President Trump has taken a cleaver to the federal bureaucracy over the past week, sparing hardly any part of the government as agencies fired thousands of recently hired employees his administration said it could do without.
The firings affected the Department of Veterans Affairs, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Fish and Wildlife Service. They targeted probationary employees who had not worked long enough to earn civil service protections.
The ousters effectively remove thousands of junior-level employees before they can take root and could have longer-lasting effects by making government service less attractive.
Democrats and some Republicans complained that the cuts were indiscriminate, though the Trump administration insisted they were intended to achieve efficiencies, not chaos.
The 1,000 probationary employees fired at Veterans Affairs represent less than a quarter of 1% of the department’s total workforce and only slightly more than 2% of its 43,000 probationary workers.
Veterans Affairs Secretary Doug Collins said he would put the savings back into services.
“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,” Mr. Collins said. “To be perfectly clear: These moves will not negatively impact VA health care, benefits or beneficiaries.”
As the firings progressed last week, the tally drew cheers from some conservatives and cries of outrage from Democrats.
The cuts affected more than 400 employees at the Fish and Wildlife Service; at least 400 Homeland Security Department personnel; 4,500 workers at the U.S. Forest Service; 388 workers at the Environmental Protection Agency; 3,600 staffers at the Department of Health and Human Services, including 1,300 at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention; at least 1,200 employees at the Energy Department; and 720 employees at the Small Business Administration.
Even the Office of Personnel Management, the government’s chief human resources agency that directed the firings, eliminated dozens of its probationary employees.
The Washington Times reported this weekend that the Justice Department fired 13 immigration judges who were last-minute hires of the Biden administration.
Layoffs are a part of Mr. Trump’s full-scale assault on the federal bureaucracy.
He has strategically ousted senior leaders, delivered warning shots to employees resisting his policy choices and made money-saving cuts from the lower ranks.
He is pursuing his “Fork in the Road” buyout plan for tens of thousands of federal workers after a judge allowed the process last week.
Some 75,000 federal employees took the buyout, White House officials said.
The firings of probationary employees and workers at the U.S. Agency for International Development, Mr. Trump’s directive to shutter diversity, equity and inclusion offices, and the president’s early cuts affect about 100,000 workers.
A federal judge has blocked the USAID cuts.
Several legal challenges to the probationary worker firings are also brewing, including one filed by several labor unions representing federal workers.
NBC News reported that the administration regretted some of its terminations at the National Nuclear Security Administration.
“The termination letters for some NNSA probationary employees are being rescinded, but we do not have a good way to get in touch with those personnel,” read an email to NNSA employees, according to NBC.
ICT News, a website specializing in American Indian affairs, reported that Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. had rescinded the layoffs of 950 employees at the Indian Health Service.
Mr. Trump’s critics said he would cut the federal government with a blunt hatchet instead of a scalpel.
“Indiscriminate workforce cuts aren’t efficient and won’t fix the federal budget, but they will hurt good people who have answered the call to public service to do important work for our nation,” said Sen. Lisa Murkowski, Alaska Republican.
Lawmakers were particularly grouchy over cuts that slashed jobs in their states.
“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,” said Sen. Jon Ossoff, a Democrat. Atlanta is home to the CDC.
Lawmakers also leaped to defend agencies with particularly sympathetic missions.
Sen. Richard Blumenthal, Connecticut Democrat, said the VA is already facing shortages and could ill afford to lose the 1,000 employees who were cut.
He said Mr. Trump went after probational employees because they were easier targets and that the government invested significant resources in training them only to give up before they could deliver returns.
• Stephen Dinan can be reached at sdinan@washingtontimes.com.