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Earlier this year, federal agencies summarily fired tens of thousands of federal workers who were in their first year of public service, when they generally have less recourse to challenge adverse personnel actions. They also fired many tenured yet recently promoted employees, despite federal law stipulating such individuals retain their full Title 5 removal protections despite their return to probationary status.
Many of these purges were reversed by court order in March—though many agencies, Commerce included, simply placed reinstated workers on administrative leave—until two April appellate court decisions allowed for the workers’ refiring.
In a letter to Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, the panel’s acting ranking member, Rep. Stephen Lynch, D-Mass., said employees have reached out to committee Democrats over the department’s failure to properly handle their health care benefits under the Federal Employees Health Benefits Program.
“I write with grave concern regarding reports that the Department of Commerce failed to provide illegally terminated probationary federal employees with health care coverage in the immediate aftermath of their initial terminations and upon rehiring, and has failed to provide documentation to former employees regarding their terminations,” Lynch wrote. “Committee Democrats received reports that employees were fired, some with just hours’ notice, and denied health coverage for which they had already paid.”
When the Commerce Department first fired around 800 probationary workers, some received a memo explaining they would continue to receive health care coverage for 31 days past their final pay period and that they are eligible to enroll in Temporary Continuation of Coverage, a COBRA-like program where federal workers can retain their FEHBP enrollment, albeit entirely at their own cost. But others did not receive the required 31-day extension and reported their insurance carrier had ceased covering them.
When a federal judge in March ordered the employees’ reinstatement, the department restored their access to FEHBP and collected premiums from their paycheck. But in April, when the initial ruling was overturned, the department reportedly backdated some employees’ termination to March, ending their FEHBP coverage despite the employees’ continued payroll deductions.
“In one case, an employee with more than a decade of continuous service at Commerce who was classified as ‘probationary’ after accepting a promotion within the agency was told that the health insurance premiums paid into the Federal Employees Health Benefits Program would not be refunded despite Commerce’s early cancellation of health coverage without notification,” Lynch wrote. “In another case, former Commerce employees were denied health care during the 31-day post-employment period and left without coverage with no notice. Commerce’s failure to meet its health care obligations to its employees raises concerns about whether other forms of owed compensation, such as payment for earned leave and credit hours, are being denied.”
In addition, employees report that Commerce has dropped the ball in other areas of the termination process. Some report being unable to access their personnel documents to prove that they have been terminated for the purposes of seeking out new insurance coverage, while others said they remain in an unpaid leave status because the department still has not processed their firing.
“This has caused issues with applying for unemployment benefits in many states and with acquiring new employment,” Lynch wrote. “Commerce must rectify this immediately and ensure that former employees have the documentation they need to allow them to access benefits and new employment.”
The Commerce Department is not the only federal agency to cut corners in its termination of probationary workers. The Housing and Urban Development Department in March refused to offer reinstated employees back pay, an apparent violation of federal law, and encouraged employees to sign up for Temporary Continuation of Coverage, rather than pay the employer’s share of their FEHBP premiums.
]]>According to a detailed budget supplement released Friday evening, CISA’s projected workforce would drop from 3,292 employees to 2,324 for the 2026 fiscal year, which starts at the end of September. The agency’s operational funding obligations would also fall by more than $420 million, from $2.38 billion to $1.96 billion, and a separate agency budget justification document shows its total funding would drop some $495 million.
While the budget boosts funding for infrastructure security efforts within CISA, most other program lines — including cybersecurity operations, stakeholder engagement and mission support — would face millions in cuts. CISA was initially forecast to lose some $491 million under President Donald Trump’s “skinny budget” released a month ago.
It’s unclear if the projected employee reductions already factor in those participating in a governmentwide deferred resignation program and similar mechanisms being offered to CISA’s workforce to leave government service. The deferred resignation program continues to pay workers until the fiscal year ends. Planned cuts at the agency were projected to shed around 1,300 employees, multiple people familiar with the matter previously told Nextgov/FCW.
The proposal would entirely eliminate the agency’s Election Security Program, with 14 positions and about $39.6 million on the chopping block. That cut was expected after CISA said it would end support in March, leaving thousands of state and local governments in limbo.
The proposed budget also includes a $45 million cut to Cyber Defense Education and Training. Additionally, the cyber agency intends to cut 35 positions and shed $70 million from the National Risk Management Center, which coordinates risk analysis to mitigate cyber and physical threats that target critical infrastructure.
Beyond CISA, other parts of the federal cyber and national intelligence ecosystem face lowered funding outlooks.
The FBI, which leads domestic cybercriminal investigations, would see its obligations drop by $560 million, alongside a loss of nearly 1,900 staff. The Justice Department’s National Security Division, which handles foreign intelligence surveillance policy and various counterintelligence operations, would see its budget fall from $133 million to $119 million, accompanied by a reduction of 19 full-time employees.
The Department of Energy’s Office of Cybersecurity, Energy Security and Emergency Response, which oversees cybersecurity for the nation’s electric grid, would see a sharp cut from $222 million to $179 million and a staffing reduction of more than 30%. And the National Science Foundation’s computer science research activities would face a dramatic drop from $952 million in the current fiscal year to $346 million in FY26.
At the General Services Administration, funding for the Information Technology Category — which oversees governmentwide IT procurement and modernization services — would decline from $335 million in FY25 to $217 million in FY26, a reduction of $118 million.
The Treasury Department’s Office of Terrorism and Financial Intelligence, which focuses on combating financial crime, would see its obligations decline slightly from $274 million to $254 million.
And the Office of the National Cyber Director, responsible for coordinating cyber strategy across the federal government, would lose $2 million in funding for 2026 but keep its current level of 85 full-time employees.
Some areas buck the trend. The Intelligence Community Management Account — which provides administrative and policy support across the nation’s 18 intelligence agencies — would receive a modest funding increase from $687 million in FY25 to $700 million in FY26.
The Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board, the watchdog for spy agency infringements into Americans’ civil liberties, would see minimal year-over-year changes in funding or staffing. The board is currently in a legal battle with the Trump administration over the firing of its Democratic members.
CISA, which was created in 2018 during Trump’s first term, has increasingly become the public face of federal response to cyberattacks, election security and espionage from foreign adversaries. But it’s come under the wrath of the Trump administration for its role in debunking claims of election fraud in 2020, its public-facing posture on disinformation threats and what administration officials now describe as bureaucratic overreach and politicization.
Recent staffing departures at CISA now leave nearly all of the agency’s operational divisions and at least half its regional bureaus without a permanent leader.
Sean Plankey, President Donald Trump’s pick to lead the cyber agency, is expected to face questions about these budget changes when he testifies this Thursday alongside National Cyber Director nominee Sean Cairncross. Congress will ultimately decide whether to endorse, reverse or revise the administration’s funding levels when it crafts the official budget bills in the coming months.
Editor's Note: This story has been corrected to reflect a drop in $495 million for CISA's total funding obligations, not $420 million, as originally written.
]]>“We as a country cannot afford for these professionals to be hopeless and to not be in the workforce,” said Rebecca Ferguson-Ondrey, a co-founder of wellfed, a social impact startup with more than 500 members from 30 federal agencies who are changing careers. “We need their skills. We need their expertise. We need their passion and their drive.”
Until they lost their jobs in February, Ferguson-Ondrey and Drew Tye Ruby-Howe worked on employee experience and engagement in the Health and Human Services Department’s Administration for Children and Families. Since then, they’ve launched wellfed to provide weekly wellness sessions and virtual skill workshops, particularly on resume and job search strategies, as well as some in-person events.
“We are fired federal workers, so we’ve been in it. We have been through the ringer, we’ve been on a roller coaster — the emotional roller coaster of ‘do I have a job or don't I have a job?’ The uncertainty of it all, we've been living in it,” Ferguson-Ondrey said. “We're also professionals that are equipped with the expertise. We're change management experts. We are employee engagement and wellness experts. So we are uniquely equipped and positioned to support the fired federal workforce.”
Ruby-Howe said that working on wellfed has helped with processing her own firing.
“This has been a form of healing for us, because we are grieving the jobs we had, the life that we knew, and we want others to understand that their grief is valid and that they are not alone,” she said. “Just because they can't be doing the work that they were doing does not mean that they have less to give and that they are lesser by way of these circumstances.”
UiPath, an automation company and government contractor, recently announced a program to train public sector professionals on how to use AI agents that it hopes laid off federal employees take advantage of too.
“288,000 full-time employees are projected to be impacted through the [deferred resignation program] or some form of a [reduction in force], like, think of that as a major multinational corporation vanishing overnight,” said Chris Radich, the company’s public sector chief technology officer. “We have friends, neighbors, very talented folks who are leaving government, and we want to help transition a lot of administrative and management professionals — in terms of job category — we want to help transition them to be a part of this technology wave, to be a part of the AI era.”
The series’ kickoff meeting is July 17, and the training features tailored learning plans, community support and opportunities for certifications.
Work for America, a nonprofit that helps state and local governments recruit employees, in May began providing more than 9,000 former federal employees who are using their platform to find job openings at those levels with three free coaching sessions through a partnership.
Caitlin Lewis, WFA’s executive director, said coaching could be especially helpful for individuals who want to shift the focus of their work or move for a new opportunity.
“Coaching is really great for just having a framework for thinking through some of those big questions — especially for the folks who have been in the same job or in multiple jobs in the federal government for decades and just have to do a total mindset shift to even start to think about what's next because this wasn't something they were expecting to be doing at this point in their life,” she said.
Lewis said her goal is to help federal employees who want to continue to serve in government stay in the public sector.
“Being in a room with people who have 30 years of experience, who have PhDs, who have been leading critical research, doing work in service of this country for their whole careers, and having them walk into a room seeking help with their resume because they haven't had to look for a job in 30 years is literally a gut punch every time,” she said. “You never become numb to that. So it is very motivating to get to work on something that is so directly responsive to what is impacting so many thousands of workers.”
The Trump administration told the court that the State Department’s reorganization, expected to lead to thousands of job cuts, is permissible even under the current preliminary injunction and layoff notices could go out as soon as next week. Susan Illston, a district judge in California, held an emergency hearing after the plaintiffs in the case—a consortium of federal employee unions, municipalities and advocacy groups—accused the administration of violating the judge’s order.
The Trump administration argued in advance of, and during, Thursday’s hearing that State’s reorganization was conducted separately from President Trump’s mandate that all agencies slash their workforces and instead occurred only at the instruction of Secretary Marco Rubio. Because Illston’s order applied only to Trump’s executive order and subsequent guidance from the Office of Management and Budget and the Office of Personnel Management, the Justice Department lawyers said, State’s plans were not subject to the injunction.
The administration has taken “a broad range of actions” to top planned RIFs at 17 agencies, said Andrew Bernie, a Justice attorney, but State’s plans represented “a special case.”
Illston first issued a temporary restraining order pausing State and most major agencies from carrying out reorganizations and related staffing cuts under Trump’s orders on May 10, then extended the pause indefinitely by issuing a preliminary injunction on May 22.
Attorneys for the plaintiffs, however, noted that State disseminated a fact sheet in April on the reorganization that said department officials would “submit a path to reducing staff in domestic offices by 15%, consistent with the president’s Workforce Optimization Initiative.” That initiative was part of Illston’s injunction. Bernie countered that State’s actions were merely consistent with that initiative but not taken because of it.
Bernie added that State could move forward with its layoffs as soon as June 13. State is expected to shed more than 3,400 employees, though it will rely on both reductions in force and voluntary separations to meet that total. Bernie said State informed him that while employees could receive their layoff notices next week, actual separations would not occur until mid-August for civil servants and mid-October for foreign service officers.
Illston said she was not ready to make a decision, but was leaning toward siding with the plaintiffs.
“It appears to me, anyway, that what is being implemented at the State Department now is covered by the injunction,” the judge said.
She ordered the Trump administration to submit evidence proving State’s reorganization was taking place separately from Trump’s demands and OMB and OPM’s guidance by Monday. Plaintiffs will then have an opportunity to respond and Illston will hold a hearing to make a determination either June 12 or June 13, depending on when State asserts the RIFs are set to occur.
At that hearing, Illston will also determine whether the renewed dismissals of probationary employees at the Housing and Urban Development Department violated her order. As Government Executive first reported, HUD has re-fired some of its probationary employees since Illston first paused agency restructurings. The plaintiffs in the case suggested that may have violated the judge’s order, but Bernie said those firings were not subject to the injunction.
At the Health and Human Services Department, meanwhile, the Trump administration conceded that some employees in the Administration for Community Living who had previously received RIF notices were given offboarding after Illston’s order went into effect. HHS has subsequently informed those workers that offboarding is on hold. The National Institutes of Health moved some employees to administrative leave, but has since reversed those changes.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit has denied the Trump administration’s request to strike down Illston’s injunction. The administration has asked the Supreme Court to intervene, and the high court requested initial filings by next week.
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