WASHINGTON — The administration of President Donald Trump initiated the mass dismissal of federal employees on Thursday.
Officials from the Office of Personnel Management convened with agency leaders and recommended that probationary employees be let go, as reported by a source familiar with the discussions.
According to the Office of Personnel Management, the potential impact could extend to hundreds of thousands of individuals, although the precise number of terminations remains unclear at this time.
Stay updated with live political coverage here.
Probationary employees usually have a federal government tenure of only one or two years, prior to the activation of their civil service protections.
“The probationary period serves as a continuation of the job application process, rather than a guarantee of permanent employment,” stated an OPM spokesperson. “Agencies are independently addressing this matter in response to the recent hiring freeze and to assist the President’s overarching objective to reform and streamline the federal government, enhancing service for the American people at the highest standards.”
The American Federation of Government Employees, representing federal workers, strongly criticized the action. AFGE President Everett Kelley remarked that the administration “has misused the probationary period to implement a politically motivated mass firing, targeting employees not due to performance issues, but because they were hired prior to Trump’s presidency.”
“These dismissals aren’t based on poor performance—there is no indication these individuals were anything less than dedicated public servants. It’s a pursuit of power,” Kelley added. “The aim is to dismantle the federal government, mute employees, and compel agencies into compliance with a radical agenda that values cronyism over capability.”
The full scope of the firings is still uncertain. The Department of Veterans Affairs announced on Thursday that it would terminate over 1,000 employees, including certain probationary staff. Within the department, there are more than 43,000 probationary employees, but the VA indicated that the “vast majority” are “exempt from today’s personnel actions as they hold mission-critical roles—mainly those assisting with benefits and services for VA beneficiaries—or are part of a collective bargaining agreement,” according to their press release.
The Education Department started laying off dozens of probationary employees on Wednesday. Meanwhile, in the Department of Housing and Urban Development, senior management was informed of which team members would be let go and were warned to anticipate up to a 50% workforce reduction, as conveyed by two HUD employees. The U.S. Forest Service is reportedly set to terminate a minimum of 3,400 individuals, as shared by Dennis Lapcewich, communications chair for the National Federation of Federal Employees’ Forest Service Council.
This development follows an announcement from an OPM spokesperson on Wednesday indicating that approximately 75,000 federal employees accepted the White House’s “deferred resignation” offer to exit their positions while still being compensated through September. NBC News has not independently verified this figure.
In the recent past, the Trump administration has targeted the U.S. Agency For International Development and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. Thousands of support contractors at USAID faced termination or were placed on leave this month.
Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency has pledged to eliminate what he and Trump characterize as wasteful expenditures.
On the inaugural day of his second term, Trump instituted a hiring freeze, preventing the filling of vacant federal civilian roles and generally prohibiting the creation of new positions. The freeze has encountered legal pushback, with a federal appeals court on Tuesday declining the Trump administration’s request to suspend a lower court’s ruling, which temporarily halted the federal funding freeze.
