Chris Arnold
Appearances
The NPR Politics Podcast
How DOGE Cuts Are Impacting Federal Workers
Yeah, right. A lot of these workers who've been fired are what are called probationary workers. And that can sound at first like, oh, well, maybe they got hired six months ago, so maybe it's not that big a deal. But in many cases, it's not that. You could have worked someplace for five, six, seven, ten years, and then you get a promotion and you're in a new job because you were doing a good job.
The NPR Politics Podcast
How DOGE Cuts Are Impacting Federal Workers
You're a good worker. And now you're in a probationary period in that new job. So these folks were in that category. And I talked to Eileen and James Kramer, and they worked at a national park in Alaska. It's called Lake Clark National Park. These guys have both gotten promotions recently. Everything seemed good. And then they get these letters saying, you know what, you're doing a lousy job.
The NPR Politics Podcast
How DOGE Cuts Are Impacting Federal Workers
And so you're fired today. No details, no reason. And it just looked like a formally letter with their names filled in. And here's Eileen and James.
The NPR Politics Podcast
How DOGE Cuts Are Impacting Federal Workers
I mean, that's what's happening right now. I mean, there are lawyers just gathering these up, you know, and being like, here's the letter. It's the same as the other thousand letters. And when you actually look at the personnel file, you know, this person got this commendation and, you know, and also they're talking and it turns out their own supervisor was like, I don't want to fire this person.
The NPR Politics Podcast
How DOGE Cuts Are Impacting Federal Workers
Well, there's one in federal court in San Francisco against the Office of Personnel Management, which apparently the lawsuit alleges a lot of these letters just came from OPM and then kind of went through the agencies. But it wasn't even these agencies saying, we want to fire these people. But it also zooms in on this idea like you were talking about, like, well –
The NPR Politics Podcast
How DOGE Cuts Are Impacting Federal Workers
You can't just lie and say these people did their jobs badly and use that as a justification to immediately terminate them. There was just another kind of related case. Things were resolved in the last couple of days involving the U.S. Office of Special Counsel. And a few workers were put back to work or will be in a couple of days.
The NPR Politics Podcast
How DOGE Cuts Are Impacting Federal Workers
So, you know, the courts really might come back and say, you know what, guys, like this just wasn't done right. Like these federal workers have rights and you cannot fire them this way.
The NPR Politics Podcast
How DOGE Cuts Are Impacting Federal Workers
Well, and I think like that's a big difference between the private sector, too. Right. I mean, if Musk buys Twitter, which became X, I mean, yeah, he's in charge. He can fire half the people. The parallel with the government like stops there. Right. It makes me think I used to cover Silicon Valley and you'd see guys who made gajillions of dollars.
The NPR Politics Podcast
How DOGE Cuts Are Impacting Federal Workers
And then they're like, I want to solve public education. And they would try to wade in. And then they'd realize like, oh my God, no, I'm dealing with the unions. And I don't have like a room full of really smart grads from Stanford, like making this one thing. I'm dealing with a hundred things and they're all way more complicated. And it's like, it kind of reminds me of that.
The NPR Politics Podcast
How DOGE Cuts Are Impacting Federal Workers
You know, it's like, it's just turning into this absolute swamp of tangled intention where, you know, anything he tries to do the way he would do it, say when he took over Twitter, is just going to spark lawsuits. Yeah.
The NPR Politics Podcast
How DOGE Cuts Are Impacting Federal Workers
I mean, I think seeing how this plays out with federal workers and whether the courts are willing to say you didn't follow the rules and you can't just summarily fire tens of thousands of people and send out all these letters that essentially lie about things like that's just not OK. And you got to hire them all back. And let's do this like grownups.
The NPR Politics Podcast
How DOGE Cuts Are Impacting Federal Workers
And if that's able to work, you know, I think that would be really interesting. And I don't know if that's what's going to happen.
The NPR Politics Podcast
How DOGE Cuts Are Impacting Federal Workers
Well, yeah, I mean, absolutely. Either way that goes, I mean, there's just there's a lot hanging on that for so many, so many federal workers, obviously.