which means vested groups within the federal government.