Americans could soon start to feel the repercussions of the Trump administration’s decision to fire thousands of government workers — from public safety to health benefits and basic services that they have come to rely on.
Trump’s directive to slash thousands of jobs across agencies is leaving gaping holes in the government, with thousands of workers being laid off from the Education Department, the Office of Personnel Management, the Department of Veterans Affairs and multiple others.
At the U.S. Forest Service, where some 3,400 workers are slated to be cut, wildfire prevention will be curtailed as the West grapples with a destructive fire season that has destroyed millions of acres in California.
And the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention wasn’t spared: Almost half of the agency’s 2,800 probationary employees were cut while about 400 employees appeared to have taken the “buy-out” offer, meaning the agency responsible for protecting Americans from disease outbreaks and other health hazards will lose about a tenth of its workforce. That’s on top of more than 2,000 probationary employees fired from the Department of Health and Human Services, the CDC’s parent agency.
“Morale is tanked,” said a forest service official close to the situation — who, like many current and former government employees who spoke to POLITICO, was granted anonymity out of fear of retribution. “The public will see it this summer when campgrounds are shut down, trails aren’t maintained and bathrooms aren’t cleaned.”
Should the gutting of the federal government result in immediate negative consequences for the American people, the Trump administration could face political backlash from voters in Republican and Democratic states who suddenly find a host of services — including access to government websites or even benefits — vanish.
The Office of Personnel Management, which serves as the federal government’s human resources department, has been operated by associates of Elon Musk for weeks. The agency, which also laid off staff, sent out the so-called “Fork in the Road” deferred resignation notice to federal employees allowing those who opted in to resign their posts but be paid to not work through September.
A lawsuit filed by union officials representing federal workers temporarily halted the program, but a federal judge ruled the program could move forward, because the union officials didn’t have standing. The Trump administration then said no more federal employees could opt into the program — and the next day, the terminations of federal workers on probation resumed.
“We definitely cut more than probationary employees,” a person familiar with Office of Personnel Management firings said Friday. “We cut the entire communications department” and career employees too, the person added. In total, the person said as many as 200,000 civil service workers across the federal government that were in their probationary period as of this week could receive termination notices.
Potential effects
The firings came so swiftly this week that some Forest Service employees were told they would lose their job before there was any paperwork to sign.
Arizona and New Mexico’s fire season is set to begin, and Forest Service personnel have typically sent staff from California to help respond this time of year. But according to a Forest Service employee in the West, that’s not possible with these layoffs and the hiring freeze. That means work — including mapping the spread of a fire, preparation for where it’s safe to conduct prescribed burns and even sending non-fire personnel in so-called “militias” to help combat a blaze — won’t happen.
Rep. Jared Huffman, a California Democrat, said that the Forest Service layoffs will have “devastating” impacts on wildfire mitigation efforts. “Fire safety projects are already frozen and being canceled all over the West,” he said. “We’re on track to lose an entire season of critical work, and this will only compound the problem. Who would even take a job with USFS right now?”
Musk and his team at the Department of Government Efficiency have targeted probationary employees across agencies — who have less protections and are therefore easier to fire. About 2,300 probationary employees were dismissed at the Interior Department, the agency in charge of managing more than 500 million acres of federal land, according to information two people shared with POLITICO.
Nearly 780 people were fired at the National Park Service, said one person briefed on the administration’s call with park superintendents. The NPS may have to cancel tours and possibly close visitor centers if they don’t have probationary employees in place on Monday, this person said.
‘Not help them achieve their policy goals’
Cuts of that scale wouldn’t just impact park-goers or workers who suddenly won’t have a paycheck. It could also imperil Trump’s own plans to boost energy production on public land if there aren’t enough employees in place to steadily process oil and gas drilling permits, said Steve Feldgus, Interior’s principal deputy assistant secretary for land and minerals management under the Biden administration.
“It’d have a huge impact,” Feldgus said of the cuts. “If you want to expand oil and gas onshore, you need land-use planners, realty specialists, environmental scientists, engineers, and more — and that’s just onshore. What they’re doing will hurt a lot of people and not help them achieve their policy goals.”
One Interior employee said he was told up to 800 staff could be let go at the agency’s Bureau of Land Management, the branch in charge of overseeing oil, gas and other energy production on federal land. The list of probationary staff to be fired included names of employees who had already finished their probation period, this staffer said.
“So for sure there will be accidental firings,” this employee said. “I think it’s just causing chaos and anxiety when we are merely trying to deliver on this Administration’s priorities.”
At the Department of Energy, cuts could directly impair management of a sprawling network of nuclear weapons storage and disposal sites, as well as efforts to combat nuclear terrorism around the world. Already, 325 staffers with the National Nuclear Safety Administration, one of the core units of the Energy Department which administers America’s nuclear deterrent in concert with the U.S. military, were terminated Thursday, per three current and former Energy Department employees familiar with the cuts. The cuts were partially rescinded on Friday, one of the former employees added, as agency leadership fights to keep as many staffers as possible. But it is unclear if all the employees will be permanently restored.
Daryl Kimball, who leads the Arms Control Association, a group which advocates for nuclear nonproliferation, added that the cuts could cause real health and safety risks to communities near nuclear bomb facilities and waste facilities, and threaten the jobs of the contractors actually carrying out the work of environmental remediation and waste management.
“We’re going to have less oversight and control over occupational health and environmental safety at these facilities,” said Kimball. “This is going to affect communities and workers in red states, blue states and purple states.”
A sense of uncertainty
At the General Services Administration, supervisors heard rumors layoff notices were supposed to be emailed to probationary workers since Wednesday afternoon. Those emails, though, didn’t land in staffers’ inboxes until Thursday around midnight and into Friday morning, according to six staffers who spoke with POLITICO.
It’s unclear how many people have been laid off, said a GSA manager and supervisor familiar with the matter, though many are probationary and they suspect over 100 of the agency’s approximately 12,000 staffers will be affected. It’s “like a tornado hit and we are still assessing damage,” the manager said.
“GSA has been and remains committed to ensuring a respectful and dignified process for our agency personnel during this transformation,” said an agency spokesperson in a statement. The spokesperson declined to provide data on how many staffers or what programs were cut.
The layoffs follow several requests from the Trump administration and newly appointed acting administrator and software entrepreneur Stephen Ehikian to slash GSA’s budget in half by cleaving contracts and personnel, according to notifications staff received earlier this month.
Benefit disbursements could be damaged
Haphazard cuts at GSA could be disastrous for the millions of Americans who rely on the agency’s services like Login.gov, the central login system for Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security. The agency also streamlines much of the federal government’s real estate, acquisition and other technical services, and cuts to these could have a domino effect across the government.
“With fewer people dedicated to this work it will hurt our ability to do that,” the manager said. “Staff are going to be deployed to multiple projects, workstreams might have to stop.”
In an internal memo obtained by POLITICO hours after the first layoff waves, Ehikian thanked “departing probationary employees” and other staff who accepted the federal government’s buyout program for their “hard work” and “service to this nation,” but did not explicitly mention the layoffs that roiled workers earlier that morning.
“GSA is setting the example in achieving the administration’s vision to reduce federal spending and become a more flexible and streamlined government that delivers better value for the American people,” Ehikian said.
The flurry of firings across agencies has raised anxieties and also halted productivity among the federal workforce who have survived the mass firings so far.
“Imagine you’ve got an office full of people who just watched their co-workers get fired without notice,” one federal employee told POLITICO. “They’re terrified. Waiting for the phone to ring for somebody to tell them that they’re next to the chopping block.”
Holly Otterbein, Natalie Fertig, Kelsey Tamborrino and Brakkton Booker contributed to this report.
