White House says some employees were fired by mistake

Paul Martin, the inspector general for the U.S. Agency for International Development, was fired on Tuesday by the White House's Office of Presidential Personnel.

Martin's firing comes a day after his office released a report saying USAID had lost the ability to track and monitor more than $8 billion in unspent aid and risked $500 million in U.S.-grown food aid spoiling as a result of Trump's changes to the agency.

Marc Meyer, assistant inspector general for investigations at USAID, will now take over Martin's role.

"It has been a true honor and pleasure to walk alongside my OIG colleagues around the world as we sought to provide independent and aggressive oversight of USAID programs and personnel," Martin wrote in a Tuesday email to his Office of Inspector General colleagues.

A USAID official told ABC News following Martin's dismissal, "Paul was the most apolitical of apoliticals. He did not deserve this. He had decades of experience as a leader in the IG community and is known for pushing out timely and impactful oversight to make government better, more accountable to taxpayers, and deter fraud and corruption -- whether at DOJ, NASA, or most recently at USAID."

-ABC News' Karen Travers, Ben Siegel and Will Steakin

With snowflakes pummeling the Capitol dome, senators struck a deal Tuesday night to push back a final confirmation vote on Tulsi Gabbard's nomination to serve as director of national intelligence.

The Senate was poised to vote on Gabbard's nomination Tuesday at around midnight, but the vote for Gabbard will now occur at 11 a.m. on Wednesday.

The deal means that senators won't have to slip and slide back to the Capitol at midnight on Tuesday, but it also includes a compromise that allows a final vote on Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s confirmation, which is expected later this week, to go on as scheduled, alleviating GOP concerns that pushing Gabbard's vote would have a domino effect that also delayed Kennedy's.

Assuming Kennedy makes it through a test vote on Wednesday that is now scheduled for after the 11 a.m. vote on Gabbard, a final vote on Kennedy's nomination will likely take place around 7 a.m. Thursday morning.

-ABC News' Allison Pecorin

The White House released Trump's executive order that uses the Department of Government Efficiency to shrink the federal workforce.

According to the order, the director of the Office of Management and Budget will submit a plan to reduce the size of the federal government's workforce through efficiency improvements and attrition.

"The Plan shall require that each agency hire no more than one employee for every four employees that depart, consistent with the plan and any applicable exemptions and details provided for in the Plan," the order said. "This order does not affect the standing freeze on hiring as applied to the Internal Revenue Service."

Each agency head will be tasked to develop a data-driven plan, in consultation with its DOGE team lead, "to ensure new career appointment hires are in highest-need areas."

According to the order, the agency will not fill any vacancies for career appointments that the DOGE team lead assesses should not be filled unless the agency head determines the positions should be filled.

"Agency Heads will undertake preparations to initiate large-scale reductions in force (RIFs), consistent with applicable law, and to separate from Federal service temporary employees and reemployed annuitants working in areas that will likely be subject to the RIFs," the order added.

-ABC News’ Hannah Demissie

The Department of Education has temporarily agreed to block representatives from the Department of Government Efficiency from accessing sensitive student loan records, according to a filing late on Tuesday.

The University of California Student Association reached an agreement that prohibits any federal employee or contractor associated with DOGE from accessing records from Department of Education systems, including the National Student Loan Data System.

The agreement, which will stay in place as the lawsuit moves through the court, also bars any federal employees or volunteers associated with DOGE from sharing any information they might have already received from the Department of Education systems.

The agreement followed a short conference Tuesday morning in which a federal judge signaled skepticism about the University of California Student Association's grounds for bringing the lawsuit.

-ABC News' Peter Charalambous