Fired Federal Workers Are Coming Back to Work, Trump Team Vows

The Trump administration pledged to return more than 25,000 fired federal workers to their jobs rather than keep them on paid leave.

The government on Tuesday said federal agencies are preparing to return the employees to their roles in response to a California judge who said paid leave is not the same as reinstatement.

Paid leave “is not being used to skirt the requirement of reinstatement but is merely a first part of a series of steps to reinstate probationary employees,” the administration said in a court filing.

The government pointed to a Monday filing in a Maryland court outlining how many employees have been fired. The Energy and Agriculture Departments are paying their staff while they finish paperwork to bring them back to work, the agency HR chiefs said in the filing.

Treasury plans to pay 7,613 fired probationary employees but not assign them work, Treasury Department official Trevor Norris said in the same notice. Returning the staff to their jobs would create chaos if an appellate court later reverses a lower court’s order, he said.

“Employees could be subjected to multiple changes in their employment status in a matter of weeks,” Norris said.

President Donald Trump himself has said that cuts to the workforce are supposed to cut those who aren’t working.

“When we cut, we want to cut, but we want to cut the people that aren’t working or not doing a good job,” he told reporters recently.

The case is Am. Fed. of Gov’t Emp. v. OPM, N.D. Cal., No. 3:25-cv-01780, 3/18/25.