WASHINGTON— The Center for Biological Diversity sued Trump’s Office of Personnel Management today seeking the plans required by the so-called Department of Government Efficiency to drastically reshape and downsize key agencies’ workforces.

These Agency Reduction in Force and Reorganization Plans, or RIF, are part of the broader DOGE effort to incapacitate federal agencies and undermine their abilities to enact congressional mandates. Elon Musk created DOGE to gut the federal workforce through mass firings of scientists, other experts and experienced public servants.

“The RIF plans are clearly designed to paralyze key agencies and cut public services across the government. Trump is determined to hide from the public the full extent of the destruction he’s planning,” said Ivan Ditmars, associate attorney at the Center. “Americans are fed up with the chaos and incompetence created whenever DOGE takes a wrecking ball to a government agency. These cruel, reckless mass-firing plans need to be disclosed so we can see the full risk to our environment and public health.”

On Feb. 11 Trump signed “Implementing The President’s ‘Department of Government Efficiency’ Workforce Optimization Initiative,” an executive order instructing agency heads to immediately prepare “large-scale RIFs.” Soon after, DOGE operatives at the Office of Personnel and Management directed federal agencies to develop these plans by March 13.

As the Trump administration fights to keep its plans a secret, frontline communities are already feeling the consequences of the mass firings. For example, veterans who rely on the Department of Veterans Affairs have found that the agents who used to help them schedule appointments and secure medical care have been fired.

The Center submitted its Freedom of Information Act request for these plans in March and has received no acknowledgement or communications for more than two months. FOIA is meant to ensure public access to information about the functioning of federal agencies by guaranteeing a response within 20 business days of a request.

Since the start of Trump’s second term, the Center has filed numerous FOIA lawsuits seeking public records of the administration’s anti-environment and anti-regulatory agenda. These records include emails and other documents detailing funding cuts to the Environmental Protection Agency, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, and the U.S. Department of Agriculture that have harmed marine wildlife and defunded climate initiatives.

Today’s lawsuit was filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia. The Center expects to receive records from the suit in the next two to three months.