Healthcare.gov, the government health insurance marketplace website, launched in October 2013 only to buckle under the weight^[1] of just 2,000 simultaneous users. As millions of Americans stared at error messages and frozen screens, a political crisis unfolded,

The Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, has secured unprecedented access^[1] to at least seven sensitive federal databases, including those of the Internal Revenue Service and Social Security Administration. This access has sparked fears about

Pretty much everyone will sometimes struggle with anger at work. People fear the wrath of abusive supervisors, suppress anger to maintain a façade of professionalism, or vent anger toward co-workers who are, fairly or not, targets. Reactions to anger in the

The Pentagon said Tuesday it will cut between 50,000 and 60,000 civilian jobs -- or 5% to 8% of a workforce that includes thousands of veterans -- through firings, resignations and a hiring freeze to meet Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth's goal.

Hegseth's office said nearly a month ago, in February, that it was starting those cuts by firing 5,400 probationary employees. The figure was announced after reports emerged of an initial plan to just fire huge swaths of civilian workers, which raised concerns inside the Pentagon^[1].

Now that court cases have forced the Trump administration's widespread government firings to halt, a top defense official told reporters that the Pentagon will focus largely on getting to that 60,000 figure by either incentivizing employees to leave or not hiring new employees. However, both of these methods also have major caveats.

Read Next: Advocates Push Trump Administration to Help Afghan Allies in Face of Potential Travel Ban^[2]

"The majority of the workforce reduction effort is voluntary measures, and the biggest component of that to date has been [the deferred resignation program]," a senior defense official said Tuesday. The official spoke anonymously as a condition of the interview.

The deferred resignation program, or DRP, is the official name for the scheme that emerged out of billionaire Elon Musk's "Fork in the Road" email that went out to all federal employees in late January and offered them the chance to walk away from their jobs while still getting paid until October. Musk has been slashing federal agencies and firing tens of thousands of federal employees with Trump's approval.

Concerns over the legality of the offer were raised almost immediately by outside experts^[3], but the senior official said that the Department of Defense "approved more than 20,000 ... nearing 21,000 of the applications from employees that volunteered" as part of that program.

Federal employees are no longer able to take that offer^[4], so it is unlikely that large pool of volunteers will grow in the future.

The senior official also said that part of the department's calculation to achieve a 5% to 8% reduction in workers includes a hiring freeze to cull around 6,000 people for every month it remains in effect.

As of Friday, though, Hegseth has allowed^[5] the military branches to approve exemptions to the freeze, after review by the personnel and readiness directorate within his office.

The defense secretary also granted blanket exemptions to "shipyards, depots, and medical treatment facilities." The senior official said they couldn't say how many exemptions have been granted to date but described it as "a very active process."

Meanwhile, the plan to actually fire probationary employees appears to be on hold.

After announcing the plan Feb. 21, it took the Pentagon a few weeks to begin to notify employees.

Military.com reported March 5 that civilian workers in at least four organizations -- the Defense Health Agency, Defense Logistics Agency, the Navy^[6] and the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences -- had been told they were fired while officials in Hegseth's office wouldn't provide the total number of firings in the department as a whole.

Then, late last week, two federal judges ruled^[7] that the Trump administration's mass firings -- characterized by board terminations of many probationary employees across numerous agencies, including the Pentagon -- were likely unlawful and the employees had to be re-hired.

As a result, the senior official would say only that the plan to remove 5,400 probationary employees was "the subject of ongoing litigation" and that the Pentagon was "committed to fully complying with every applicable court order regarding the process."

The official didn't answer questions about how close the department got to its goal of 5,400 civilian employees or whether they had since been re-hired.

The senior official also argued that the Pentagon "did not undertake probationary employee removals just blindly based on the time they had been hired" and that "the fact that someone was a probationary employee did not directly mean that they were going to be subject to removal."

Reporters have discovered that fast-moving and wide-reaching efforts by Musk's so-called Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, to trim the federal workforce resulted in the removal of key experts, like those responsible for America's nuclear weapons and scientists trying to fight a worsening outbreak of bird flu.

After those actions became public, the Trump administration then moved to hire those employees back.

Some of the DOGE-inspired policies, like the clampdown on government travel card spending, led to similar unintended consequences at the Pentagon, too.

Military.com first reported^[8] that on March 7 the Army^[9] suddenly halted travel funding that enabled potential recruits to take the military entrance exam at remote locations and high schools and furloughed all the employees. Then, a week later, the program was reinstated^[10].

However, it appears that Hegseth, who until recently was personally involved in some of the decisions surrounding which employees could stay or go, is not backing away from his goal of trimming his department's workforce.

"There are other methods available to the secretary," the senior official said, adding that "it'll be the secretary's prerogative to designate how and when he might use any of the other tools that would be available to him to achieve the state of reduction targets."

The senior official also conceded that the workforce reductions will affect some of the more than 30,000 veterans^[11] who are employed by the Pentagon.

"Within the military, there are times where you see that individuals will leave service when their services are no longer directly in the nation's interest," the senior official said. "The same thing is true in the civilian side, and some of those people will be veterans that served in uniform previously."

Related: Firings Begin at the Pentagon: Veterans, Civil Servants Caught in the Crosshairs^[12]

Troop pay^[1] will be protected and money to cover an upcoming pay raise^[2] for junior enlisted service members will be secure after Congress approved an extension of government funding through September.

The Senate voted 54-46 to approve a stopgap spending bill known as a continuing resolution, or CR, on Friday evening, just hours before a potential government shutdown would begin. The House approved the CR earlier this week; it now awaits President Donald Trump's expected signature.

Government funding was set to expire at the end of the day Friday, meaning the government would have shut down at 12:01 a.m. Saturday without congressional action.

Read Next: Veterans Protest Trump Administration's Slashing of Federal Government^[3]

The bill was written entirely by House Republicans, and Trump backed the CR as a way to enable his administration to continue its unilateral cuts to the federal government.

"Great things are coming for America, and I am asking you all to give us a few months to get us through to September so we can continue to put the country's 'financial house' in order," Trump posted on social media last weekend, urging Republicans to support the bill.

The CR's passage was in doubt for most of the week because at least eight Democrats needed to join with Republicans to vote to advance it in the Senate. A procedural vote called a cloture motion requires 60 votes. Republicans hold 53 seats, and Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., came out in opposition to the bill early in the week.

But on Thursday evening, Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., announced he would back the cloture motion, arguing that a shutdown would allow Trump to cause more harm than a CR would. Schumer's decision gave a strong signal the CR would pass, and ultimately nine other Democrats joined Schumer to advance the bill in the procedural vote.

"While the CR bill is very bad, the potential for a shutdown has consequences for America that are much, much worse," Schumer, who voted against final passage even though he supported cloture, said on the Senate floor Thursday night.

In a government shutdown, troops continue working without getting paid unless Congress passes separate legislation to allow paychecks to continue during the shutdown -- making shutdowns anathema to the Pentagon.

While funding will continue now, the approval of the bill also means this will be the first time the Pentagon will operate under a CR for the entire fiscal year.

The Pentagon typically hates CRs because they force the military to operate under the previous year's budget while facing increased costs. In general, CRs simply extend existing funding levels, though lawmakers sometimes include some extra funding.

In this CR, Congress sought to mitigate some of the fallout for the military by adding $6 billion above last year's budget for the Pentagon.

In particular, Congress added funding for military personnel accounts^[4] for a 10% pay raise that junior enlisted service members are slated to get in April. The junior enlisted pay raise would have taken effect without extra funding being approved in the CR because Congress authorized the raise in the defense policy bill passed in December, but the military would have had to raid other personnel funds such as for retention bonuses in order to cover the increased paychecks.

Despite the CR including some extra Pentagon funding, top officers testified to Congress this week that it^[5] will still have some harmful effects on the military.

The CR also includes an extra $6 billion for the Department of Veterans Affairs^[6] to make up for a shortfall in the Toxic Exposures Fund that was first identified by the Biden administration last year.

In addition to passing the CR, the Senate also voted Friday evening on an amendment offered by Sen. Tammy Duckworth, D-Ill., that would have reinstated all veterans fired from the federal government by the Trump administration.

Thousands of federal workers, including thousands of veterans, have been fired as part of Trump's sweeping efforts to slash the government.

Duckworth's amendment failed entirely along party lines, with all 47 Democrats supporting and all 53 Republicans opposing.

Related: GOP Plan to Avert Government Shutdown Would Fund Next Month's Junior Enlisted Pay Raise^[7]

In 1950, global plastic production was about 2 million tons. It’s now about 400 million tons^[1] – an increase of nearly 20,000%.

As a material, it has seemingly limitless potential. Plastic is inexpensive to produce while being lightweight and sturdy. Its applications range from food and beverage packing to clothing and health care.

When a...

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