Mass firings began at the Defense Department this week, with multiple organizations receiving direction to place targeted probationary employees on administrative leave pending official action by the department.
There are 55,000 total probationary employees at DOD, according to Pentagon data shared with lawmakers this week and provided to Defense One. An undisclosed number of them began receiving notification of their new status on Monday. They are expected to be officially terminated 14 to 21 days later, according to the information provided.
The firings are part of staff reductions initiated since January by the Department of Government Efficiency, a White House advisory board. While other agencies have seen across-the-board cuts of recent hires, the Pentagon hadn’t taken broad action until this week. DOD officials have announced plans to fire 5,400 probationary employees, then freeze hiring and prepare a 5- to 8-percent cut of all civilian workers.
“I know that the recent workforce reduction initiatives are causing stress and confusion for many of our employees,” one Navy Department manager wrote in an email to staff. “As I said during our all hands event last week, shrinking the federal workforce remains an objective of the administration, and we will likely continue to receive direction to execute that objective.”
Both the manager’s identity and that of the email recipient who shared it with Defense One are being withheld to prevent retaliation.
The manager added that most of that organization’s probationary employees met one of 29 possible exemption criteria and so will not be fired.
Probationary employees are generally people hired in the past year or two who therefore lack some civil-service protections, or people recently promoted or transferred between agencies, who retain the protections they earned in their previous jobs.
The Navy had no data to share on Thursday in terms of total probationary layoffs and exemptions granted, a service official, who was not authorized to speak on the record, told Defense One.
One Navy civilian described their experience on Wednesday.
“Commander came into my office and said he needed to speak to me,” the civilian said. “My gut feeling told me it was about the firings and what is going on. I went in and he told me that I was going to be placed on admin leave for two to three weeks and I’ll be terminated due to the budget constraints and me being a probie and whatever else is going on.”
The employee said they haven’t received anything official from the department, but did turn in their access badge.
“I am an Army vet, 100 percent disabled and wanted to give back to my country in this way because I was medically discharged and can no longer serve,” they said. “My kids were in daycare on post. I drove an hour to and from work every day since November. The job was such a joy and helped with my anxiety, my mental, my lifestyle. Then it’s gone just like that.”
Word of probationary firings came down the day of President Donald Trump’s second inauguration, via memo from the Office of Personnel Management. A month later, as word swirled around DOD that managers had been asked to compile lists of their probationary employees, Hegseth took to social media to proclaim that firings would be based on performance.
“Now common sense would tell us where we should start, right? We start with poor performers amongst our probationary employees because that is common sense and you want the best and brightest,” he said.
Information provided to lawmakers this week included the assertion that the firings are only targeting poor performers, but there are no details provided as to how “poor performance” was assessed. Anecdotes suggest that at least some DOD employees with ostensibly good performance have been dismissed. Fired federal employees from other agencies, who have spoken with the Associated Press and NBC in recent weeks, said their firing notifications cited poor performance, despite track records of excellent evaluations.
Hegseth’s address accompanied a memo release from the department’s interim personnel boss, Darin Selnick, declaring that DOD intended to fire up to 5,400 probationary employees, institute a hiring freeze, then target more than 60,000 additional civilian employees through a wider reduction-in-force review.
A lawsuit filed by federal employees temporarily, some employees thought, put a hold on the firings. A judge ruled Feb. 27 that OPM had no legal standing to order agencies to fire their employees.
To circumvent that ruling, Selnick signed another memo Monday declaring that the Pentagon’s decision to shrink its workforce was “independent.”
“I determined it necessary to reduce the size of the Department’s civilian workforce,” he wrote. “The first step in doing this will be terminating those probationary employees whose continued employment at the Department would not be in the public interest.”
On Friday, Pentagon officials declined to say on the record how many employees across the department have been targeted for firing, whether all of them had documented performance or conduct issues, and how many exemptions were granted.
Neither Hegseth nor his spokespeople have held any public briefings to discuss the layoffs. Requests for comment from the secretary’s public affairs office have gone unanswered. Numerous social media posts on the department’s activities have also not addressed firings, though spokespeople and Hegseth continue to tout the current administration as “the most transparent ever.”
Eric Katz contributed to this report.
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