CLIMATEWIRE | The Trump administration fired federal employees on probationary status Thursday, affecting tens of thousands of staffers nationwide.
The Department of Energy, Forest Service and Office of Personnel Management are among the agencies that axed staffers, several current and former federal employees said. All agency employees for this story were granted anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly.
“Per OPM instructions, DOE finds that your further employment would not be in the public interest,” said an email sent to a DOE employee Thursday and viewed by POLITICO’s E&E News. “For this reason, you are being removed from your position with DOE and the federal civil service effective today.”
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The Forest Service informed probationary employees — including those who had offered to leave as part of President Donald Trump’s “deferred resignation” program — that they would be terminated “for performance,” according to people within the agency. The notices came just hours after Brooke Rollins was confirmed as secretary at the Department of Agriculture, which oversees the service.
E&E News reported Thursday on pending cuts at DOE, and those layoffs began at the Loan Programs Office and the Office of Manufacturing and Energy Supply Chains, a DOE staffer said. Another employee said the cuts were across the entire department.
Federal jobs typically come with probationary periods, generally for those with less than a year of government service. During that period, employees can more easily be terminated. There are about 220,000 probationary workers in the federal government, according to March 2024 OPM data, the latest available numbers.
A current employee, along with a former political staffer at DOE in the Biden administration who was also granted anonymity to speak freely, said dozens of people at the loan office were laid off Thursday. The office is now led by John Sneed, its executive director during President Donald Trump’s first term.
DOE agencies were beefed up by the nearly $100 billion given to the department in the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act and the 2021 bipartisan infrastructure law. The loan office closed tens of billions of dollars in new projects under then-President Joe Biden.
The total number of fired DOE staffers remains unclear.
Forest Service, Interior, EPA
The Forest Service firings affect as many as 3,400 employees — some of whom live in government housing, according to agency staffers familiar with the plan who spoke on condition of anonymity. Wildland firefighters were spared from the cuts.
Probationary employees at the service were told they were let go for performance, regardless of whether their performance was lacking, these staffers said.
Firings at the Forest Service come as the agency already faces a backlog of work on the 193-million-acre forest system and on the heels of the Biden administration’s decision not to hire seasonal employees in 2025 due to a budget crunch.
It wasn’t clear Thursday how probationary employees would be affected across the sprawling Interior Department, which oversees the nation’s public lands and national parks, mineral reserves and wildlife programs.
Roughly 1,700 National Park Service employees alone are currently within their one-year probationary period, according to the nonprofit National Parks Conservation Association. Staffers feared that some if not all of those employees could face dismissal if the number of people taking the so-called Fork in the Road resignation program didn’t satisfy Trump administration officials.
Congressional Democrats have warned Interior Secretary Doug Burgum that national parks are already understaffed due to congressional spending caps and the combined impact of the hiring freeze, deferred resignations and elimination of probationary employees that could strip the park workforce ahead of this year’s busy season.
One career Interior employee, who had not heard of anyone being laid off yet at the department, said implementation of Trump’s personnel mandates has been “very disjointed.”
“There is no real visible plan or organization,” that employee said.
As of Thursday night, there was no indication that EPA’s probationary staffers were about to be forced out, said former and current agency employees. But anxiety remains high at EPA.
As with employees at other agencies, EPA’s junior staffers have been identified, as directed under guidance from OPM. They were also warned in a Jan. 29 email that “the agency has the right to immediately terminate you.”
That has resulted in high stress for employees.
Gary Jonesi, a recently retired senior EPA enforcement attorney, told E&E News when a list of names of the agency’s probationary staffers was presented last week, it was found to have many errors.
Some EPA employees said they were incorrectly deemed probationary. Some had started a new position at the agency within the past year but had additional federal service that was not accounted for.
“It was causing emotional distress. Literally, they were crying,” Jonesi said. “They couldn’t get any help from the HR office to rectify the problem.”
If EPA were to fire its probationary employees, the impact would be widespread. In a CNN interview earlier this month, Administrator Lee Zeldin said around 1,700 staffers received that January email.
Firing the agency’s trial period staffers will strike at the previous administration’s campaign to rebuild EPA. More than 6,000 full-time employees were brought on at the agency during the Biden years, an EPA spokesperson said last month.
Layoffs, buyouts and leaves
Layoffs on Thursday also took place at OPM, according to the news site Government Executive. The Small Business Administration and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau also shoved out their probationary staffers.
Agencies like DOE and EPA put diversity, equity and inclusion, or DEI, employees on administrative leave, following an Inauguration Day executive order directing them to do so.
EPA also placed 168 environmental justice staffers on leave last week, who were caught up in the sweep of diversity positions.
OPM, along with the Elon Musk-led Department of Government Efficiency, have been at the center of the Trump administration’s plans to shrink the federal workforce. The personnel office has directed agencies to fire their employees on probationary status.
“Agencies are taking independent action in light of the recent hiring freeze and in support of the president’s broader efforts to restructure and streamline the federal government to better serve the American people at the highest possible standard,” an OPM spokesperson told E&E News on Thursday.
A federal judge on Wednesday ruled that the administration is able to move ahead with Trump’s mass resignation scheme for federal employees.
U.S. District Judge George O’Toole decided that unions lacked legal standing in their challenge to the program, which the administration closed Wednesday night.
Roughly 75,000 federal employees took the president’s offer to go on paid leave until Sept. 30 if they decide to leave the civil service, an OPM spokesperson told E&E News on Wednesday. Many federal employees say they do not trust the Trump administration to deliver on the promise.
“We do need to delete entire agencies,” Musk said Thursday via video at the World Government Summit held in Dubai, United Arab Emirates.
This story also appears in Energywire.
Reprinted from E&E News with permission from POLITICO, LLC. Copyright 2025. E&E News provides essential news for energy and environment professionals.
