West Virginia Watch, Beckley Register-Herald , Ohio Capital Journal– Two hundred workers were laid off from the Bureau of Fiscal Service in Parkersburg. Thousands from the Department of Veterans Affairs (including at least 10 in West Virginia). And hundreds each from the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) and the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA). Caring for our veterans, responding to natural disasters, and keeping our skies safe — these are all among the roles of government that most folks across the political spectrum agree upon, and even so, they have all been impacted.
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And these layoffs aren’t coming after professional and thorough reviews of departments identifying redundancies or unnecessary functions. The Department of Government Efficient (DOGE) is using a hatchet rather than a scalpel, largely firing probationary employees — not because they were found to be unnecessary but because they are easy to fire with few civil service protections.
And promoted employees are also subject to probationary periods, meaning many workers who are moving up the ladder due to their professional success are also being fired. This is in line with DOGE’s broader lack of thorough analysis, cutting off critical grant programs without a full understanding of what they do and dramatically overstating the supposed savings, often later having to unfreeze important dollars and walk back those “savings” claims.
