The Trump administration accelerated plans for widespread work force cuts across the government on Friday, as employees at multiple federal agencies learned they would be losing their jobs.
Agencies such as the Environmental Protection Agency and the Agriculture Department were the latest to be hit with layoffs as President Trump and a team led by the billionaire Elon Musk ramped up an initiative to cut government spending and overhaul government. The administration has recently focused its efforts on an estimated 200,000 probationary workers, who do not receive the same protections as many other federal employees.
On Friday, officials at the E.P.A. said they had terminated 388 probationary employees. “President Trump was elected with a mandate to create a more effective and efficient federal government that serves all Americans, and we are doing just that,” Laura Gentile, an agency spokeswoman, said in a statement.
Some of the biggest cuts were made at the Energy Department, which began laying off staff on Thursday, according to three people familiar with the matter. Around 1,000 federal workers at the agency, all probationary employees, were told they were losing their jobs, according to one of the people. More than 300 of those workers were employed at the National Nuclear Security Administration, which manages the nation’s nuclear weapons fleet, and about 50 were at the department’s loan programs office, which helps bring new energy technologies to market, said two of the people. All three spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the moves publicly.
In addition, hundreds of federal employees were fired at both the Bonneville Power Administration and Western Area Power Administration, which oversee much of the Western grid, the people said. A spokeswoman for the Department of Energy did not respond to a request for comment.
Terminations also continued at the U.S. Forest Service, an agency within the Agriculture Department, which started to lay off roughly 3,400 probationary employees on Thursday, according to two people familiar with the matter. Firefighters, law-enforcement officers and other public safety-related positions were exempt from the terminations, the people said.
The governmentwide layoffs escalated on Thursday, the same day that leaders at the Office of Personnel Management, the government’s human resources division, met with agency representatives and advised them to lay off most probationary workers. On Friday, agencies were instructed to send O.P.M. officials an updated spreadsheet that included information on which probationary employees they had terminated and which they planned to keep, along with an explanation, by 8 p.m. Eastern time on Tuesday, according to an email seen by The New York Times.
Federal workers are typically on probation for a year, but the period can last longer for certain positions. The federal government employed roughly 220,000 employees who had been serving in their roles for less than a year, according to the most recent data as of May.
President Trump has aggressively sought to overhaul the federal civilian work force since taking office. Late last month, the administration sent out a mass email to roughly two million federal employees offering them the option to resign but be paid through the end of September. About 75,000 workers accepted the offer, according to the Office of Personnel Management. The administration closed the program to new entries earlier this week after a federal judge declined to block the plan.
Other agencies across the federal government made plans to shed more workers in coming days. The Internal Revenue Service prepared to lay off thousands of employees as soon as next week, according to several people familiar with the matter.
Some workers who were laid off this week said they were stunned by the abrupt nature of the terminations, and they worried about how the loss of their positions could impact government services.
Katherine Tasheff, a web team manager at the Office of Personnel Management, said she had received an email on Thursday afternoon informing her that she would be losing her job and that the agency’s communications office would be dissolved. Ms. Tasheff said she was concerned that the elimination of those positions could leave federal workers struggling to access accurate information on the agency’s website, which provides details about their health insurance plans, retirement benefits and other work force policies.
“There is a lot of information that is contradictory because it hasn’t been well-managed in the past,” Ms. Tasheff said. “That was something I was working to improve.”
The layoffs were also quickly denounced by union officials and Democratic lawmakers as they continued in waves across the federal government.
Senator Patty Murray, Democrat of Washington, said on Friday that she had heard from workers on the ground that about 400 probationary employees were terminated at the Bonneville Power Administration, an action that she worried would harm the reliability of the grid.
“This includes everyone from electricians and engineers to biologists to line workers to cybersecurity experts, and so many others,” Ms. Murray said in a statement. “These are literally the people who help keep the lights on — and now they’re being fired on a whim because Trump and Elon Musk don’t have a clue about what they do and why it’s important.”
On Friday, Mr. Trump said his administration’s efforts to shrink the federal work force would result in “tremendous” savings. “We want to downsize government but make it better,” Mr. Trump said.
A spokesperson for the Office of Personnel Management said the probationary period was “not an entitlement for permanent employment,” and that agencies were taking independent action to advance Mr. Trump’s broader efforts to restructure the federal government.
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