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Federal Workers Who Were Fired and Rehired by the Trump Administration

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Federal Workers Who Were Fired and Rehired by the Trump Administration

Even as the Trump administration continues to slash federal jobs, a number of federal agencies have begun to reverse course — reinstating some workers and pausing plans to dismiss others, sometimes within days of the firings.

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Note: Some dates on the chart are approximate, based on available information.

The Office of Personnel Management on Tuesday revised earlier guidance calling for probationary workers to be terminated, adding a disclaimer that agencies would have the final authority over personnel actions. It is unclear how many more workers could be reinstated as a result.

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Here’s a look at some of the back-and-forths so far:

Rehiring Some Essential Workers

Trump-appointed officials fired, then scrambled to rehire some employees in critical jobs in health and national security.

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Workers reviewing food safety and medical devices

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Around Feb. 15 The Food and Drug Administration fired about 700 probationary employees, many of whom were not paid through taxpayer money.

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Workers involved in bird flu response

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icon Around Feb. 14 The Department of Agriculture continued plans to fire thousands of employees, including hundreds in a plant and animal inspection program.
icon Days later The agency said it was trying to reverse the firings of some employees involved in responding to the nation’s growing bird flu outbreak.

Workers who maintain the U.S. nuclear arsenal

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icon Feb. 13 The Energy Department began laying off 1,000 of its probationary employees, including more than 300 who worked at the National Nuclear Security Administration, which maintains and secures the country’s nuclear warheads. A spokesperson for the Energy Department disputed that number, saying fewer than 50 at the N.N.S.A. were fired.

Rehired After Political Pushback

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Public opposition from both Democrats and Republicans has also resulted in some fired workers getting called back.

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Workers managing a 9/11 survivors’ health program

icon Around Feb. 15 The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention cut hundreds of employees, including 16 probationary workers who manage the World Trade Central Health Program, which administers aid to people who were exposed to hazards from the terrorist attacks on Sept. 11, 2001.
icon Several days later After bipartisan pushback, the Trump administration said that fired employees would return to their jobs.

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Scientific researchers, including military veterans

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icon Feb. 18 The National Science Foundation fired 168 employees, or roughly 10 percent of its work force.
icon Less than two weeks later The foundation began reversing dismissals of 84 probationary employees, in response to a ruling by a federal judge and guidance from the Office of Personnel Management to retain the employment of military veterans and military spouses.

Temporary Reinstatements and Pauses on Firings

The firing spree has prompted a slew of lawsuits, which in some cases have resulted in temporary reversals.

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Employees at a federal financial watchdog

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icon Feb. 11 Officials fired almost 200 employees at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, a financial industry watchdog, and ordered the rest to stop their work.

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Employees at an international aid department

icon A day later A federal judge ordered the Trump administration to temporarily halt the layoffs.
icon Two weeks later The judge ruled that the administration could proceed with plans to lay off or put on paid leave many agency employees. U.S.A.I.D. moved to fire around 2,000 U.S.-based workers and put up to thousands of foreign service officers and others on paid leave.

Workers from multiple agencies have also filed complaints with the office of a government watchdog lawyer who himself has been targeted by Mr. Trump for termination. In response to requests from that office, an independent federal worker board has considered some of the claims and temporarily reinstated some workers.

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Workers at the Agriculture Department

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icon Feb. 13 The Agriculture Department began cutting thousands of jobs, including around 3,400 in the Forest Service.
icon Three weeks later The Merit Systems Protection Board issued a stay ordering the department to reinstate fired workers while an investigation continued.

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Six workers from six federal agencies

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icon Feb. 14 The Office of Personnel Management sent an email ordering federal agencies to fire tens of thousands of probationary employees.
icon Less than two weeks later The Merit Systems Protection Board temporarily reinstated six fired federal workers from the Departments of Agriculture, Education, Energy, Housing and Urban Development and Veterans Affairs, and the Office of Personnel Management.

The back-and-forth and lack of transparency surrounding the administration’s cost-cutting moves have deepened the confusion and alarm of workers across the federal government at large, many of whom also have to interpret confusing email guidance and gauge the veracity of various circulating rumors.

“The layoffs and then rehires undermine the productivity and confidence not only of the people who left and came back but of the people who stayed,” said Stephen Goldsmith, an urban policy professor at Harvard’s Kennedy School and a former mayor of Indianapolis.

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Are you a federal worker? We want to hear from you.

The Times would like to hear about your experience as a federal worker under the second Trump administration. We may reach out about your submission, but we will not publish any part of your response without contacting you first.

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Video: Inside Our Reporter’s Collection of Guantánamo Portraits

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Video: Inside Our Reporter’s Collection of Guantánamo Portraits

new video loaded: Inside Our Reporter’s Collection of Guantánamo Portraits

Carol Rosenberg, a reporter who has covered the U.S. military prison at Guantánamo Bay since it opened in 2002, describes a collection of stylized portraits of its detainees in the war against terrorism. The photos were taken as part of a Red Cross program for the detainees to communicate with their families.

By Carol Rosenberg, Laura Bult, Coleman Lowndes, Stephanie Swart, June Kim and Zach Caldwell

October 23, 2025

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Confused by the legal battles over troop deployments? Here’s what to know

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Confused by the legal battles over troop deployments? Here’s what to know

A member of the Texas National Guard stands at an army reserve training facility on October 07, 2025 in Elwood, Illinois.

Scott Olson/Getty Images North America


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Scott Olson/Getty Images North America

President Trump’s federalization and deployment of National Guard troops to both Oregon and Illinois are facing a pair of legal litmus tests — including one at the Supreme Court — that could be decided in the coming days.

At the heart of both challenges is whether or not to defer to the president’s assessment that major cities in both places — Portland and Chicago — are lawless and in need of immediate military intervention to protect federal property and immigration officers, despite local leaders and law enforcement saying otherwise. Both deployments were done against the wishes of Democratic state governors, and were quickly temporarily blocked by district courts.

On Monday, a divided panel on the 9th Circuit court of appeals overturned a temporary restraining order put in place by a federal judge in Portland, siding with the Trump administration, however another temporary restraining order remains in place.

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That ruling came days after the 7th Circuit court of appeals upheld a similar block from a federal judge in Illinois on the deployment of National Guard troops to Chicago. The Trump administration has asked the Supreme Court to intervene.

Movement in both cases is expected in the coming days, in what has been a dizzying pingpong of legal disputes around Trump’s use of the military domestically in several Democratic-led cities  around the country. And while any decision will only impact troop deployment in an individual state, they could impact how courts weigh in on such cases going forward — and embolden the administration, legal experts say.

“This could be a pretty seminal week in terms of the bigger legal fight over domestic deployments,” says Scott R. Anderson, a fellow at the non-partisan Brookings Institution and senior editor of Lawfare.

The 9th Circuit and Portland, Ore. 

The 9th Circuit’s decision earlier this week only applies to one of the two temporary restraining orders that U.S. District Judge Karin Immergut issued this month to block the National Guard deployments — meaning that troops can still not be on the streets in Portland. But the federal government has asked Immergut to remove her second temporary order. A court hearing has been scheduled for Friday to discuss the dissolution of that order.

Karin J. Immergut, nominated to be U.S. district judge for the District of Oregon, attends a judicial nomination hearing held by the Senate Judiciary Committee October 24, 2018 in Washington, D.C.

Karin J. Immergut, nominated to be U.S. district judge for the District of Oregon, attends a judicial nomination hearing held by the Senate Judiciary Committee October 24, 2018 in Washington, D.C.

Win McNamee/Getty Images North America

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The 9th Circuit is also deciding whether or not to revisit the ruling made earlier this week with a larger group of judges — and that decision could come before Immergut’s deadline.

Trump has said that the 9th Circuit decision has made him feel empowered to send the National Guard to any city where he deems it necessary.

“That was the decision. I can send the National Guard if I see problems,” Trump told reporters Tuesday. In recent days, Trump has renewed an interest in sending troops to San Francisco.

Justin Levitt, a law professor at Loyola Marymount University Loyola Law School and an expert in constitutional law, worries the ruling by the 9th Circuit “authorized blindness to facts.”

“It said [Trump] can decide that there’s a war when there’s nothing but bluebirds,” he says, noting that’s likely why an immediate call for a full review was made. “I fully expect a larger group of 9th Circuit judges to say we don’t have to be blind to what’s actually going on in order to give ample deference to the Trump administration.”

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The Supreme Court and Chicago

At the same time, the Trump administration has issued an emergency appeal to the Supreme Court on whether National Guard troops can be deployed in Illinois, after the 7th Circuit court of appeals upheld a district court’s block.

It’s unknown when, or if, the Supreme Court will issue a decision, although experts expect it in the coming days as well.

The decision, although not precedent-setting, will likely clarify the president’s power to deploy federal military resources — and how deferential the courts should be to his administration’s presentation of facts — but only to a point. Emergency decisions are usually short, without much reasoning provided by the justices, experts say.

“It ends up kind of putting the onus on district and appellate courts to read the tea leaves of those interim orders to inform these much larger questions in very different factual environments, you know, possibly months in the future,” says Chris Mirasola, a national security law professor at the University of Houston Law Center.

National Guard troops arrive at an immigration processing and detention facility on October 09, 2025 in Broadview, Illinois.

National Guard troops arrive at an immigration processing and detention facility on October 09, 2025 in Broadview, Illinois.

Scott Olson/Getty Images North America

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He says that while the emergency decisions from the Supreme Court don’t apply broadly, in recent months, some judges have started to treat them as if they do.

“I think what we’re going to get in at least the medium term is even more confusion than we’ve had so far,” he says.

But just how the Supreme Court might weigh in isn’t clear.

“I think it’s a harder case for the Supreme Court than some people might think, who go in with the assumption the Supreme Court is just naturally inclined toward the administration’s positions on things — and it is in many contexts,” says Anderson of the Brookings Institution.

He says that while it’s standard for courts to be deferential to the president, it’s also standard to believe the facts presented by the local courts.

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“That is a tricky, tricky sort of situation here,” Anderson says.

What could this mean for possible deployments going forward?

These two expected decisions will only directly affect Portland or Chicago. But the implications of both – especially something from the Supreme Court – could have ripple effects in future litigation.

Elizabeth Goitein, senior director of the Liberty and National Security Program at the Brennan Center for Justice, says that what’s particularly worrying is that the Department of Justice has been expressly celebrating high arrest counts by law enforcement in places like Chicago, while still saying the military is necessary to help.

“If the bar is so low that the President can use the military at a time when his administration is touting how effective civilian law enforcement is, it becomes hard to imagine a scenario where he couldn’t deploy the military,” she says.

Experts say that these legal challenges are just the beginning of what will surely be a long and winding road through the U.S. court system.

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“This is really just the first battle. There are a lot of legal questions that come after this,” Anderson says.

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Video: Driver Crashes Car Into Security Gate Near White House

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Video: Driver Crashes Car Into Security Gate Near White House

new video loaded: Driver Crashes Car Into Security Gate Near White House

A man was arrested on Tuesday night after he drove his vehicle into a barricade outside the White House, the Secret Service said. It was not immediately known whether the crash was intentional.

By Axel Boada

October 22, 2025

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