All The Times DOGE S**t Had To Be Cleaned Up

WASHINGTON — Imagine becoming president of the United States and one of the first things you do is fire the people in charge of managing the country’s nuclear weapons.

For good measure, imagine you also went ahead and fired scientists trying to prevent a national outbreak of a deadly bird flu, military veterans who run a national crisis line and environmental stewards who keep the country’s hugely popular national parks clean and safe for millions of summertime visitors.

Oops! President Donald Trump — with the assistance of his buddy Elon Musk, the world’s richest man ― did all of these things, and now he’s backpedaling, scrambling to rehire hundreds if not thousands of federal workers he just pushed out.

After weeks of sowing chaos across the federal government with drastic and arbitrary (and likely illegal) mass firings, the Trump administration is figuring out the hard way, after turning tens of thousands of people’s lives upside-down, that federal employees and the work they do is essential for millions of Americans’ safety, health and general happiness.

From the moment Trump resumed office in January, Musk has been moving at warp speed to dismiss as many federal employees as possible — the White House’s stated goal is how to reach some of them.

It’s not clear how many will return to work.

The Department of Agriculture has been scrambling to rehire employees it recently dismissed who were part of an office that reportedly helps oversee a national network of labs that the agency uses to confirm cases of bird flu and other animal diseases.

The bird flu has devastated egg and poultry farms over the past three years. It’s not clear how many people in this federal office were fired or how many may be coming back.

Rep. Don Bacon (R-Neb.) chided the president for being careless with these cuts.

“While President Trump is fulfilling his promise to shed light on waste, fraud, and abuse in government, DOGE needs to measure twice and cut once,” Bacon said Wednesday. “Downsizing decisions must be narrowly tailored to preserve critical missions.”

After firing hundreds of employees at the Environmental Protection Agency, an unspecified number of them were suddenly rehired at a regional office in New England.

EPA managers reportedly did not explain why some employees were dismissed and then reinstated. Those who were brought back simply got this email message: “On behalf of EPA, we apologize for this inconvenience and thank you for your service to the Agency.”

The Department of Veterans Affairs terminated 1,000 employees this week, but is apparently racing to rehire some who worked on the Veterans Crisis Line, a 24/7, confidential hotline that offers support to veterans and their loved ones.

“After pushing on their behalf, I’m relieved federal employees who were fired from the Veterans Crisis Line are set to be rehired,” Sen. Tammy Duckworth (D-Ill.) said Wednesday on social media. “Many were Veterans themselves.”

The Bonneville Power Administration, a federal power plant that runs a large hydroelectric dam in the Pacific Northwest, dismissed 200 probationary workers last week as part of Trump’s large-scale cuts. But as of Wednesday, it had hired 30 of them back.

These employees include electricians, lineworkers, cybersecurity experts and engineers, per local reporting, and were deemed “critical” to the agency’s work to manage the region’s electrical grid and keep people’s electricity on.

Thousands of people who work as seasonal employees at the National Park Service received emails last month that their jobs were canceled.

But this week, after public outcry from outdoors enthusiasts and Democratic senators, the Interior Department issued a memo saying park service officials could hire 7,700 seasonal employees this year — an increase over the 6,300 who have been hired in recent years.

The Trump administration’s reversal on park service workers is “definitely a win,” Kristen Brengel of the National Parks Conservation Association said Thursday.

Without seasonal workers on site during the peak season, national parks would have been forced to take steps like closing visitor centers and campgrounds, not cleaning bathrooms, and cutting back or canceling guided tours.

The Trump administration has reversed course on plans to cut staffing at the World Trade Center Health Program, which provides medical monitoring and treatment of health conditions for first responders and survivors of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attack in New York City.

Rep. Nicole Malliotakis (R-N.Y.) said in a Friday statement that she wrote to Trump earlier this week about program staff being let go because of cuts to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which oversees the program. She said the White House has since changed its plans.

“This is a reminder of why, when looking for savings to reduce our nation’s $37 trillion debt, we need to use a scalpel not a sledgehammer—to avoid unintended consequences and unnecessary anxiety,” Malliotakis said.

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) said Trump backed off cuts to this program after pressure from him and other Democrats.

“This lifesaving program should have never been on the chopping block in the first place and so it makes sense that the Trump administration has done a complete about-face and heeded our calls to reverse these devastating cuts and rehire the dedicated staff of the World Trade Center Health Program,” Schumer said in a Friday statement.

Public health officials in the CDC’s Epidemic Intelligence Service were initially warned they were going to lose their jobs, but over the weekend, they learned they were spared.

Known as CDC’s “disease detectives,” these employees would have fallen into the category of probationary workers because they are fellows who serve for two years. Some serve at the CDC or are sent to health departments around the country, taking part in public health responses.

The country would be “less safe” without these federal workers, Dr. Anne Schuchat, a former top-ranking CDC official told CBS News on Thursday. “These are the deployable assets critical for investigating new threats, from anthrax to Zika.”