A federal judge on Thursday said the Trump Administration’s Office of Personnel Management (OPM) illegally fired thousands of probationary employees.
US District Judge William Alsup, a Clinton appointee, did not reinstate the fired federal workers because he said he lacked the authority to do so.
Politico’s legal correspondent Josh Gerstein reported that Judge Alsup blasted the Trump Administration for ‘false claims of poor performance used to ax some workers.’
CAUTION: Some other reports out there suggesting Judge William Alsup (Clinton/NDCA) reversed firings or halted them, but he did not do that. At least not today. He did rebuke government for “lies”–false claims of poor performance used to axe some workers.
— Josh Gerstein (@joshgerstein) February 28, 2025
According to the latest data from the Office of Personnel Management, there were approximately 220,000 federal workers who had not yet completed their probationary period as of March 2024.
It is unclear how many probationary employees Trump has already fired, but there are potentially 200,000+ federal employees across government agencies.
Terminations occurred in various departments, including Energy, Veterans Affairs, Education, Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, and Small Business Administration.
According to far-left CNN, employees received termination notices via emails, form letters, and video calls.
At OPM, dozens of probationary employees were fired on a Microsoft Teams call.
Between 1,200 and 2,000 workers were laid off at the Department of Energy, including hundreds from the office overseeing the nuclear stockpile.
Nearly 1,300 probationary employees, accounting for about 10% of CDC’s workforce, were let go.
Approximately 3,400 probationary employees were terminated at the U.S. Forest Service.
The VA dismissed more than 1,000 employees, saying it would save over $98 million annually.
Politico reported:
A judge ruled Thursday that the Office of Personnel Management — the central human resources office for the federal government — broke the law when it ordered other federal agencies to terminate thousands of “probationary” employees.
The ruling is a setback for the Trump administration’s ongoing effort to dramatically shrink the federal workforce. But it does not appear to immediately help any of the federal workers who have already lost their jobs.
That’s because U.S. District Judge William Alsup stopped short of ordering the agencies to reinstate the fired workers or to halt looming firings. Alsup said he doesn’t currently have the authority to do that.
The San Francisco-based judge, however, did order OPM to rescind any directives it has issued requiring the mass terminations. OPM also must inform several agencies that it has no power to dictate firings across the federal bureaucracy.
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