By Tami Luhby, Rene Marsh, Matt Egan and Sean Lyngaas

(CNN) — The Trump administration broadened its effort to terminate thousands of probationary workers on Thursday, instructing agencies on a call to move forward with the layoffs.

Officials have set their sights on probationary workers, who have typically been employed for less than a year, or two years in some cases, because they have fewer job protections and lack the right to appeal.

Labor unions representing federal employees are still working to get their arms around the full scale and scope of the firing of probationary employees this week. More than 200,000 employees have worked within the federal government for less than a year, according to the most recent 2024 data from the US Office of Personnel Management, which conducted Thursday afternoon’s call.

The culling on Thursday took place at the departments of Energy and Veterans Affairs, among others, and followed terminations of scores of probationary workers earlier this week at the Department of Education, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and the Small Business Administration. More dismissals at other agencies, including the Department of the Interior, took place Friday.

Until recently, federal employees across all government agencies had only been placed on paid administrative leave.

Thursday’s directive marked a shift in guidance, as OPM had told agencies earlier this week they did not have to terminate all probationary workers but should focus on those who have been underperforming.

“The probationary period is a continuation of the job application process, not an entitlement for permanent employment,” an OPM spokesperson told CNN in a statement Thursday. “Agencies are taking independent action in light of the recent hiring freeze and in support of the President’s broader efforts to restructure and streamline the federal government to better serve the American people at the highest possible standard.”

Since taking office in January, President Donald Trump and Elon Musk have upended the federal workforce, firing top officials and watchdogs, dismantling a key humanitarian agency and convincing 77,000 workers to voluntarily leave their jobs through a deferred resignation offer.

The dismissal of probationary workers had been in the works since Trump’s first day in office, when the acting head of OPM sent a memo to all agencies ordering them to compile a list of all their probationary staff and send it to the office. The January 20 memo noted that it is easier to terminate these employees.

Firings by email and video

Employees received their termination notices via emails, form letters and video calls, according to sources who spoke with CNN.

Staffers at the Interior Department began receiving word of widespread firings on Friday from coworkers who were suddenly being let go.

One employee received an email from a colleague, saying, “I’ve just been notified,” and explaining they could no longer complete the project they’d been working on together.

More than 2,200 workers in the agency, which includes the Bureau of Land Management, National Park Service, Fish and Wildlife Service and the United States Geological Survey, were dismissed.

At OPM, dozens of probational employees were fired on a Thursday afternoon Microsoft Teams call, according to the American Federation of Government Employees, which represents career employees at the office. After receiving an email to join the call, roughly 100 people joined with their video and speaking ability deactivated, and probationary employees were told that they were being terminated and would have to leave the building within a half hour.

The reason cited for their termination was that they did not accept the deferred resignation package, according to AFGE. After 3 p.m. those who were let go no longer had access to the building or government emails. Union representatives were not allowed on the call, AFGE said.

The VA said it had dismissed more than 1,000 employees while touting that it would save the department more than $98 million per year. However, the vast majority of probationary employees — more than 43,000 — were exempt from the dismissals, the department said.

One firing notice to a VA employee shared with CNN stated: “The Agency finds, based on your performance, that you have not demonstrated that your further employment at the Agency would be in the public interest.” Termination notifications at other departments contained similar language.

The VA employee’s message was signed by VA Chief Human Capital Officer Tracey Therit.

In a statement, VA Secretary Doug Collins said, “To be perfectly clear: these moves will not negatively impact VA health care, benefits or beneficiaries.”

One VA employee who was terminated worked at a Vet Center, a community-based clinic that helps veterans seeking mental health care and other services, according to a union source. The worker had a perfect performance review rating, CNN’s review of the employee’s file showed.

Meanwhile, employees across the Department of Energy were on edge as probationary staffers began receiving notices Thursday that they were being dismissed.

“Our leadership was visibly shaken today,” one Department of Energy employee told CNN. “Sounds like it hit them out of the blue.”

Earlier in the day, the agency’s acting general counsel held a meeting with heads of department offices and asked offices to compile lists of “mission-critical” probationary employees who could potentially be exempt from the layoffs, one person familiar with the agency’s staffing told CNN.

Some 2,000 employees at the agency were let go, according to a source with knowledge of the action.

At the US Forest Service, 3,400 employees were fired, according to an agency source familiar with the matter. The agency manages and maintains public forests and grasslands and is critical in wildfire protection.

While the employees fired were not from the firefighting unit, much of the staff dismissed would have served as reserve crews during peak wildfire season that the agency could tap into for extra manpower, the source said, who noted that the service could be faced with having to shutdown certain campsites due to a lack of staff.

AFGE vowed to fight the dismissals, saying the administration has “abused” the probationary period to “conduct a politically driven mass firing spree.”

“These firings are not about poor performance – there is no evidence these employees were anything but dedicated public servants. They are about power,” AFGE National President Everett Kelley said in a statement. “Agencies have spent years recruiting and developing the next generation of public servants. By firing them en masse, this administration is throwing away the very talent that agencies need to function effectively in the years ahead.”

Americans will likely feel the impact of these terminations, Randy Erwin, national president of the National Federation of Federal Employees, said in a statement Friday.

“It is a tremendous task to hire and retain a skilled civil service, and indiscriminately dismissing qualified workers is an incredible waste of time and money,” he said. “Firing tens of thousands of civil servants puts a massive strain on public services that Americans depend on every day and makes our country considerably less safe.”

‘Valentine’s Day Massacre’

Thousands of federal probationary health workers across agencies including the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the National Institutes of Health are expected to be pushed out Friday, sources told CNN. Workers are expected to be given four weeks’ pay.

At the CDC, about 1,300 employees could lose their jobs, a source told CNN. Among those employees is the entire first year class of the Epidemic Intelligence Service, a different source said. The EIS is the public health agency’s applied epidemiology training program – officers are known as CDC’s “disease detectives,” and they’ve been deployed since 1951 to help with public health threats in the US and abroad, including smallpox eradication, Ebola, HIV, anthrax and Covid-19.

Employees at the CDC are calling this “The Valentine’s Day Massacre,” another source told CNN. The cuts are part of about 5,200 across the Department of Health and Human Services, one day after Robert F. Kennedy Jr. was sworn in as secretary, the health news organization STAT reported Friday.

NIH employees involved in patient care are being exempted, one source said.

Other employees also targeted

At the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, probationary workers were let go on Tuesday, but dozens of so-called term employees were terminated on Thursday evening, people familiar with the matter told CNN. These workers typically serve for a limited duration of time but are still considered career employees with certain civil service protections.

The bureau’s team of technologists who were hired to work on artificial intelligence and other areas was severely impacted by the terminations, one source told CNN. The CFPB did not respond to a request for comment.

One of the bureau’s term staffers was notified of their termination in a form letter to their personal email Thursday evening, shortly after being locked out of their work accounts. Although they were supposed to be employed into 2026, they were informed that their last day was Thursday. They would receive a postage paid box to return their ID badge, laptop, iPhone and other equipment owned by CFPB, the notice said.

“It was a job I loved doing, protecting consumers every day,” said the employee, who has young children and a mortgage. “It will also have a pretty serious financial impact on my family.”

The notices said employees were being terminated due to the workforce optimization executive order, signed by Trump on Tuesday, that promised a “critical transformation of the Federal bureaucracy” aimed at “eliminating waste.” The order also directed agency heads to start preparations for large-scale reductions in force, or RIFs.

Federal employees across the government are bracing for more rounds of downsizing in the near future.

Newly confirmed Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins told reporters at the White House Friday that additional layoffs are “forthcoming” and that she welcomed the Department of Government Efficiency and Musk “with open arms.”

“USDA is pursuing an aggressive plan to optimize its workforce by eliminating positions that are no longer necessary, bringing its workforce back to the office, and relocating employees out of the National Capital region into our nation’s heartland to allow our rural communities to flourish,” she said in a statement.

This story has been updated with additional developments Friday.

CNN’s Megan Trimble, Kaanita Iyer, Ella Nilsen, Jamie Gangel, Meg Tirrell, Brenda Goodman, Nick Valencia and Alejandra Jaramillo contributed to this report.

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