The Trump administration has backed down from its move to fire thousands of probationary federal workers. The switch means hundreds of local federal workers may now be rehired if they were fired or keep their positions if they had not yet been cut.
Probationary workers are people who have either been hired or moved jobs in the last year or two, depending on the role.
While specifics vary from agency to agency, this wave of rehiring is reportedly unfolding locally at the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and Bonneville Power Administration, although it’s unclear if the U.S. Forest Service has reinstated local workers yet.
President Donald Trump told his cabinet — which is staffed by heads of the departments that run the federal agencies — that they control hiring within those agencies, not Elon Musk. Musk is the world’s richest man and a Trump mega-donor who now runs the Department of Government Efficiency, which has led the blitz on federal agencies’ staffing.
Nationally, the government cut about 62,000 jobs across 17 agencies last month, according to a report from Challenger, Gray & Christmas, an outplacement firm that helps people find new jobs.
Those cuts — which now stand to be reversed, at least in part — hit deep locally.
Prior to the mass firings, Clark County was home to about 4,000 of Washington’s roughly 76,000 federal employees.
Fifty-four of those Clark County workers have filed for unemployment so far this year, according to a Thursday news release from the Washington Employment Security Department.
Washington Attorney General Nick Brown’s office announced Wednesday it was joining a multistate lawsuit against the U.S. Office of Personnel Management and other federal agencies, alleging the Trump administration’s mass firings were damaging and illegal.
“These firings don’t save the public a dime, but they do make government less responsive, particularly in the communities across the nation where these employees live and serve,” Brown said.
U.S. Forest Service
Firings at the U.S. Forest Service reportedly eliminated at least a dozen employees at Gifford Pinchot National Forest, potentially impacting the services the forest can provide.
But the U.S. Merit Systems Protection Board ruled Wednesday that the firings of about 5,000 probationary employees at the U.S. Department of Agriculture may have been unlawful, and the workers should be reinstated for at least the next 45 days.
The U.S. Forest Service falls under the U.S. Department of Agriculture, which indicated Friday it intends to honor the ruling.
Amanda Brewer was fired in February from her job at the Mount St. Helens National Monument Headquarters in Amboy. She was one of the many Gifford Pinchot National Forest staff fired in the Trump administration’s efforts to shrink the federal workforce.
Brewer said she hasn’t been reinstated to her work at the Gifford Pinchot. As of Friday, she hadn’t even been contacted by anyone from the federal agency.
Army Corps of Engineers
The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers stood to lose 150 workers or more locally, potentially hamstringing the region’s hydropower and Columbia River navigation systems.
But Corps regional spokesman Tom Conning said those cuts have not materialized.
“The Northwestern Division has not received notification to release any probationary employees as of this time,” he said. “So there is no need to bring anyone back.”
Conning emphasized that the Corps’ services have not been disrupted.
“Our staff remain focused on performing their mission of managing our nation’s water resources and providing engineering expertise,” he said.
BPA
The Bonneville Power Administration lost about 100 probationary staffers last month. That loss — along with about 200 retirements from Trump’s offer and 90 rescinded job offers — led to widespread fear of blackouts around the region.
The agency runs thousands of miles of power transmission infrastructure and sells electricity generated by the federal hydroelectric dam system on the Columbia and Snake rivers. The BPA operates under the U.S. Department of Energy but is not taxpayer funded.
Shortly after news of the cuts became public, the Trump administration offered 30 “mission critical” workers their jobs back.
And the Department of Energy expanded that to at least an additional 70 probationary employees, regional power industry trade publication Clearing Up reported Thursday.
The BPA did not respond to The Columbian’s request for comment. But a source familiar with BPA operations who requested to remain anonymous, because they are not authorized to speak on the matter, confirmed those reports but added that the BPA has not yet been granted an exemption from the Office of Personnel Management’s reduction-in-force order.
NOAA
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration lost significant numbers of staffers locally and at a Mississippi-based office that enables Columbia River navigation.
The scientific and regulatory agency has a large footprint in Washington, including its second largest office, which is in Seattle.
Spokespeople for NOAA and its National Weather Service did not answer questions about the agency rehiring previously fired local staffers.
The agencies issued near-identical statements that they have a “long-standing practice” of not answering questions about “internal personnel and management matters,” but they remain dedicated to their missions.
Other agencies
The New York Times reported some 200 U.S. Geological Survey workers were fired nationwide, but the service’s parent agency, the Department of the Interior, hasn’t responded to requests to verify if any Clark County staff have been fired.
Scientists who recently retired from east Vancouver’s Cascades Volcano Observatory, however, said they heard from staff that the volcano, landslides and earthquake hazards programs at the observatory hadn’t yet been impacted by the federal workforce reductions.
Southwest Washington’s Fort Vancouver National Historic Site lost a handful of staffers, putting pressure on the site’s dwindling workforce and volunteers to keep the popular local tourist attraction up and running.
Fired staff at Fort Vancouver haven’t been brought back, according to a Fort Vancouver volunteer who asked not to be identified for fear of retribution against Park Service staff.
Despite rehirings, the federal workforce is still slated for further downsizing.
While Trump’s latest move reverses course on the mass of DOGE-driven firings, he instructed all federal departments to “initiate large-scale reductions in force” no later than March 13.
“Elon and the group are going to be watching them, and if they can cut, it’s better. And if they don’t cut, then Elon will do the cutting,” Trump said Thursday.
