Special Poll
Over the past two days, the Trump administration has dismissed thousands of federal employees, affecting a wide range of jobs, including those in wildfire prevention and medical research.
A mass firing of this scale is unprecedented and is expected to have a lasting impact on how the federal government operates for years to come. The White House has not yet provided an official count of the number of employees affected and has not responded to requests for comment.
Agencies were instructed to complete these firings by 8 p.m. on Tuesday, though exceptions could be made on a case-by-case basis. There are approximately 200,000 probationary employees across the federal government—those who have worked for an agency for less than one to two years. In addition to these terminations, around 75,000 employees had previously accepted a deferred resignation offer linked to a restructuring plan associated with Elon Musk’s DOGE initiative.
Many of the firings have been conducted over email. Most of those being let go are probationary employees or individuals with term-limited positions, but some permanent civil servants have also been dismissed. Employees at agencies such as the IRS, CFPB, and USDA have confirmed that they or their colleagues received termination notices, with more expected.
In an unexpected move, all 18 career communications staffers at the Office of Personnel Management (OPM), which functions as the government’s HR department, were fired. This decision effectively eliminated the agency’s public relations team, mirroring the cuts Musk made at Twitter after his takeover. According to reports, OPM also terminated dozens of probationary employees during a group video call on Thursday afternoon, giving them less than an hour to leave the building.
The Department of Energy also issued notices informing probationary employees that they were being let go, stating that their continued employment was “not in the public interest.” Meanwhile, the Department of Veterans Affairs confirmed that it had dismissed over 1,000 employees on Thursday.
CNN reported 3,400 dismissals at the U.S. Forest Service and another 2,000 at the Energy Department, while STAT confirmed that 5,200 workers at the Department of Health and Human Services were targeted for termination.
A spokesperson for OPM described the probationary period as an extension of the hiring process, adding that agencies were taking independent action in response to a hiring freeze and in alignment with the administration’s plan to streamline the federal government. Sources indicate that agencies were advised to fire probationary employees unless they were deemed essential to mission-critical operations.
Everett Kelley, president of the American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE), strongly criticized the administration’s actions, arguing that the probationary period was being misused to carry out a politically motivated purge rather than assessing job performance. He claimed that the administration was targeting employees simply because they were hired before Trump took office.
As these mass firings reshape the federal workforce, questions remain about whether additional funding or measures could be put in place to stabilize key agencies and prevent further disruptions. If Trump were to increase government resources, agencies could potentially recover from these losses, but without intervention, the long-term impact of these terminations could be significant.