Jesse Watters with a graphic reading "Bloated bureaucracy"

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Right-wing media celebrate the gutting of the federal government as critical agencies are expected to reel from layoffs

Written by Gideon Taaffe & Pete Tsipis

Published

As the Trump administration orders thousands of layoffs of “probationary” federal employees, new reporting shows that many of these firings hit people who had been in public service for years, and some employees are now being rehired because of the critical nature of their jobs — suggesting the layoffs have been rolled out haphazardly. But many right-wing media figures responded by celebrating the layoffs, praising the supposed “line by line” cutting of waste in the federal budget and the mass firings of “entitled” public employees.

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  • The Trump administration is firing thousands of federal employees with little justification

    • The Trump administration is targeting probationary employees for mass layoffs as part of efforts to gut the federal government. A probationary employee “is often a recent hire to the agency or a long-serving employee who was moved or promoted into a new position,” NPR reports. “They are put on a ‘probationary’ period that typically lasts for one or two years, though it can be longer at some agencies.” They do not have the same protections as more senior employees and can be fired at will — a status that impacts hundreds of thousands of federal workers. [NPR, 2/15/25]
    • According to the National Federation of Federal Employees union, around 30% of all federal employees are veterans — warning that if planned 75% workforce cuts proceed, “nearly half a million veterans will go jobless.” While it is unclear exactly how many federal workers have already been fired, the impacted departments and agencies include the Departments of Veterans Affairs, Interior, Energy, Education, Health and Human Services, and Homeland Security, as well as the Office of Personnel Management, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, and the Small Business Administration. [National Federation of Federal Employees, 11/20/24; CNN, 2/14/25]
    • Government worker unions have vowed to fight the layoffs in court, claiming the firings are not about employee performance as many of the termination letters claimed. The layoffs reportedly included many employees who had received high performance reviews. A lawyer specializing in federal labor issues told the Washington Post that “firing employees en masse with the same claim of poor performance is illegal,” adding that “it violates federal law covering career civil service employees.” Some of those impacted by the latest round of weekend layoffs have “dubbed the error-ridden run of firings the ‘St. Valentine’s Day Massacre.’” [The Washington Post, 2/17/25]

  • The ramifications of mass layoffs have dire consequences for critical government programs

    • Hundreds of employees at the Federal Aviation Administration have been placed on leave. The Associated Press reports that these layoffs have included staff responsible for “FAA radar, landing and navigational aid maintenance.” According to Rolling Stone, a handful of employees were fired from an Oklahoma City team that evaluates “many tens of thousands of potential new hazards — such as new buildings, windmills, and especially cranes — to inform flight procedures each year.” [The Associated Press, 2/17/25; Rolling Stone, 2/18/25]
    • The HHS cuts hit pandemic preparation agencies, the National Institutes of Health, the Food and Drug Administration, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, and fellowship programs. CBS News reported, “Some letters were also sent in error to people not intended to be let go, officials said.” The outlet added that many scientists it spoke to “said they had uprooted their lives for the chance to serve the federal government, sometimes taking steep pay cuts from what they could be earning in academia or the private sector. Others had been on probation for staff roles after many years working for the same agency as a contractor.” [CBS News, 2/15/25]
    • The World Trade Center Health Program faces a 20% staffing cut that workers say will cause a backlog for treatment to “first responders and others sickened by toxic smoke and debris” from the 9/11 terror attacks. One of the workers affected said his termination notice claimed he was let go due to performance issues despite being given “the top ratings” in previous reviews. [NY1, 2/17/25]
    • A former Environmental Protection Agency official said that many of the cuts to the EPA targeted those responsible for internal audits and managing the agency’s grants. Zealan Hoover told Politico: “They say that they want to fight waste, fraud and abuse, and yet they are firing many of the staff who were hired to be audit specialists, project officers and grant specialists.” [E&E News, 2/14/25]
    • The Federal Emergency Management Agency estimates that 1,000 jobs were cut as the agency is actively dealing with over 100 natural disasters across the U.S. The Washington Post reports “the cuts will affect disaster victims seeking individual assistance funds, rural and tribal communities trying to bolster their infrastructure, and towns trying to obtain large grants to help them rebuild, according to nine current and former FEMA officials.” [The Washington Post, 2/18/25]
    • The U.S. Forest Service lost 10% of its workforce — “on top of a funding freeze also ordered by the administration that has interrupted work designed to clear national forests of vegetation that can feed wildfires.” The New York Times highlighted that those laid off were largely “frontline workers, the people working in forests, rather than behind desks in Washington.” [The New York Times, 2/15/25]
    • With over 1,000 people let go from the Department of Veterans Affairs, veterans will have trouble accessing health care. One veteran in Virginia reported that a day after the layoffs were announced, her annual mammogram appointment was cancelled due to staffing shortages and she was told she could reschedule in June at the earliest. [WTKR, 2/17/25]
    • Some of the seemingly haphazard layoffs have had to be reversed because those affected are working on critical projects. The Department of Agriculture accidentally fired employees working on the government’s bird flu response and is now having to rehire them; the firing of nearly 1,000 Indian Health Service employees had to be rescinded; and employees who were maintaining the United States’ nuclear arsenal were fired and rehired. [NBC News, 2/18/25; Native News Online, 2/16/25; The New York Times, 2/16/25]

  • Right-wing media touted the Trump administration’s mass layoffs, criticized federal workers, and downplayed the importance of public servants

    • Fox News host Jesse Watters attacked federal employees, claiming, “Everybody that works in the government is a Democrat.” Watters said: “They think it’s their government and they think it’s their money. The way they talk about it, it is like the DNC is being audited. And in a way, they are right, because everybody that works in the government is a Democrat. So the way they recycle money is they tax it, they take it, and they give it to the Democrats, and then the Democrats win elections and then they hire more people to work for the government.” [Fox News, The Five, 2/18/25]
    • Watters praised the firings and called for more, saying, “Two billionaires who build things for a living know how to run a business and are applying business principles to running the government.” Watters continued to suggest the government is being made more efficient, saying, “These bureaucrats and politicians have never run a business. When they need money, they tax it, and when that's not enough, they print it. And when they screw up, they don't fire people, they instead hire people. The worse they do, the more money they get — it’s the opposite of how the real world works.” [Fox News, Jesse Watters Primetime, 2/18/25]
    • Watters gloated about federal employees waking up up “to a big ‘you are fired.’” With an on-screen graphic celebrating the “bureaucrat blow out,” Watters continued: “A thousand workers at the VA, fired; 2,000 workers at the Department of Energy, fired; 3,000 workers at the U.S. Forest Service, fired; and one-tenth of the CDC was fired too.” [Fox News, Jesse Watters Primetime, 2/14/25]
    • The Five co-host Jeanine Pirro attacked federal employees, saying they “think they're entitled to a job.” Pirro: “How absurd is it that because you have to go to the office, they're saying you're being, you know — they're watching you and it's ‘a reign of terror,’ as if working in the office means you're subject to surveillance? I mean, these people think they're entitled to a job. They think they have the right to work from home, and it is a manufactured narrative.” [Fox News, The Five, 2/18/25]
    • The Daily Wire’s Ben Shapiro downplayed cuts to national park workers: “You can cut all those people by just having an automatic parking meter.” He added, “Supposedly, this is going to mean the trash will pile up and restrooms won't be cleaned, and maintenance problems will grow, and guided tours will be cut back or canceled. And they say public safety will be at risk. No. I'm sorry. No.” [The Daily Wire, The Ben Shapiro Show, 2/19/25]
    • Fox News contributor Katie Pavlich insisted that the cuts are not indiscriminate, saying, “They are going through … line by line through the federal government to find this waste and abuse.” She also reassured viewers that the cuts are being done by “some of the most successful businessmen in the entire world.” [Fox News, America’s Newsroom, 2/14/25]
    • Fox News hosted former FAA Administrator Dan Elwell to claim that the firing of FAA employees should have “zero effect on safety.” Elwell claimed, “I'm not concerned at all” about the firings at the FAA, adding, “Letting go 400 probationary employees is going to have zero effect on safety in my opinion.” [Fox News, Fox & Friends, 2/18/25]
    • Fox & Friends Weekend guest co-host Lisa Boothe downplayed the impact of government jobs cuts, claiming, “What this election is about is the American people taking their power back; it is a ‘We the People’ election, and we’re seeing a ‘We the People’ administration.” Boothe also said: “The biggest problem with where we are right now with our country with our federal government — it's too big. This is not the original vision of America. We’re supposed to have a decentralized government. That was the whole vision of the Founding Fathers. So what we have now is the antithesis of what America's supposed to be. And when government becomes so centralized and so big, it becomes corrupt. And that’s what we are seeing, and that’s what we saw with the Biden administration.” [Fox News, Fox & Friends Weekend, 2/15/25]
    • Discussing “mass layoff letters” sent to probationary federal workers, The Wall Street Journal’s James Freeman claimed, “This has to happen and it's happening lawfully with our president saying, ‘Let's find the waste.’” Freeman asserted, “We have a problem. Obviously, there are too many federal employees. Obviously, the government is spending way too much.” [Fox News, The Story with Martha MacCallum, 2/17/25]