President Donald Trump's stated reasons for firing thousands of federal employees are dubious and likely to spur legal challenges, The Washington Post reported on Monday, calling the effort a "messy rush."
So far, the president has mostly targeted "probationary" employees, who have only been with their respective agencies for a short time and thus don't have the full range of civil service protections. Trump has separately sought to classify a broad range of workers under "Schedule F," which would remove their protections altogether.
These probationary firings, according to the report, "swept up people with years of service who had recently transferred between agencies, as well as military veterans and people with disabilities employed through a program that sped their hiring but put them on two years’ probation."
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Although probationary federal workers have reduced rights to appeal termination compared to typical federal employees, "union heads have vowed to challenge the mass firings in court. The largest union representing federal workers has also indicated it plans to fight the terminations and pursue legal action."
One of the key points of contention, the report continued, is that "the termination letters hitting inboxes all struck the same note: Probationary workers were getting the ax for poor job performance. But many of those fired had just received positive reviews, or had not worked in the government long enough to receive even a single rating, according to interviews with federal employees and documents obtained by The Post. Internal communications from the Office of Personnel Management obtained by The Post appeared to tie the performance directive to Trump’s plans."
These firings have been broad-based and across a wide range of agencies. Among the firings were air traffic control staff, which come over a period of a few weeks that has seen several high-profile commercial plane crashes.