Trump's Personnel Office Directed 25,406 Firings a Judge Held Unlawful, Then Took Over Layoff Appeals

The Personnel Office Wrote the Letter

In February 2025, Trump's Office of Personnel Management directed federal agencies to fire their probationary employees and supplied the letter to send.¹ The letter gave each worker's individual performance as the reason.¹ Agencies fired 25,406 in less than a month.¹ On September 12, 2025, Judge William Alsup held the directive unlawful and ordered agencies to tell the workers they had not been fired for their personal performance.¹ He did not order them back to work.¹

The National Science Foundation had chosen to retain its probationers before OPM changed the instructions; it fired them en masse over Zoom on February 18, then rehired nearly all on March 3.²

Trump signed the orders that moved approximately 7,600 career jobs outside normal dismissal protections and excluded major departments from federal collective bargaining law.³⁴⁵⁶⁷ His personnel office directed the firings, and in September 2026 it became the forum for covered new layoff appeals that had gone to a separate merit board.¹⁸ Together, those acts made federal workers easier to dismiss and removed ways to contest what their employer did.⁴⁸⁷

Before Trump nominated him to run the budget office, Russell Vought said what he wanted for federal workers, in private speeches obtained by ProPublica and Documented.⁹¹⁰

Video of private speeches obtained and published by ProPublica and Documented, under the headline 'Put Them in Trauma': Inside a Key MAGA Leader's Plans for a New Trump Agenda (the page's browser title reads Videos Reveal Trump Adviser's 'Shadow' Plan for Second Administration)⁹

We want the bureaucrats to be traumatically affected

Senators quoted the remarks during the February 5, 2025 nomination debate. The next day the Senate confirmed him, 53 to 47.¹¹¹⁰ The remarks state his aim; they do not identify him as the person who ordered these particular firings.⁹

Fired, Then Called Back

At Agriculture, the firings reached a forestry technician and others dismissed under the same form letter.¹² On March 5, at the Special Counsel's request, Cathy Harris, a member of the Merit Systems Protection Board, paused those firings for 45 days.¹² She found reasonable grounds to believe a prohibited personnel practice had occurred; her order did not decide that the firings were illegal.¹² Agriculture's sworn declaration put its probationary terminations at approximately 5,714 and said it reinstated all of them on March 12, with back pay and an initial phased return through paid administrative leave.¹³ Of the reinstated group, 1,070 seasonal Forest Service employees returned to their prior unpaid status.¹³

The National Nuclear Security Administration told Senator Edward Markey that 177 termination notices had been issued and 150 rescinded, with those employees back at work.¹⁴ Twenty-seven terminations remained in effect.¹⁴ NNSA assessed the 27 dismissed employees' roles as having no or minimal immediate national-security or public-safety impacts and considered the mission risks from reductions to date manageable.¹⁴

What the Judge Found

OPM had told agencies to dismiss probationers except the highest performers in mission-critical roles and employees covered by an OPM-approved exemption.¹ The government denied that OPM had issued a directive.² The denial failed against the agencies' own documents and testimony: the Forest Service briefing paper, Energy's termination letters, VA's sworn congressional testimony and IRS personnel officials' statements all pointed to OPM.² To the argument that OPM had only made a request, Alsup answered in his April 18 order: "An “ask,” followed by a directive, is a directive."¹⁵

In his March 14, 2025 memorandum explaining preliminary relief, Alsup found that the performance explanation was a pretense used at least in part to evade reduction-in-force procedures, the rules for layoffs, and foreclose Board appeals.² In the same memorandum he credited evidence that grants-administration cuts at USDA's Natural Resources Conservation Service had left a nonprofit, Point Blue Conservation Science, unpaid for work and stalled project approvals.²

The administration won the next round. On April 8, 2025, the Supreme Court stayed the initial reinstatement order, finding the nonprofit plaintiffs' allegations insufficient to establish standing; it did not decide the firings' legality or the other plaintiffs' claims.¹⁶

Alsup went on to the union claims and entered his merits judgment on September 12.¹⁵¹ He held that OPM's directive exceeded its authority and violated the Administrative Procedure Act, as did terminations pursuant to it, and made the injunction against such directions permanent subject to the regulation's narrow exception.¹ He found that government counsel had inserted nonexistent words about a presidential directive into a purported quotation from an email.¹ Alsup also called the government's administrative record a sham: it omitted exemption denials and other decisionmaking material while including a post-litigation explanation favorable to the government. Because plaintiffs sought judgment on that record and waived a completeness dispute, he nevertheless assumed its sufficiency and ruled on it.¹

The judgment required corrective personnel records and individually addressed notices, and barred agencies from telling third parties the workers had been fired for cause or performance.¹ It excluded State, NASA, OMB and OPM from that relief, permitted agencies to document genuine individualized performance decisions instead, and left agencies free to make their own lawful termination decisions.¹

That distinction answers the defense that these were only probationers.¹⁷¹ Initial probationers generally lack the normal adverse-action protections of covered employees. That does not give OPM power to order other agencies' firings.¹⁷¹

Alsup said ordinary relief under the Administrative Procedure Act would return the workers to their posts. He declined to order it: he expected the Supreme Court to overturn relief involving executive-branch hiring and firing, and he cited workers finding new jobs and posts disappearing in reorganizations.¹ The administration obtained the departures, while workers needed court-ordered correction of the reason attached to their names.¹

Trump Fired the Special Counsel and a Merit Board Member

Trump had fired Special Counsel Hampton Dellinger on February 7, 2025 and Harris on February 10; both won court orders reinstating them.¹ Dellinger resigned after his injunction was stayed pending appeal.¹

On May 22, 2025, the Supreme Court allowed Harris's removal during review, while recording that no qualifying statutory cause had been given.¹⁸

The administration won the dispute over Harris's removal.¹⁹²⁰ On December 5, 2025, the D.C. Circuit held the Board members' removal protections unconstitutional because they exercised substantial executive power, and on June 30, 2026 the Supreme Court denied Harris's petition.¹⁹²⁰

Alsup's September 2025 judgment recorded what the removals did to a fired worker's options.¹ He found that Harris's removal left the Board without the quorum required for final decisions.¹ He found the Special Counsel route impaired after Trump appointed officials who simultaneously headed agencies, creating conflicts in investigating government employers; Dellinger's replacement repudiated the office's earlier opposition to the mass firings.¹

The Personnel Office Now Hears the Appeals

On September 2, 2026, the office a court held had exceeded its authority by directing mass firings became the forum for covered new appeals against workforce actions.¹⁸ Covered appeals over layoffs, suitability decisions about fitness for government employment, and specified probationary actions moved from the Merit Systems Protection Board to OPM.⁸ Within the affected appeal categories, four groups of cases remained with the Board, among them covered cases already pending and Foreign Service layoff appeals protected by statute.⁸

Before the firings, the administration had also paid workers to leave: OPM's January 28, 2025 deferred-resignation offer promised eligible workers continued pay and benefits through September 30, and under its model agreement the worker resigned and waived challenges before the Board or any other forum.²¹²² OPM also promised participants exemption from planned reductions in force.²²

The program had mission-based exemptions: NNSA reported securing exclusions for 374 secure-transport agents, 122 Naval Reactors nuclear engineers and program managers, and seven nuclear emergency-support team leads.¹⁴

The appeals transfer has a defense. The probationary rule restored a limited appeal after a gap and protected against partisan-political and marital-status discrimination, with safeguards insulating adjudicators from officials involved in the challenged decisions.²³ OPM's strongest response to the independence objection was that, after the Harris decision, both agencies' leaders could be removed at will by the President.²³ That answers the claim that the Board still had greater removal protection. The change still moved adjudication from a separate board into the central personnel office.²³⁸

Approximately 7,600 Career Jobs Moved Outside Normal Dismissal Protections

The firing directive came from Trump's personnel office.¹ The orders that changed career protections carry his own signature.³⁵

On January 20, 2025, his first day back in office, Trump revived Schedule F under the name Schedule Policy/Career. His order gave the reason: "there have been numerous and well-documented cases of career Federal employees resisting and undermining the policies and directives of their executive leadership."³

OPM's final rule, which took effect on March 9, 2026, authorized covered policy-influencing positions to become at-will career jobs without normal dismissal procedures or appeals.⁴ Moving any job required a further presidential order.⁴ Trump signed that order, Executive Order 14410, on June 3, 2026.⁵ The Office of Government Ethics put the number at approximately 7,600 positions, against the roughly 50,000 potential conversions OPM had estimated earlier.⁶⁴ That counts positions reclassified, not employees dismissed.⁶ The list includes policy analysts at the Agricultural Research Service, economists at the Food Safety and Inspection Service and attorney advisers at the Commodity Futures Trading Commission.²⁴

The administration's strongest defense is accountability: supervisors should be able to remove poor performers and employees who obstruct lawful presidential policy.⁴⁵ The rules preserve merit-based, nonpartisan hiring, require internal protection against prohibited personnel practices and apply veterans' preference as far as administratively feasible. Trump's earlier order expressly says employees need not personally or politically support him.⁴³ Schedule Policy/Career employees retain reduction-in-force procedures and appeal rights. OPM expressly said the schedule should not be used to avoid those procedures when reducing a workforce.⁴ But the rule removes normal dismissal procedures and appeals to the merit board.⁴ It also removes coverage under the federal statute on prohibited personnel practices, including that statute's protection against whistleblower reprisal, and requires internal agency policies against those practices instead.⁴

The stated goal was better performance accountability.³⁵ The June order changed employment protections for approximately 7,600 positions and supplies no measurement of improved employee performance.⁵⁶ In March 2026, before the transfers, OPM's own performance plan acknowledged lacking complete, reliable government-wide data on hiring and performance management.²⁵

Excluding Veterans' Care, Food Inspection and Federal Building Management

The second protection Trump removed was collective bargaining. On March 27, 2025, he signed Executive Order 14251, excluding listed departments and subdivisions from the federal labor-relations statute.⁷ The list included Veterans Affairs, the General Services Administration and Agriculture's food-safety and animal-health inspection services, with exceptions and carve-outs specified in the order.⁷

Congress gave the President an exclusion power when he determines that an agency's primary function is intelligence, counterintelligence, investigative or national-security work and that the labor statute cannot operate there consistently with national security.²⁶ The legal power exists. Trump's use of it reaches veterans' care, food inspection and management of federal buildings.²⁶⁷

The administration won an important challenge to the order: in its June 17, 2026 amended opinion, the Ninth Circuit vacated a preliminary injunction based on alleged retaliation against unions.²⁷ On the preliminary record, the court held, the government had shown Trump would have acted on national-security concerns even without the unions' protected speech. The court did not decide the unions' separate claim that he exceeded his statutory authority.²⁷ The exclusion went forward, and the listed workers lost their statutory bargaining protections.²⁷⁷

At the Bureau of Prisons, Judge Vernon Oliver ordered the union agreement restored for likely Administrative Procedure Act violations, and the bureau's William Marshall canceled it again on October 7, 2026; the government argued its new decision complied and disputed contempt.²⁸²⁹³⁰ At Veterans Affairs, Judge Melissa DuBose found an August contract-expiration attempt violated her injunction, but the First Circuit stayed that order on October 2 on jurisdictional grounds without deciding the extension dispute.³¹

The Pattern Reached Beyond the First Firings

The pattern extended beyond the first firings.³²³³ In September 2026, Judge Susan Illston held DHS's control of FEMA renewals and its unsupported staffing-halving plan unlawful under the Administrative Procedure Act; the full cut had not happened, and the remedy remained for further proceedings.³² The government settled its shutdown-firing case on September 23, admitting no liability; defendant agencies represented that they had rescinded their October 1-November 12, 2025 shutdown layoff notices and reinstated separated workers.³³ OPM also won a case outright: on December 22, 2025, Judge Randolph Moss dismissed the Jane Does 1-7 suit over its government-wide email system for lack of standing and denied sanctions, finding no misrepresentations by OPM.³⁴

Authority to Manage Does Not Erase the Rules

The broadest defense is presidential authority: the administration can invoke substantial removal authority and statutory limits on a district court's role. In Elgin, the Supreme Court held that qualifying employees must use the Civil Service Reform Act's review system even when challenging a statute's constitutionality.³⁵³⁶³⁷ In July 2025 the Court also stayed broader workforce relief because it found the government's argument that the executive order and memorandum were lawful likely to succeed, while leaving particular agency plans unjudged.³⁸

History favors caution about impeachment over removal powers: Andrew Johnson's 1868 impeachment over removing Edwin Stanton ended one vote short of conviction, and Congress later repealed the remaining Tenure of Office Act provisions.³⁹⁴⁰

Congress built the merit-based civil service in the Pendleton Act of 1883 and barred political firing or demotion of covered employees.⁴¹ The President's authority does not excuse an agency's exercise of a power that a merits judgment held it did not possess.¹

What the President and His Administration Did

Trump signed the orders. OPM directed the firings. Agencies carried them out, and a federal judge held the directive and resulting terminations unlawful.³⁵⁷¹

The charge is abuse of public personnel power: using it at scale to weaken the system that makes federal workers answer to law and merit, while a central agency ordered removals beyond its authority.⁴¹¹⁵⁸ The government's legal victories matter. So do the 25,406 firings, the protections removed from approximately 7,600 positions and the review moved into the personnel office.^16271468 That is why this belongs in a case for impeachment.¹⁵⁷⁸