WASHINGTON — Imagine becoming president of the United States and one of the first things you do is fire the people in charge of managing the country’s nuclear weapons.
For good measure, imagine you also went ahead and fired scientists trying to prevent a national outbreak of a deadly bird flu, military veterans who run a national crisis line and environmental stewards who keep the country’s hugely popular national parks clean and safe for millions of summertime visitors.
Oops! President Donald Trump — with the assistance of his buddy Elon Musk, the world’s richest man ― did all of these things, and now he’s backpedaling, scrambling to rehire hundreds if not thousands of federal workers he just pushed out.
After weeks of sowing chaos across the federal government with drastic and arbitrary (and likely illegal) mass firings, the Trump administration is figuring out the hard way, after turning tens of thousands of people’s lives upside-down, that federal employees and the work they do is essential for millions of Americans’ safety, health and general happiness.
From the moment Trump resumed office in January, Musk has been moving at warp speed to dismiss as many federal employees as possible — the White House’s stated goal is 10% of the federal workforce — in his role atop Trump’s newly created commission, the Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE.
It’s not clear how many of the 2.4 million members of the civilian federal workforce have been pushed out so far. The Office of Personnel Management — the human resources agency of the federal government — has said about 75,000 workers accepted a “deferred resignation” proposal, and Trump is ordering federal agencies to lay off “probationary employees,” or people who have generally been on the job for a year or less. That accounts for about 220,000 federal employees as of March 2024, per OPM data.
But as it plows ahead with mass firings, the Trump administration hasn’t been paying much attention to whom it’s actually dismissing or what roles those people fulfilled. The results have been disastrous, and in some cases have left Trump officials with little choice but to backtrack in the face of pressure from the public and members of Congress.
“We are building the rocket as we’re launching it,” national security adviser Mike Waltz declared Friday at a far-right conservative political conference, apparently unaware of the irony of his claim.
Here’s a look at the messes Trump has made by randomly firing federal employees ― and then racing to rehire them because my god do we need these people.
People Who Manage America’s Nuclear Bombs
Last week, Trump administration officials dismissed more than 300 employees at the National Nuclear Security Administration, a team of people who oversee the country’s nuclear weapons.
It wasn’t long before the administration backpedaled after several members of Congress warned of the “dire national security implications” of not having these staffers.
Trump officials spent last weekend racing to reinstate all of them, except they couldn’t figure out how to reach some of them.
It’s not clear how many will return to work.
Scientists Fighting The Ongoing Bird Flu Outbreak
The Department of Agriculture has been scrambling to rehire employees it recently dismissed who were part of an office that reportedly helps oversee a national network of labs that the agency uses to confirm cases of bird flu and other animal diseases.
The bird flu has devastated egg and poultry farms over the past three years. It’s not clear how many people in this federal office were fired or how many may be coming back.
Rep. Don Bacon (R-Neb.) chided the president for being careless with these cuts.
“While President Trump is fulfilling his promise to shed light on waste, fraud, and abuse in government, DOGE needs to measure twice and cut once,” Bacon said Wednesday. “Downsizing decisions must be narrowly tailored to preserve critical missions.”
People Who Make Sure We Have Clean Air And Water
After firing hundreds of employees at the Environmental Protection Agency, an unspecified number of them were suddenly rehired at a regional office in New England.
EPA managers reportedly did not explain why some employees were dismissed and then reinstated. Those who were brought back simply got this email message: “On behalf of EPA, we apologize for this inconvenience and thank you for your service to the Agency.”
Military Veterans Operating The Veterans Crisis Line
The Department of Veterans Affairs terminated 1,000 employees this week, but is apparently racing to rehire some who worked on the Veterans Crisis Line, a 24/7, confidential hotline that offers support to veterans and their loved ones.
“After pushing on their behalf, I’m relieved federal employees who were fired from the Veterans Crisis Line are set to be rehired,” Sen. Tammy Duckworth (D-Ill.) said Wednesday on social media. “Many were Veterans themselves.”
People Who Make Sure The Pacific Northwest Has Electricity
The Bonneville Power Administration, a federal power plant that runs a large hydroelectric dam in the Pacific Northwest, dismissed 200 probationary workers last week as part of Trump’s large-scale cuts. But as of Wednesday, it had hired 30 of them back.
These employees include electricians, lineworkers, cybersecurity experts and engineers, per local reporting, and were deemed “critical” to the agency’s work to manage the region’s electrical grid and keep people’s electricity on.
People Who Keep Our National Parks Clean And Operational
Thousands of people who work as seasonal employees at the National Park Service received emails last month that their jobs were canceled.
But this week, after public outcry from outdoors enthusiasts and Democratic senators, the Interior Department issued a memo saying park service officials could hire 7,700 seasonal employees this year — an increase over the 6,300 who have been hired in recent years.
The Trump administration’s reversal on park service workers is “definitely a win,” Kristen Brengel of the National Parks Conservation Association said Thursday.
Without seasonal workers on site during the peak season, national parks would have been forced to take steps like closing visitor centers and campgrounds, not cleaning bathrooms, and cutting back or canceling guided tours.
People Who Run 9/11 Health Programs
The Trump administration has reversed course on plans to cut staffing at the World Trade Center Health Program, which provides medical monitoring and treatment of health conditions for first responders and survivors of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attack in New York City.
Rep. Nicole Malliotakis (R-N.Y.) said in a Friday statement that she wrote to Trump earlier this week about program staff being let go because of cuts to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which oversees the program. She said the White House has since changed its plans.
“This is a reminder of why, when looking for savings to reduce our nation’s $37 trillion debt, we need to use a scalpel not a sledgehammer—to avoid unintended consequences and unnecessary anxiety,” Malliotakis said.
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) said Trump backed off cuts to this program after pressure from him and other Democrats.
“This lifesaving program should have never been on the chopping block in the first place and so it makes sense that the Trump administration has done a complete about-face and heeded our calls to reverse these devastating cuts and rehire the dedicated staff of the World Trade Center Health Program,” Schumer said in a Friday statement.
People On The Front Lines Of Public Health Responses
Public health officials in the CDC’s Epidemic Intelligence Service were initially warned they were going to lose their jobs, but over the weekend, they learned they were spared.
Known as CDC’s “disease detectives,” these employees would have fallen into the category of probationary workers because they are fellows who serve for two years. Some serve at the CDC or are sent to health departments around the country, taking part in public health responses.
The country would be “less safe” without these federal workers, Dr. Anne Schuchat, a former top-ranking CDC official told CBS News on Thursday. “These are the deployable assets critical for investigating new threats, from anthrax to Zika.”
Scientists Who Make Sure Medical Devices Are Safe And Effective
A week after firing hundreds of people at the Food and Drug Administration, the Trump administration scrambled over the weekend to hire back dozens of people who work on food safety, medical device reviews and other areas.
It’s not clear how many FDA workers were fired and promptly rehired, but The New York Times reported Monday that nearly all of the roughly 180 medical division staffers who were terminated are getting their jobs back. Previous reports suggest Trump fired roughly 700 people at the agency last week.
The FDA was facing pressure from lobbyists in the medical device industry to preserve these teams. Industry groups like AdvaMed pay the FDA hundreds of millions of dollars every year to bring on more scientists to promptly review the devices they make. The FDA oversees all kinds of medical devices, ranging from syringes to pacemakers to X-ray machines and ultrasound equipment.
“This would be welcome news, and I appreciate the administration for acting quickly,” AdvaMed CEO Scott Whitaker told The Associated Press on Monday regarding the fired medical device employees being rehired. “We all share the same goal — an efficient, effective FDA review process that helps advance the medical technologies American patients depend on.”
People Keeping The U.S. On The Cutting Edge Of Science, Engineering
The National Science Foundation is scrambling to rehire dozens of employees it fired weeks earlier after a federal judge said their firings were illegal.
An NSF spokesperson confirmed to HuffPost that 84 probationary employees are being reinstated, referring to people who have held their jobs for a year or less. The agency is reversing course after U.S. District Judge William Alsup ordered the Office of Personnel Management to inform several agencies that it had no authority to direct them to carry out mass firings.
“We started the process to reinstate those impacted probationary employees right away,” said the NSF spokesperson.
One of those 84 employees told HuffPost that he learned about his job being reinstated not from NSF, but from a colleague and via the press. He said he’s in a group chat with other NSF coworkers caught up in the illegal mass firings, and none had received notice of their jobs being reinstated.
“What a joke, finding out from colleagues and online – and not directly,” said this employee, who requested anonymity so he doesn’t get fired again.
Some of the 84 people getting their jobs back were singled out because they are veterans, military spouses or people with disabilities. They got word in late February that they’d be getting their jobs back, but it took time before they got official notice, said the NSF employee. In some cases, they were told they couldn’t come back for at least a week due to tight scheduling for getting new badges and reissuing their access to tech systems.
“What an absolute waste of time and money,” said this employee.
People Who Make Sure Our Food Is Safe And That Farmers Have Help
More than 5,000 people who were fired from the U.S. Department of Agriculture are now getting their jobs back after a government employee oversight board found that they were illegally terminated.
The Merit Systems Protection Board, a panel charged with protecting federal merit systems against partisan or political abuse, announced that it was broadening its previous decision that restored the jobs of six federal employees to all USDA employees who were haphazardly fired by the Trump administration. All of these federal staffers are probationary employees, or people who have generally been in their jobs for a year or less.
The head of the Office of Special Counsel, an independent federal watchdog agency that referred this case to the merit board, praised the board’s “important” decision and urged other agencies to follow suit.
“I am calling on all federal agencies to voluntarily and immediately rescind any unlawful terminations of probationary employees,” Special Counsel Hampton Dellinger said in a statement.
A day later, Dellinger, who has been a key figure in scrutinizing Trump’s mass firings, was out of a job.
People Who Protect Americans From Disease Outbreaks
Dozens of probationary employees who were fired from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention are now being reinstated.
CDC leaders reportedly asked 180 people to come back to work after their jobs were terminated in February. In an email with the subject line, “Read this e-mail immediately,” the previously fired workers were told they could return to work “after further review and consideration.”
“We apologize for any disruption that this may have caused,” reads the email.