WASHINGTON (States Newsroom) — The Trump administration Friday continued its mass firing of thousands of probationary federal employees in an attempt to remove workers recently hired under the Biden administration and to cull the federal workforce.
President Donald Trump wants to shrink the federal government’s 2.4 million-person workforce, and the targeting of roughly 220,000 probationary employees is the easiest route, as relatively few federal employees accepted an earlier resignation offer pushed by Trump adviser and billionaire Elon Musk.
Those probationary workers are either newly hired or have worked in the federal government for decades and started a new role that subjects them to a probationary status of one to two years.
The federal workforce is employed all over the country, with 80% outside the District of Columbia, Maryland, and Virginia metro area. States with a high presence of federal employees include California, Texas, Florida, Georgia, Pennsylvania, Alaska, New Mexico, Oklahoma, and Oregon.
The White House did not respond to States Newsroom’s request for comment about exactly how many federal workers were fired or where they were located.
Latest action by Trump
It’s the latest attempt by the Trump administration to decimate federal agencies and the workforce following the halting of work at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and the dismantling of the U.S. Agency for International Development.
Media reports of federal agencies that fired employees within the probationary window include the Department of Education, General Services Administration, Office of Personnel Management, the Small Business Administration, the U.S. Forest Service, Veterans Affairs, National Nuclear Security Administration, and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The decision has drawn swift backlash from unions. The National Federation of Federal Employees, with 110,000 members, has filed a lawsuit against the Trump administration over the mass firings as well as the resignation offer.
Another union of 800,000 federal workers, the American Federation of Government Employees, also slammed the White House.
AFGE President Everett Kelley said in a statement that the Trump administration “has abused the probationary period to conduct a politically driven mass firing spree, targeting employees not because of performance, but because they were hired before Trump took office.”
“These firings are not about poor performance — there is no evidence these employees were anything but dedicated public servants,” Kelley said. “They are about power. They are about gutting the federal government, silencing workers, and forcing agencies into submission to a radical agenda that prioritizes cronyism over competence.”
‘Indefensible, indiscriminate’
Democratic lawmakers have also blasted the Trump administration for the mass firings.
Georgia’s Sen. Jon Ossoff slammed the firing of more than 1,000 CDC workers. The agency is based in Atlanta.
“President Trump’s indefensible, indiscriminate firing of more than 1,000 CDC personnel in a single day leaves Americans exposed to disease and devastates careers and livelihoods for the world’s most talented doctors and scientists, many of them here in Georgia,” Ossoff said on the Senate floor.
The federal agency that employs 21% of the workforce, Veterans Affairs, fired more than 1,000 federal employees Friday.
VA Secretary Doug Collins said the action will save the agency $98 million. For fiscal year 2024, Congress appropriated $135.3 billion in non-defense discretionary funding and $161.7 billion in mandatory funding for the VA, as well as advance funding for medical care and benefits.
“At VA, we are focused on saving money so it can be better spent on Veteran care. We thank these employees for their service to VA,” Collins said in a statement. “This was a tough decision, but ultimately, it’s the right call to better support the Veterans, families, caregivers, and survivors the department exists to serve.”
Roughly 30% of the 2.3 million federal workforce are veterans.
Maryland’s Democratic Sen. Chris Van Hollen on Thursday held a rally outside the VA with union representatives, protesting the incoming firings of federal workers.
“Their real ultimate goal is to shut down very important services to the American people and use the savings from denying those services to working Americans to provide tax cuts to the very wealthy, like Elon Musk and the others who were behind President Trump on inauguration day,” Van Hollen said. “When he talked about the ‘golden age’ he was talking about delivering even more money to Elon Musk and the tech titans.”
Firings at Forest Service, Interior
The U.S. Forest Service will fire roughly 3,400 federal workers, according to Politico.
And the U.S. Interior Department announced it was firing up to 2,300 probationary employees, according to Reuters. The agency has regional offices in Denver, Colorado; Portland Oregon; Santa Fe, New Mexico; Atlanta, Georgia; Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; Anchorage, Alaska; Oakland, California; and Boston, Massachusetts.
Deputy Director Aaron Weiss of the Center for Western Priorities slammed Interior Secretary Doug Burgum for the firing of workers from the Interior Department.
“Firing the next generation of America’s park rangers, scientists, and land managers is a recipe for literal disaster,” Weiss said. “I don’t know whether we’ll see overflowing latrines, polluted streams, or deadly wildfires first, but Doug Burgum is already leaving a path of destruction across America’s parks and public lands.”
