Inside Trump’s federal worker firings

President Trump’s widespread firings of federal employees has reached every level of government, but critics say his selection of whom to axe is hardly arbitrary.

In just a few weeks on the job, President Trump has fired numerous inspectors general, forced out top FBI officials and overseen a purge of federal employees.

Some of the removals have targeted a series of officials sure to conduct oversight of Trump’s actions.

Other firings have been described by critics as retribution against agencies and institutions Trump has feuded with. Many have targeted the Democratic leaders of boards designed to handle employee complaints or protect consumer interests.

And then there is Elon Musk and the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), which have sought to shrink the entire government with broad workforce reductions.

Critics see an effort by Trump to stifle his opponents and go after bureaucrats he’s long decried as the deep state.

“What we're seeing is an effort by Donald Trump, Elon Musk, and DOGE and their cronies to purge what they wrongly perceive as their adversaries among federal employees from the treetops to the grassroots,” said Norm Eisen, whose group State Democracy Defenders Action has brought a flurry of litigation on behalf of fired employees.

Eisen called the firings the “cutting edge of the autocratic takeover.”

The Trump administration has defended its actions.

“There are a number of bureaucrats who are resistant to the democratic process and mandate delivered by the American people. President Trump is only interested in the best and most qualified people who are also willing to implement his America First Agenda on behalf of the American people,” White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said in a statement.

“It’s not for everyone, and that’s okay.”

The oversight apparatus

Trump within his first week in office fired 17 inspectors general in what critics called a midnight massacre, and he has forged ahead in firing the leaders of other oversight boards.

“It is more about taking out in advance those who would otherwise be in a position to cause Trump 2.0 problems and instead, either replace them with loyalists where possible, or simply have someone in an acting capacity who is now intimidated,” said Mark Zaid, who is among the lawyers helping fired employees launch lawsuits against the administration.

“It is an anticipatory, preemptive move to ensure those agencies, entities and individuals cannot cause him problems.”

Trump fired the head of the Office of the Special Counsel, which helps protect employees from wrongful termination, including reprisals against whistleblowers, and also enforces Hatch Act prohibitions on electioneering.

The head of the office, Hampton Dellinger, scored an early victory in court and was reinstated after arguing he was entitled to serve his full five-year term. The Trump administration has aggressively fought the case, even asking the Supreme Court to intervene, but the high court declined to step in at this juncture.

Trump similarly fired David Huitema, the head of the Office of Government Ethics, which plays a role in establishing standards of conduct and financial disclosure requirements for executive branch officials and monitors their complaints with ethics guidelines.

“It really speaks [to], I think, an effort to kind of dismantle all of the institutions across the government that are set up to serve as kind of an independent voice for integrity and for accountability,” Huitema said during an appearance on CBS News.

The number of inspectors general fired by Trump has also ticked up to 18 after the president fired the inspector general of the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) after a critical report.

Inspectors general are intended to be an independent voice within each agency to review accusations of wrongdoing and misuse of government funds.

Chioma Chukwu, executive director of the watchdog group American Oversight, said the action “defies logic.”

“The administration fired more than a dozen watchdog officials who are responsible with eliminating waste, fraud and abuse. That is what this administration purports to be about. That is why they allegedly created DOGE. So if that is the case, why would they have terminated these long serving, dedicated public servants without any articulated reason for why they have to be dismissed overnight,” Chukwu said.

In carrying out the firings, Trump did not comply with a law requiring him to give 30 days notice of any plans to remove an inspector general as well as his rationale for doing so.

Boards galore

In a series of firings in recent weeks, several of which have come late on Friday nights, the White House removed the Democratic members of various boards dedicated to reviewing employment complaints or looking out for consumers.

Trump fired Democratic members of the National Labor Relations Board, the Merit Systems Protection Board, Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) and the Federal Labor Relations Authority.

He also fired the director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) and all three Democratic members of the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board (PCLOB). The CFPB, created under the Obama administration as an idea spearheaded by Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), enforces financial laws that protect consumers while the PCLOB works to ensure government efforts to battle terrorism don't infringe on citizens’ civil liberties.

Many of those dismissed are Senate-confirmed officials nominated to a set term, prompting lawsuits from those who say they can only be removed from their posts for wrongdoing.

“I think what unites all of these actions, it's an effort to minimize the efficacy of these agencies,” said Rachel Weintraub, executive director of the Coalition for Sensible Safeguards.

“They have clear statutory authority about their missions, about their role, and this contradicts that and undermines these agencies' abilities to protect the public.”

Trump’s removal of the employment boards’ members comes as several have already been asked to review complaints from terminated employees.

In one case, a judge told unions that had sued over various Trump efforts to fire federal employees to first raise the matter with the Federal Labor Relations Authority, whose chair was ousted by Trump.

And it was Dellinger through his post at the Office of the Special Counsel who brought findings to the Merit Systems Protection Board (MSPB) asking them to block the firing of six employees who were terminated because they were still in their probationary phase as recent hires.

The MSPB agreed — temporarily reinstating the employees — but Dellinger and MSPB Chair Cathy Harris were only able to move forward on the matter after they launched their own litigation to get their jobs back. Courts have temporarily returned them to their roles as the pair of former President Biden appointees argue they are entitled to serve for their full term.

Chukwu said if courts don’t continue to keep the members on their boards, some of their work could come to a screeching halt.

“If those actions are not reversed, those agencies like the EEOC, like the MSPB, they're going to be left without a quorum, which means that no formal actions can be taken, which then means that the rights of workers will continue to go unaddressed. That has the potential of harming thousands of workers across the country, and that’s not something that any Americans should be OK with,” she said.

Trump’s interest in numerous independent boards was paired with an executive order seeking to limit their independence, saying board members “shall regularly consult with and coordinate policies and priorities” with various facets of the White House. The Democratic National Committee sued on Friday, arguing it could preclude independent agencies from taking legal positions that don’t align with the president’s views.

“The whole point of having bipartisan commissions was meant to insulate them against direct political interference, and it also reflects the technical nature of their work, of the unique significance of these commissioners on their work to perpetuate the goals of the agencies as very clearly laid out in statutes passed by Congress,” Weintraub said.

While Trump’s firings risk slowing the functioning of each agency, the suits challenging the removals tee up lawsuits that will test the limits of Trump’s executive power, likely reaching a court stacked with his appointees who have signaled a broad view of presidential authority.

“There's a real willingness from the administration to kind of fire first, deal with lawsuits later,” said Faith Williams with the Project on Government Oversight.

“They're moving very quickly, and they are not following these laws that Congress has passed, and I'm speculating, but perhaps it is because they feel that the courts will ultimately agree with their take on executive power.”

The White House in firing board members has cited Trump’s powers as an executive under Article II of the Constitution, which established the presidency.

Trump’s team has defended the firings in court, arguing Congress, when creating the boards, did not have the right to encroach on the president’s power to determine who should serve in the roles.

“The Department of Justice has determined that certain for-cause removal provisions that apply to members of multi-member regulatory commissions are unconstitutional, and that the Department will no longer defend their constitutionality,” acting Solicitor General Sarah Harris wrote to the Senate Judiciary Committee.

Retaliatory firings

Trump officials have fired a number of staff at agencies the president disfavors, starting with prosecutors who worked on special counsel Jack Smith’s team.

The FBI also fired its top five career leaders as well as the heads of numerous field offices.

In firing those staffers, the Justice Department (DOJ) said they could not be trusted to implement the president’s agenda.

The DOJ then demanded the FBI turn over a list of the thousands of agents who worked on the cases of the 1,500 individuals charged in relation with the storming of the Capitol. The department also asked agents to fill out a detailed survey about their roles in the probe.

The list appears to be a precursor to firing many of the agents, as FBI Director Kash Patel has said he plans to conduct a personnel review. Critics have said culling scores of experienced agents will only harm national security.

Zaid, the lawyer helping fired employees, is now representing plaintiffs in a suit to bar the Trump administration from releasing the names of FBI agents who worked on the cases as well as gearing up for any eventual firings.

“That is retaliation, with respect to anyone who worked on the Jan. 6 cases, which to Donald Trump was a direct attack on him and his supporters,” Zaid said.

Zaid compared his multiple employment cases to the defense of the Alamo — knowing he will not be able to successfully ward off the firings of all the employees he represents.

“We are Sam Houston and Davy Crockett at the Alamo. We’re doing our best as we’re fighting to try and get some people — give them an ability to escape. And then ultimately, once those escape pathways have been exhausted, then all we’re doing is defending and holding on for as long as we can. But ultimately we're going to lose. We're going to be overrun, overpowered,” he said.

“But there's a reason why the Alamo is remembered 170 or so years later … because of the principled stand that they took and the sacrifice.”

Trump also fired head of the National Archives Colleen Shogan last month, targeting any agency that has received the ire of Trump since it began pushing for him to return documents from his first presidency. The Archives ultimately referred the matter to the Justice Department, igniting Trump’s Mar-a-Lago documents probe.

Shogan, a Biden appointee, did not arrive at the National Archives until 2023, well after the Justice Department investigation.

Some also see the firing of USAID Inspector General Paul Martin as retaliatory as he was removed the day after he released a report critical of Trump administration efforts to gut the agency.

Trump also forced out Ellen Weintraub, the chair of the Federal Election Commission (FEC), which has oversight over Trump as a candidate.

The FEC chair was vocal in pushing back against Trump's claims in the wake of his 2020 loss.

The federal workforce at large

The Trump administration has also taken wide reaching actions to cull the number of federal employees, including recently instructing agencies to fire employees still in their probationary period.

The directive impacts some 200,000 employees hired in the last year or two, depending on their agency, as well as those who were recently promoted — which reignited their probationary status.

Since agencies received the Feb. 13 instruction, thousands of federal employees have lost their jobs and more cuts are coming.

“They've made us all less safe, whether it's terminating those who guard nuclear stockpiles, keep airplanes flying, control bird flu, fight fires in our national parks, investigate and prevent terrorism and human trafficking and other crimes affecting the American people and on and on,” said Eisen, of the State Democracy Defenders Action.

In some cases, the administration has had to rehire some of the workers who were just booted.

The administration turned around and tried to rehire those who manage the nation’s nuclear stockpiles, who were axed in broader firings at the Department of Energy. And it has also struggled to rehire U.S Department of Agriculture employees who were working on responding to the bird flu outbreak.

So far the administration has fired or has plans to imminently boot some 25,000 probationary workers, a figure that is only expected to grow.

In its next move, the White House has ordered agencies to embark on a reduction in force, kicking off mass layoffs in government.

Agencies have been ordered to turn over their restructuring plans by March 13.

“This is an incredibly chaotic and destructive way to affect change,” Zaid said of the mass firings.

“I think there’s probably merit in many of the things that Trump is doing, but not in the matter in which he is doing it … not in a manner that is destructive and contrary to the very missions of what these agencies are trying to do. And haphazardly [cutting employees] in a way that harms morale, undercuts the ability of these agencies to actually function, will, without a doubt, cause disruption upon the average American that has not yet been felt,” he added.

“And it is when that happens when we will start to see pushback against this administration.”

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