Following the flurry of federal firings over the weekend as a part of President Donald Trump’s mission to decrease the federal government with Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency, hundreds of government workers were informed that their terminations had been rescinded.
Employees from the National Nuclear Security Administration, the Department of Veterans Affairs and the Department of Agriculture received notice that they were no longer fired from their government positions.
On Feb. 13, hundreds of staffers at the National Nuclear Security Administration were fired in the wave of mass Trump administration terminations, but the following day, the Department of Energy paused the firings of hundreds of employees who work for the key agency maintaining the U.S. nuclear stockpile, according to sources.
However, Department of Energy officials were unable to get in touch with some critical nuclear workers as they frantically attempt to rehire them, according to an internal email obtained by ABC News.
But on Tuesday, all but 28 of the roughly 300 fired NNSA employees had been rehired, multiple sources told ABC News.
The Department of Veterans Affairs, which fired 1,000 probationary employees earlier this week, is also working to rehire a number of employees who worked on the Veterans Crisis Line, Sen. Tammy Duckworth, D-Ill., posted on X.
“My office has personally spoken with dismissed federal employees that worked for the Veterans Crisis Hotline and supported the VA claims process,” Duckworth, joined by Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., said on a press call with reporters Wednesday afternoon.
“Now, 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,” she added.
Several employees at the Department of Agriculture working on bird flu were notified they had been fired over the weekend, but the department is working to rescind those termination letters and “swiftly rectify the situation,” according to a statement from the USDA on Tuesday.
And just hours after about 950 employees at the Department of Health and Human Service’s Indian Health Service had been told verbally they were had been laid off on Feb. 14, HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. rescinded the terminations, and an official notice of the IHS layoffs was reportedly never sent.
Last week, while speaking in the Oval Office beside Trump, Musk acknowledged that he and DOGE “will make mistakes, but we’ll act quickly to correct any mistakes.”
The White House acknowledged on Sunday night that some federal government employees who took the “Fork in the Road” buyout offer were also, subsequently, fired or let go — and that this was an error.
An Office of Personnel Management official told ABC News that some employees who responded to the buyout offer ahead of the deadline last week may have received termination notices by mistake but that the buyout agreements would be honored for those personnel.
But in regard to the hiring and rehiring of federal employees, the Trump administration and DOGE have not characterized such decisions as “mistakes.”
When asked on Tuesday if Trump was concerned over employees who were terminated and rehired over the weekend, specifically the nuclear weapons security workers, the president said, “No, not at all.”
“I think we have to just do what we have to do,” Trump said, arguing that their work has been “amazing.”
“If we feel that, in some cases, they’ll fire people and then they’ll put some people back — not all of them, because a lot of people were let go,” he continued, before touting that decreasing the size of the government is part of the reason he was elected.
Stephen Miller, deputy chief of staff for policy, defended the process of firing and rehiring employees, calling it “pretty standard when you’re downsizing the government” and saying he “wouldn’t use the term mistake.”
“You make cuts, you assess those cuts, you see who needs to be rehired, who needs to be kept, who needs to be reevaluated,” Miller told CNN on Tuesday afternoon.
ABC News’ Youri Benadjaoud contributed to this report.
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