March 11, 2025 3:50 a.m.

Oregon’s U.S. Senators Jeff Merkley and Ron Wyden, and a group of colleagues, are urging the non-partisan Government Accountability Office to launch an investigation into how the recent mass firings of probationary federal workers have impacted American’s health and safety.

A joint release said in recent weeks, President Trump has fired at least 25,000 probationary federal employees. Despite termination letters from many agencies citing “poor performance”, the senators claim probationary employees appear to have been fired in indiscriminate batches, regardless of their individual performance.

Thousands of these fired workers were responsible for protecting American’s health and safety, across areas like air travel, flood and wildfire response, infectious disease control, nuclear safety, veteran’s health care and benefits, food safety, and managing the opioid epidemic.

In their letter, the senators wrote, “Rather than make government more efficient, these firings appear to have created massive inefficiencies and put the American people at risk”.

The release said as the Trump Administration implements its “plans for large-scale reductions in force”, over 200,000 probationary workers are expected to be laid off, and private companies are expected to benefit.

The senators requested that GAO’s investigation cover the duties of fired probationary workers, attempts to hire those workers back, data on how the terminations are impacting American’s health and safety, and more.

Merkley and Wyden signed the letter led the Senator Elizabeth Warren. A group of seven other Democratic senators signed on as well.