Merkley, Wyden, Colleagues Call for Investigation into Trump’s Purge of Workers Protecting Americans’ Health and Safety
Washington, D.C. – Oregon’s U.S. Senators Jeff Merkley and Ron Wyden urged the non-partisan Government Accountability Office (GAO) to launch an investigation into how the recent mass firings of probationary federal workers have impacted Americans’ health and safety.
In recent weeks, President Trump has fired at least 25,000 probationary federal employees. Despite termination letters from many agencies citing “poor performance,” probationary employees appear to have been fired in indiscriminate batches, regardless of their individual performance.
Thousands of these fired workers were responsible for protecting Americans’ health and safety, across areas like air travel, flood and wildfire response, infectious disease control, nuclear safety, veterans’ health care and benefits, food safety, and managing the opioid epidemic.
The Trump Administration has since called some of the firings an “accident” and scrambled to rehire certain workers — including people who work on the bird flu outbreak, nuclear security, veterans’ health, and health services in Tribal communities. To date, agencies have not been able to rehire all of the workers affected and continue to face critical workforce shortages.
“Rather than make government more efficient, these firings appear to have created massive inefficiencies and put the American people at risk,” wrote the Senators in their letter.
As the Trump Administration implements its “plans for large-scale reductions in force,” over 200,000 probationary workers are expected to be laid off, and private companies are expected to benefit. In fact, some private companies, including some owned by or connected to Elon Musk and other Trump officials, have begun entering agencies to take the role of fired workers.
“Unlike the federal government, those companies are not responsible for prioritizing Americans’ health and safety interests, and we are concerned that they will not do so,” said the Senators.
The Senators requested that GAO’s investigation cover the duties of fired probationary workers, attempts to hire those workers back, data on how the terminations are impacting Americans’ health and safety, and more.
Merkley and Wyden signed the letter led by Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), alongside other signers Senators Tammy Baldwin (D-Wisc.) Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.), Cory Booker (D-N.J.), Tammy Duckworth (D-Ill.), Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.), Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.), Edward J. Markey (D-Mass.), and Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.).
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