Trump administration fires thousands for ‘performance' without evidence, in messy rush

Yahoo

18-02-2025

The first message from her manager on Saturday afternoon misspelled Amanda Mae Downey's name. The second mentioned 'the news' about probationary federal workers, and how the Trump administration planned to fire them.
When Downey called her boss at a Michigan branch of the U.S. Forest Service for an explanation, she learned her name was on a firing list. She would have to come into the office to sign a letter formalizing her termination. And she had to do it before the holiday weekend was over.
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'I'm glad that our agency at least has decided we can do it in person,' her manager said, according to a recording Downey provided to The Washington Post. 'So we can add a little human touch to what's going on.'
Many federal government employees were dismissed over the holiday weekend as managers confronted a Trump administration demand to fire workers by Tuesday. In group texts and in online forums, they dubbed the error-ridden run of firings the 'St. Valentine's Day Massacre.'
The firings targeted new hires on probation, who have fewer protections than permanent employees, and swept up people with years of service who had recently transferred between agencies, as well as military veterans and people with disabilities employed through a program that sped their hiring but put them on two years' probation. Most probationary employees have limited rights to appeal dismissals, but union heads have vowed to challenge the mass firings in court. The largest union representing federal workers has also indicated it plans to fight the terminations and pursue legal action.
Critics warned of swift consequences as the administration raced to execute a vision Trump and billionaire Elon Musk have touted for a leaner, reshaped government. The latest wave of personnel actions already prompted an administrative complaint on behalf of workers at nine agencies, adding to more than a dozen legal tests of Trump's power filed one month into his term.
The Trump administration will not disclose how many workers it cut since last week ahead of its Tuesday deadline, but the government employed more than 200,000 probationary workers as of last year. The firings have extended to touch employees at almost every agency, including map makers, archaeologists and cancer researchers, The Post found, in choices that some workers said contradicted a U.S. Office of Personnel Management directive to retain 'mission-critical' workers.
This account of how the Trump administration's firing spree played out over the weekend, sowing pain and chaos, is based on interviews and messages with more than 275 federal workers, as well as dozens of government records and communications reviewed by The Post.
The Federal Aviation Administration let go hundreds of technicians and engineers just weeks after a midair collision miles from the White House killed 67 people, eliciting promises from Trump officials to improve air safety, workers said in interviews. FEMA, which handles the nation's natural disasters, is preparing to fire hundreds of probationary employees, according to four people familiar with the situation who, like others interviewed for this report, spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of retaliation. The agency is already stretched thin responding to fires in California and floods in Kentucky. And the administration terminated scores of employees who work to bolster America's nuclear defense, only to realize its error and start reversing the firings.
'I'd understand a strategic reduction in force if needed,' said one USDA employee, who was fired over the weekend. 'But this was a butchering of some of our best. Does the public know this?'
The termination letters hitting inboxes all struck the same note: Probationary workers were getting the ax for poor job performance. But many of those fired had just received positive reviews, or had not worked in the government long enough to receive even a single rating, according to interviews with federal employees and documents obtained by The Post.
Internal communications from the Office of Personnel Management obtained by The Post appeared to tie the performance directive to Trump's plans. In a message sent Friday to agencies, an OPM employee wrote that, because of Trump's mandated hiring freeze, probationary employees 'had no right to continued employment. … An employee's performance must be viewed through the current needs and best interest of the government, [in] light of the President's directive to dramatically reduce the size of the federal workforce.' OPM also provided a form email agencies could use to terminate workers, citing 'performance.'
Firing employees en masse with the same claim of poor performance is illegal, said Jim Eisenmann, a partner at the Alden Law Group, a law firm specializing in litigation by federal employees. It violates federal law covering career civil service employees, he said.
'It can't be true,' Eisenmann said. 'They're clearly not articulating this on an individual basis, which is what makes it so suspect.'
The White House referred questions about the firings to individual agencies and OPM. An OPM spokeswoman reiterated what the agency has previously said about the terminations: 'The probationary period is a continuation of the job application process, not an entitlement for permanent employment.'
Musk, whose U.S. DOGE Service is leading the drive to downsize government, over the weekend shared triumphant messages on X, the social media platform he owns. Close to 2 a.m. Monday, he reposted a picture of himself in a gladiator outfit and declared he was destroying 'the woke mind virus.'
A few hours after the post, Downey, the U.S. Forest Service employee, climbed into her car. She drove a half-hour to her office and signed her name to a letter putting an end to the income she relies on to support three children, an ailing mother and a husband who just lost his own job.
Before she walked out, she jotted five words above her signature: 'Received and accepted under duress.'
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Mistakes, miscommunication and confusion
The firings started Thursday, by email and on video calls, after the Trump administration held calls with agency heads ordering them to terminate most probationary and temporary employees. The dismissals picked up pace into the weekend, hitting thousands more at the Interior Department, the Department of Health and Human Services and the Energy Department.
Some employees said the proceedings seemed rushed, the details botched. Termination letters at Education listed the wrong job, or the wrong start date. A legal help number offered in a notice sent to a Small Business Administration employee led to the voicemail for an apartment building, not a lawyer. Some firing letters seemed copy-pasted from a form and left out the name of the agency where employees worked.
The Friday email to agencies from OPM only caused more confusion. The email at first directed agencies to finish all their firings by close of business Monday, a federal holiday. Agency leaders were supposed to send a spreadsheet listing all their terminated probationary employees to OPM chief of staff Amanda Scales by 8 p.m. that day, the email said. OPM later adjusted the deadline.
The 'tracker' should include 'which probationary employees have been terminated and which you plan to keep,' the email said. 'For those you plan to keep, provide an explanation of why.'
OPM also offered a template notice agencies could send to fired workers. It read in part: 'The Agency finds, based on your performance, that you have not demonstrated that your further employment at the Agency would be in the public interest.' Federal law gives agencies wide latitude to fire probationary workers so long as they provide written notice 'as to why he is being separated [and] the agency's conclusions as to the inadequacies of his performance or conduct.'
The Alden Law Group and Democracy Forward, a legal group that has challenged several Trump policies dating back to his first term, filed a complaint on behalf of fired probationary employees.
U.S. District Judge Tanya S. Chutkan is weighing a request from a group of states to block Musk's team from accessing sensitive data and ousting employees from seven federal agencies. In a hearing Monday, she signaled that she may reject the complaint, saying that DOGE appeared to be moving unpredictably but that the plaintiffs had not pointed to enough evidence of irreparable harm to justify an immediate ban on its activities.
Government personnel rules state that newly hired career employees serve probationary terms of one to two years, with attorneys and others who do specialized work falling in the lengthier category. Others, including scientists, can be hired for limited terms of one to four years, depending on the agency and role. Some of these have now been let go, federal workers said in interviews. Others who served at one agency but transferred to another job elsewhere in the government in interviews reported being dismissed, since the probation clock starts anew with a new agency.
In one division within the National Institutes of Health (NIH), firing emails began to go out Friday morning without supervisors' knowledge, prompting a division director to call an all-hands meeting that afternoon. There, the director said all probationary workers were being terminated, according to a probationary employee.
There were two mistakes on the list of probationary people, the director noted, which leadership was working to fix. The NIH employee hoped she was one of the 'mistakes.' She waited, anxiety building, until Saturday at 6 p.m., when she got her answer - in the form of an email stating her 'ability, knowledge and skills' no longer 'fit the Agency's needs.'
Directors at the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services, known as CMS, were told Friday to reassure their probationary workers they would not be targeted, said a manager there. Then on Friday afternoon, probationary workers began to be 'deactivated' in CMS systems, losing their access and user profiles with no notice. The letters started coming in a trickle at noon the next day - then a flood, the manager said. By Saturday evening, it was clear: All had been cut.
Americans have long held an appetite for government reform, but the breakneck pace of change could imperil public services, said Donald Kettl, a professor emeritus at the University of Maryland who specializes in the civil service.
'If there's any one thing that anyone on government's inside would quietly agree about, it's that the current civil service is badly broken and that the system is full of wasteful bloat,' Kettl said. 'But a clumsy fix is worse than no fix at all. It's like going to a meat market, getting a piece of steak, and trying to cut out the fat with a sledgehammer. That would only make a mess of the meat.'
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'Above fully successful,' fired for performance
One Transportation Department worker found out he was fired on Valentine's Day just after putting his children to bed, as he sat down to watch a movie with his wife. An Agriculture employee discovered he was terminated the morning after attending an ex-partner's funeral. A Natural Resource Conservation Service employee was cut months after the government paid $20,000 to relocate his family North Dakota.
Others targeted in the wave of firings fixated on the emails explaining why, struggling to understand.
Employees who were told their performance was at issue said they had earned evaluations, reviewed by The Post, that offered evidence of their good work.
'Above fully successful,' read a November assessment of a fired General Services Administration worker.
'An outstanding year, consistently exceeding expectations,' stated a review for a former NIH employee, whose manager credited her for 'mastering a steep learning curve and becoming an invaluable asset.'
One well-rated Veterans Affairs staffer texted her boss to complain after she was fired. In text messages obtained by The Post, he replied: 'It states it's due to your performance which is not true. … Your performance has nothing to do with this.'
Others were stunned to find themselves included in the probationary category, including a federal nurse with more than five years of government employment who recently moved under military orders with her spouse - and had to switch agencies as a result. Now she's out of a job.
A veteran of the National Park Service, who had worked parks including Yosemite, Shenandoah and the Great Smoky Mountains, last year left a permanent position to accept a promotion in a new park. There, she was told she'd have to serve one year of probation. On Valentine's Day, she was fired for 'performance,' ending a quarter-century of service.
'It is very brutal,' she said. 'Especially after working and dedicating most of my life to the NPS.'
Some lamented that they had hoped to forge careers in federal service but won't get the chance.
Luke Graziani, a disabled Army veteran, was five weeks from completing his probation year on Friday, when he logged into his work computer at the Bronx Veterans Affairs hospital.
Waiting on the screen was a boilerplate termination email citing performance concerns. Graziani printed out the message and took it to his boss, who was shocked - and promised to submit a request for exemption.
'You're critical staff,' Graziani recalled his boss saying. 'We're going to try.'
Graziani, who is 45 and has four children, had believed until this weekend that his veteran status would protect his job. He served 20 years in the Army, first as a supply specialist and then in public affairs, deploying for two tours in Iraq and another two in Afghanistan before retiring in 2023.
In the hours after his termination, Graziani tried to figure out what to do. Then he thought of Douglas A. Collins, the newly appointed veterans affairs secretary, who vowed in his confirmation hearing that 'we will not stop until we succeed on behalf of the men and women who have worn the uniform.'
Graziani sat down and composed a letter.
'You see, I am a Veteran too. Just like you, Sec. Collins, I spent those same hot nights in Iraq, waiting for the all-clear after an incoming round set off the alert system, praying that there wouldn't be another,' he wrote.
Then he asked for his job back: 'This can't be how my service to my country ends.'
As of Monday, Collins had not replied.
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Derek Hawkins and Brianna Sacks contributed to this report.
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