Fired and rehired: the dizzying confusion of Trump's government overhaul

HOME I I HI TECH NEWS I SPORTS I CONTACT

Elon Musk listens to U.S. President speak in the Oval Office of the White House in Washington, D.C., U.S., February 11, 2025. REUTERS/Kevin Lamarque/File Photo

Fired and rehired: the confusion of the government overhaul

By Timothy Gardner, Leah Douglas,
Tim Reid, Valerie Volcovici

WASHINGTON, Feb 21 (Reuters) - Federal workers responsible for America's nuclear weapons, scientists trying to fight a worsening outbreak of bird flu, and officials responsible for supplying electricity are among those who have been accidentally fired in President Donald Trump's rush to lay off tens of thousands of workers.

In an about face, the Trump administration is now rushing to rehire hundreds of these workers, revealing in the process how chaotic and potentially dangerous the rapid dismantling of the U.S. federal bureaucracy has been, labor union officials and governance experts told Reuters.

"This shows a level of absolute incompetence in the firing process," said Don Moynihan, a professor at the Ford School of Public Policy at the University of Michigan.

"They are taking a chainsaw to public services without any kind of careful review of the people being removed and the tasks they are employed for."

Anna Kelly, White House deputy press secretary, told Reuters that Trump is moving swiftly to cut wasteful spending and non-critical government jobs.

"Any key positions that were eliminated are being identified and reinstated rapidly as agencies are streamlined to better serve the American people," Kelly said.

Tech billionaire Elon Musk and his young aides at the cost-cutting Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) are in the midst of a radical downsizing of the federal bureaucracy at the behest of Trump, who views the government as bloated and corrupt.

DOGE did not respond to requests for comment.

They have adopted a blunt force approach toward the wholesale firing of workers, often focusing on categories of workers who are easier to fire, like probationary employees, rather than looking at individuals and the specific jobs they do.

That approach has led to a host of mistakes.

After nearly 180 workers were fired last week at the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA), an agency that manages the U.S. nuclear arsenal and secures dangerous radioactive materials around the world, all but 28 of those layoffs were later rescinded.

U.S. Energy Secretary Chris Wright, whose department oversees the NNSA, told Scripps News on Wednesday that he had moved too quickly in firing workers there.

"When we made mistakes on layoffs at NNSA, we reversed them immediately, less than 24 hours. But the security of our country, our nuclear deterrence, our nuclear weapons, is critical, and we ... don't take that lightly," Wright said.

The rescinding of the layoffs at NNSA came after managers got emails saying "STOP ALL ACTIONS WITH TERMINATIONS", according to a copy of the message seen by Reuters.

The impact was still reverberating on Thursday.

"Morale is shit and not a lot of work is getting done because people are shell shocked," one Energy Department source told Reuters.

Geraldine Richmond, until last month an Energy Department under secretary, told a congressional hearing on Thursday that the speed of the cuts could have long-term impacts on national security and morale among a workforce that handles classified information.

Previous cuts, she said, took nearly two years to execute.

Musk, speaking to reporters in the Oval Office next to Trump last week, said, "We are moving fast, so we will make mistakes, but we'll also fix the mistakes very quickly."

And asked on Tuesday if he had any concerns about the re-hiring of workers who had been fired, Trump said, "No, not at all." He called the work by DOGE "amazing."

BIRD FLU SCIENTISTS

The U.S. Department of Agriculture this week rehired three workers it fired on February 14 from a laboratory network critical to the agency's response on bird flu, said Keith Poulsen, director of the Wisconsin Veterinary Diagnostic Laboratory, told Reuters.

The staff worked at the program office of the National Animal Health Laboratory Network (NAHLN), which coordinates more than 60 labs across the country, many of which process bird flu samples from animals.

Bird flu has infected nearly 1,000 dairy cattle and killed millions of poultry in the past year in an ongoing outbreak that has also sickened nearly 70 people and sharply raised the price of eggs.

The USDA did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Labor unions have gone to court to slow down the government overhaul and have won some initial victories, but they have also suffered some setbacks.

Steve Lenkart, executive director of the National Federation of Federal Employees, a union which represents 110,000 government workers, said the firings, rehirings and the targeting of workers critical to public safety showed a disregard by Musk and Trump for the important role government plays in people's lives.

"They are not making educated decisions which should be alarming to every American," Lenkart said.

Everett Kelley, president of the American Federation of Government Employees, the largest government workers union representing 800,000 federal employees, called the layoffs "reckless."

FIRED THEN REHIRED

The Department of Veterans Affairs (VA), which fired 1,000 probationary employees this week, is also working to rehire a number of employees who worked on the Veterans Crisis Line, according to Democratic U.S. Senator Tammy Duckworth, herself a military veteran.

"After I raised these cases to the VA and spoke out about them, it sounds like, thankfully, at least some of these employees will be rehired," Duckworth said on her X social media account.

At the Bonneville Power Administration, a public power agency that runs a large hydroelectric dam in the Pacific Northwest, about 200 workers were fired last week.

About 30 were rehired this week after a public outcry over the reliability of the electric supply, according to an aide to Democratic U.S. Senator Patty Murray of Washington State, whose constituents are served by the agency.

Nick Bednar, an associate professor of law at the University of Minnesota Law School who has been tracking the government layoffs, said the sledgehammer approach by Trump and Musk is starting to show vulnerabilities.

"They have started to realize that when they adopt that approach, things break very quickly," Bednar said.