Blaze News investigates: Critics say Trump's mass firings of probationary bureaucrats are unlawful. They're wrong.

President Donald Trump faced a variety of obstacles when attempting to advance the MAGA agenda in his first term.

While Democratic lawmakers, some members of his own party, and leftist groups worked hard to impede the execution of the president's will, the federal bureaucracy also played a significant role, particularly those identifying with the so-called "resistance."

Although the GOP is now largely on board, the Democratic Party is greatly weakened, and leftist groups are on the back foot, Trump appears unwilling to take any chances regarding those charged with executing his agenda.

In the name of addressing government bloat and maximizing efficiency but also clearly seeking to oust Biden loyalists and other obstructionists, the second Trump administration has worked to shake up the federal workforce.

As part of this shake-up, the White House has instructed agencies to fire probationary federal workers.

Democratic lawmakers and advocates for fired and soon-to-be-fired bureaucrats claim the terminations are unlawful. The Trump administration maintains that the firings are not only lawful but aimed at ensuring that the federal workforce comprises "qualified, high-performing individuals who support the mission of federal agencies."

Experts with penetrating insights into presidential authority and the workings of the federal government suggested to Blaze New that when it comes to canning probationers, the Trump administration stands on firm legal ground. Accordingly, the recent sound and fury from Democratic lawmakers and deep-staters largely signify nothing.

Housecleaning

Trump wasted no time kicking various career agency employees and political appointees to the curb. For instance, in his first week in office, he fired the inspectors general from at least 17 federal agencies.

While the Trump administration has been ousting and replacing senior bureaucrats and political appointees across the federal government, it appears especially keen on addressing the submerged portion of the bureaucratic iceberg — on shrinking and optimizing the federal workforce, which the White House indicated exceeds 2.4 million people, excluding active-duty military and Postal Service employees.

To move the needle forward, the U.S. Office of Personnel Management offered buyouts to millions of full-time federal employees last month. Even though the offer has faced legal challenges, roughly 75,000 have reportedly taken the deal.

While the Trump administration has both greased some workers' exits and fired numerous low-performing bureaucrats in non-critical roles, the White House has also set its sights on federal employees on probationary periods, which could apparently impact over 200,000 workers.

'Performance has not been adequate to justify further employment at the agency.'

Probationary workers are recent agency hires or employees moved or promoted into new positions who generally do not have rights to appeal to the Merit Systems Protection Board over suspensions, demotions, and removals. An OPM spokesman noted in a statement to Blaze News that "the probationary period is a continuation of the job application process, not an entitlement for permanent employment."

Charles Ezell, the acting director of the OPM, asked agency heads in a Jan. 20 memo to identify all probationary employees who have served less than a year in a competitive service appointment or who have served less than two years in an excepted service appointment.

After initially instructing agencies to fire the poor performers among their probationary employees, the OPM issued a directive on Feb. 13 to commence firing the remainder of their probationers.

Between the time of the order and Feb. 20, various agencies followed through or were in the process of doing so. For instance, over 1,000 probationary employees were fired at the Department of Veterans Affairs; around 400 were reportedly fired at the Department of Homeland Security; nearly 1,300 were given the boot at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention; thousands were reportedly dismissed from the Interior Department; 3,400 were canned at the U.S. Forest Service; and 168 were fired at the National Science Foundation.

A source said to be familiar with the agency's plans told CBS News that the Internal Revenue Service was expected to can over 6,000 employees by Feb. 21.

Probationers were in some cases told in their termination letters that they were "not fit for continued employment because [their] ability, knowledge and skills do not fit the agency's current needs" and that their "performance has not been adequate to justify further employment at the agency," reported CNN.

When asked about the significance of the firings, Mitch Sollenberger, professor of political science at the University of Michigan-Dearborn, told Blaze News, "The breadth of these actions in such a limited amount of time (30 days or so) is unprecedented and seems to demonstrate the level of sophistication the second-term Trump administration has over the first-term version. Really I can't recall a prior presidential administration so aggressively and thoroughly using the central tenets of the unitary executive theory to take command of the executive branch."

"It is these types of actions that are important because they aren't really 'ends' to themselves," continued Sollenberger. "Trump viewed the 'deep' state as being a problem during his first term in office. Taking action as he's doing seems to be about serving his longer-term policy goals (whatever they are)."

Challenging the broom

Democratic lawmakers and other champions of the deep state have condemned the mass firings. Federal worker unions have begun filing legal challenges, and multiple law firms are advancing class-action complaints.

Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) suggested after a Delta Air Lines jet crash-landed in Canada that layoffs at the Federal Aviation Administration were "making our skies less and less safe."

'This administration has abused the probationary period to conduct a politically driven mass firing spree.'

On Wednesday, 90 House Democrats decried the firing of probationers at Veterans Affairs, suggesting that contrary to Secretary Doug Collins' insistence that the firings "will not negatively impact VA health care, benefits, or beneficiaries," the affected positions were somehow "critical to health care, benefits, and research."

While Democrats are trying to paint the firings as a threat to government function, unions are leaning on the notion that the firings are somehow illegal in a desperate attempt to protect prospective dues-paying members.

Everett Kelley, president of the American Federation of Government Employees, the largest union for civilian federal employees, vowed to "fight these firings every step of the way."

"This administration has abused the probationary period to conduct a politically driven mass firing spree, targeting employees not because of performance, but because they were hired before Trump took office," Kelley said in a statement.

"These firings are not about poor performance — there is no evidence these employees were anything but dedicated public servants. They are about power," continued Kelley. "They are about gutting the federal government, silencing workers, and forcing agencies into submission to a radical agenda that prioritizes cronyism over competence."

The AFGE was among the unions that filed a lawsuit Wednesday in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, seeking to block the mass firings.

'President Trump is on solid legal ground.'

In their complaint, the unions, which are represented by a leftist group that frequently fights Republican election integrity initiatives, alleged that the OPM "lacks the constitutional, statutory, or regulatory authority to order federal agencies to terminate employees in this fashion" and that the firings were both made on false pretenses and unlawful.

The idea that the firings were somehow improper was also advanced in a complaint to the U.S. Office of Special Counsel made on behalf of probationers who were allegedly fired across nine federal agencies on the basis of their probationary status, not because of performance or conduct.

Lawyers from Democracy Forward — a legal outfit established by Democratic Party operatives whose board chair is Marc Elias — and a private firm claimed in the complaint that probationers must be assessed individually and on their performance, reported USA Today.

The complaint suggests that "mass indiscriminate terminations are, by definition, not based on the performance of the individual employee."

Clean sweep

While critics of Trump's efforts to shrink the federal bureaucracy might prove successful in combatting the removal of select full-time employees, it appears their battle over probationers is a lost cause.

John Malcolm, vice president of the Heritage Foundation's Institute for Constitutional Government and director of the think tank's Edwin Meese III Center for Legal and Judicial Studies, told Blaze News, "So far as I am aware, and as a former federal executive branch employee myself, civil service protection laws (assuming those are constitutional to begin with) do not kick in until after someone passes the probationary period."

"Therefore, I believe that President Trump is on solid legal ground when it comes to terminating probationary employees," added Malcolm, who served as a deputy assistant attorney general in the Department of Justice's Criminal Division from 2001 to 2004.

Sollenberger similarly figures the "Trump administration stands on a bit firmer grounds firing probation employees."

Blaze News reached out to the AFGE for comment but did not receive a response by deadline.

A 2005 Merit Systems Protection Board report to the president and Congress underscored that "until the probationary period has been completed, a probationer is still an applicant for an appointment, with the burden to demonstrate why it is in the public interest for the Government to finalize an appointment to the civil service for this particular individual."

Prior the finalization of employment, "a probationer has only limited job protections."

D.C. labor attorney Suzanne Summerlin told NPR that probationers are entitled to written letters or termination notices stating the reason for their firing but in most cases can't do anything about it — unless they were canned due to discrimination based on their sex, race, disability, or whistleblower status.

'President Trump deserves a lot of credit for turning such talk into action.'

When asked whether it makes a difference whether the Trump administration terminates probationary employees en masse or on an individual basis, Malcolm said it shouldn't make a difference but could prove to be an issue.

Nevertheless, he noted that "courts will typically cut the president more slack when it comes to making programmatic shifts as opposed to individual employment decisions which someone might challenge as having been done for an improper purpose, such as firing somebody because of their race, age, or disability."

"I'm not at all certain that the challenges will be successful if they are raising section 2302 concerns (prohibited personnel practices) unless the argument is that the 'mission-critical' rationale the Trump administration is using is pretextual and the true motive is really about something else that violates the rights of these employees," Sollenberger told Blaze News.

Section 2302 of the U.S. Code prohibits discrimination against any employee or applicant for employment on the basis of race, sex, national origin, marital status, and political affiliation.

Malcolm said that while it is presently difficult to assess the political and institutional significance of the firings under way, it is clear that "the firing of probationary employees is only a small part of the overall restructuring and downsizing of the federal bureaucracy that is currently being undertaken by President Trump, with the assistance, of course, of Elon Musk and DOGE, and the process has just begun."

"Reining in the administrative state and returning more power to the states and to individuals has long been touted as a goal, and a laudable one at that, of the Republican Party," continued Malcolm. "President Trump deserves a lot of credit for turning such talk into action."

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