Donald Trump has made a lot of changes since he came into office just a month or so ago. This includes taking away many jobs from federal workers on a variety of grounds.
A federal judge has now given Donald Trump the order to rehire thousands of those federal workers that were allegedly fired because of a ‘lie’. California federal judge William H Alsup wants 30,000 probationary employees rehired.
A number of departments are affected by the firings, including the Department of Veterans Affairs, Department of Energy, Department of Defense, Department of Agriculture, Department of the Treasury, and the Department of the Interior. They were fired for ‘poor performance’.
The department responsible for the firing of those federal workers is the new Department of Government Efficiency. That department is headed by the CEO of Tesla, Elon Musk, and Vivian Ramaswamy, a former Republican presidential candidate.
They were given the task of streamlining the United States government and planned on taking away thousands of jobs and reducing the wage bill. They then said that they would disband the department, hoping to have it all wrapped up by July 4, 2026.
Trump said that the primary objective of the department is to ‘dismantle government bureaucracy, slash excess regulations, cut wasteful expenditures, and restructure federal agencies’.
The federal judge spoke in court on March 13, speaking about the firing of those probationary workers. He said: “It is sad, a sad day when our government would fire some good employee and say it was based on performance when they know good and well that’s a lie.”
Many who lost their jobs were told it was due to poor performance, even though they received good performance evaluations before being let go.
Alsup also passed another ruling on February 27, saying the firing was illegal. This was due to the office of personnel management not having the authority to order the firing.
The American Federation of Government Employees said that the OPM admitted to acting unlawfully. They released a statement, which read:
“OPM’s revision of its Jan 20 memo is a clear admission that it unlawfully directed federal agencies to carry out mass terminations of probationary employees – which aligns with Judge Alsup’s recent decision in our lawsuit challenging these illegal firings.
“Every agency should immediately rescind these unlawful terminations and reinstate everyone who was illegally fired.”
