As dusk falls in Washington on Fridays, the firings begin

Many Glantz was in her room at HomeInn in Columbia, South Carolina, last Friday night during a trip visiting friends when her phone began pinging furiously with messages at 9:30 p.m. They were from packets in Washington at the US Institute of Peace, an independent, congressionally funded organization in Washington that had found itself in the crosshairs of billionaire Elon Musk’s cost-cutting Department of Government Efficiency. DODE employees had fanned out to their way, also she had told a senior adviser at the institute, was being told that mass layoffs had begun.

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Mary Glantz was in her room at a Hampton Inn in Columbia, South Carolina, last Friday night during a trip visiting friends when her phone began pinging furiously with messages at 9:30 p.m. They were from panicked colleagues at the US Institute of Peace, an independent, congressionally funded organization in Washington that had found itself in the crosshairs of billionaire Elon Musk's cost-cutting Department of Government Efficiency. DOGE employees had forced their way into the building, past protesting USIP staffers, with the aid of local police on March 17. Now Glantz, who had been a senior adviser at the institute, was being told that mass layoffs had begun.

At IO:09 p.m., Glantz's own termination notice arrived in an email telling her she was being fired, effective immediately. Most of USIP's 300 staff were laid off that night. "I wasn't expecting it," said Glantz, who shared her termination notice with Reuters. "It was shocking," she said, because she had just been told her leadership was working on a briefing to DOGE justifying their work. Glantz and her colleagues are not the only government workers who have been fired late on a Friday night since US President Donald Trump and Musk launched their fastmoving effort to cut the size and cost of the federal bureaucracy.

While thousands of workers have been fired in the overhaul throughout the work week, Friday nights have become some of the most nerveracking times for civil servants. Mass firings have taken place on seven of the IO Fridays that Trump has been in office since being sworn in on January 20, affecting hundreds of government workers, a Reuters review of the pattern of dismissals found.