‘You’re fired!’: Trump 2.0 ditches first-term caution for instant action

President Trump took 10 days to make his first major firing during his first term.

This time, it started on Day 1 and has kept going.

During his first three days in office, Mr. Trump ousted the heads of two Homeland Security Department agencies, booted the chief of the agency that oversees Voice of America, tossed the members of a privacy watchdog board and put every federal employee engaged in DEI, or diversity, equity and inclusion, on paid leave.

That doesn’t include the heads of the FBI and IRS, who resigned rather than wait to be fired.

Mr. Trump likely sidelined more employees during his first three days in office than in all of 2017, his first year in the White House.

Mr. Trump’s critics have panned his aggressive approach, but his supporters cheer it. Many of them expected this sort of bloodbath in the first term, particularly from a man who made “You’re fired” a national catchphrase, and were surprised it didn’t happen.

Experts said the firings show a president firmly in control of his party, more so than any predecessor, so he can be more aggressive this time.

“It’s night and day,” said Jeremy Mayer, a professor at George Mason University’s Schar School of Policy and Government. “It’s different from any president since FDR, and maybe ever, in the way he’s grasping executive power and using it in creative and often unprecedented ways.”

Early ousters this time include the commandant of the Coast Guard, whom the Trump team found too focused on DEI and not focused enough on border security, and the head of the Transportation Security Administration.

Some firings were largely symbolic.

Chef Jose Andres, a vicious critic of Mr. Trump for years, was booted out of his role on the President’s Council on Sports, Fitness and Nutrition. Brian Hook, a former envoy to Iran, was removed from the Wilson Center for Scholars. Also, retired Army Gen. Mark A. Milley was kicked off the National Infrastructure Advisory Council.

Mr. Trump was delighted with the ousters on social media.

“YOU’RE FIRED!” he wrote, reprising his catchphrase from NBC’s “The Apprentice” reality TV show.

“My Presidential Personnel Office is actively in the process of identifying and removing over a thousand Presidential Appointees from the previous Administration, who are not aligned with our vision to Make America Great Again,” Mr. Trump wrote on Tuesday.

Among the firings was Elizabeth Pena. The Daily Wire reported that she was a Biden staffer who managed to burrow her way into the career civil service at the Labor Department during the transition. The outlet reported that the Trump team canned her on Thursday.

Mr. Trump capped the workweek by firing a slew of agency inspectors general. Lawmakers from both parties on Capitol Hill said the president appeared to be breaking a law that requires a 30-day notice to Congress before removal.

The president defended the firings over the weekend by saying “some people” thought the watchdogs were “unfair” or “not doing the job.”

“I did it because it’s a very common thing to do,” he told reporters, according to CNN.

The DEI employees haven’t been fired yet, but Mr. Trump’s acting director of the Office of Personnel Management ordered them all to be put on paid leave as of Wednesday evening. They were told not to show up for work and lost their email access, but they can collect pay and benefits — for now.

The New York Times reported that Mr. Trump has also fired three members of the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board, a watchdog that has exposed abuses in the government’s warrantless surveillance programs.

Former FBI Director Christopher A. Wray and IRS Commissioner Danny Werfel resigned this month rather than be fired.

Amanda Bennett, head of the U.S. Agency for Global Media, which oversees Voice of America, Radio Free Europe and other state-funded news operations, left her post on Inauguration Day.

Michael McKenna, a contributing editor at The Washington Times who served as a senior aide in the first Trump White House, said the moves send a message.

“They learned that Reagan was right: Personnel is policy,” he said. “They also figured out you don’t have to fire the whole world. You set a tone, and everybody will follow it.”

Mr. Mayer said the firings, particularly for all DEI staffers, would be popular with Mr. Trump’s supporters.

“There are going to be very few tears shed in the heartland,” he said. “No president has ever delivered this quickly. But that’s what authoritarians can do when you have a cult of personality around yourself.”

Mr. Trump’s move to take control of the executive branch raises significant questions about how the government should work.

On the one hand, some say the professional bureaucracy is a fundamental part of checks and balances, steering the ship of state on a steady course no matter who the president is. Others, particularly conservative legal scholars in recent years, argue that the founders intended the bureaucracy to be responsive to voters through the person of the president, which means he or she must be able to clear out those who would stand in the way of their policies.

It’s a lesson the Trump team was slow to learn in its first term.

Back then, Mr. Trump didn’t score his first big firing until 10 days into his term, when he canned acting Attorney General Sally Yates, a holdover from the Obama years who refused to defend his travel ban policy in the courts.

Two weeks later, he booted National Security Adviser Michael Flynn. It wasn’t until May that he fired FBI Director James B. Comey, a move that sparked the creation of the two-year special counsel’s investigation that cleared Mr. Trump of Russia “collusion” allegations but dinged him for the firing.

Most of the high-profile firings from Mr. Trump’s first term were, like Mr. Flynn, his own appointees. They included Attorney General Jeff Sessions, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, National Security Adviser John R. Bolton and Communications Director Anthony Scaramucci, who was fired after what seemed like a record-short 11 days in the White House.

Mr. Trump’s move to control personnel goes beyond firings.

He has ordered a hiring freeze for all non-national security or public safety positions.

Rep. Jason Smith, Missouri Republican and chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, called that a “cease-and-desist order to the IRS,” derailing a Biden administration hiring spree that could have brought on tens of thousands more auditors and agents.

Mr. Mayer said that Mr. Trump’s leeway to be aggressive depends on yardsticks such as the strength of the stock market, inflation and the number of unemployed Americans.

If those go or if Mr. Trump sustains significant political losses in the 2026 midterm elections, he might have to “behave more like a regular president,” Mr. Mayer said.

This article has been updated to reflect that the head of the U.S. Agency for Global Media resigned from her post.