‘It violates who we are as a nation.’ Ex-federal workers from WA angered by firings
A small group of federal workers from Washington state came forward on Feb. 19 to detail firings among their ranks by the Trump administration and Department of Government Efficiency.
Sen. Patty Murray (D-Washington) hosted a Zoom call for reporters to hear from workers formerly within the U.S. Forest Service, U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs and the Bonneville Power Administration.
DOGE was created via executive order Jan. 20 by Trump, and the White House has repeatedly defended the DOGE team’s work. In an interview with Fox News’ Sean Hannity that aired Feb. 18, both President Trump and DOGE chief Elon Musk pushed back against their critics, with Musk stating, “They wouldn’t be complaining so much if we weren’t doing something useful ... .”
Murray noted that many workers do not want to go public with their stories for fear of retribution.
Others are willing to go public amid indiscriminate firings occurring with no warning and no severance.
“It violates who we are as a nation,” said Gregg Bafundo, former lead wilderness ranger at the U.S. Forest Service’s Okanogan-Wenatchee National Forest and a former U.S. Marine for a combined 18 years.
Bafundo said he wasn’t offered severance upon his firing the week of Feb. 10 and that he had heard “a number of people are being denied unemployment claims because they were fired for poor performance, which we all know is a lie.”
He recounted some career highlights, including rescues in the North Cascades, saving the life of a cardiac patient on a trail just outside Mount Rainier National Park and battling wildfires.
Bafundo noted he’d recently received a performance bonus from his district ranger.
“I’ve been with the Okanogan-Wenatchee National Forest for nine seasons, and I took a promotion last last year,” he explained. The forest service “did a huge temp-to-perm conversion, where they took a lot of temporary seasonal workers and they made us permanent workers. And in that conversion, I got bumped into probationary status.”
Probation status terminations
Thousands have lost their jobs with the U.S. government across agencies nationwide, including both longtime workers and those just starting their careers. The Office of Personnel Management has reported about 75,000 federal employees taking deferred resignations, known as the “Fork in the Road” email offer. Meanwhile, upwards of 220,000 federal employees had less than a year on the job as of March 2024, The Associated Press reported Feb. 19, making them vulnerable to cuts under probationary status.
A fact sheet tracking cuts so far supplied by Murray’s office listed more than 1,000 Department of Veterans Affairs employees nationwide fired the week of Feb. 10, a dozen at the Hanford nuclear site beyond those who took deferred resignations, and a handful at the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, among other agencies.
The sheet cautioned that the totals were not comprehensive and that actual numbers could be higher, adding, “This lack of transparency and responsiveness to Congress, and thus the American people, is without precedent.”
Murray said Feb. 19 that in previous administrations, “We’ve been able to talk to the agencies and have someone give us the information we need.”
During this round of cuts, she said, “We’re not being given information from the agencies themselves about those exact numbers.”
Instead, she said, her office is collecting information from those who call her office and those willing to be whistleblowers.
“That’s really troubling as part of my job is oversight and making sure that Bonneville or Hanford or the Forest Service or VA or Social Security Administration have the capability to serve the people that I represent,” Murray said.
The widespread dismissals late the week of Feb. 10 targeted those listed in federal probationary periods, people typically in their first year or two on the job. Some entities, such as the Bonnevile Power Administration and U.S. Department of Agriculture, have since sought to reverse course in limited cases. The U.S. government also has sought to rehire those overseeing the U.S. nuclear weapons stockpile who were swept up in the cuts.
BPA alone is set to lose more than 400 workers, with just 30 reinstated, Oregon Public Broadcasting reported Feb. 19.
Liz Krumpp is a retired Washington constituent account executive at the Bonneville Power Administration. She said Feb. 19 while it was “very good news” some jobs might be reinstated, “Cutting its employees does not save the federal taxpayer a dime,” noting that BPA is self-funded by selling transmission or power.
Tacoma Power in January 2024 noted that it “provides its customers with 97 percent clean energy—about half from its own hydro projects and most of the rest from the Bonneville Power Administration.”
Peninsula Light, serving areas north of the Narrows, lists BPA as its primary wholesale supplier. BPA also has transmission contracts with Puget Sound Energy.
BPA distributes hydropower from 31 federal dams and supports much the Northwest’s power grid.
According to a BPA release in October, “Each year, BPA pays back to the U.S. Treasury a portion of the taxpayers’ investment in the Federal Columbia River Power System, which includes the federal hydropower dams that produce renewable electricity and the transmission system.”
“What we saw was Elon Musk and Trump going into agencies across the board ... with no idea of an end game, except for we’re going to cut the budgets and get rid of people with no idea what they were doing, how long they’ve been there, what their performance was ... and sending out these horrific letters,” said Murray.
‘I was trying to crank out work’
Another worker who received a termination notice the week of Feb. 10 was Raphael Garcia, a disabled Army veteran and former management analyst who worked at the Seattle regional office for the US. Department of Veterans Affairs.
Garcia said his notice came in after-hours Feb. 13 via email.
“The official explanation cited that based on my performance, ‘you have not demonstrated that your further employment at the agency would be in the public interest,’” he recounted. “But there was no evidence of any deficiencies or prior counseling. I was even pending a promotion in the fall time frame for the second job I was handling in addition to my (primary) job.”
Garcia explained that he carried double the normal workload as a sole management analyst for the veterans benefits administration’s disability rating activity site, as well as overseeing on-boarding of new employees.
“I essentially performed the work of two positions ensuring that all Army disability plans for active duty, reserve and National Guard service members medically separating from service, are processed accurately and timely under the Integrated Disability Evaluation System,” he said.
He said that his supervisors submitted termination exemption reconsideration requests, so far to no avail.
“I was trying to crank out work on Friday, even after I’d been terminated, because I knew there was work that needed to be done. And then all of a sudden, my systems and accounts got cut off,” he said.
“And then next thing you know, I get a call on Monday saying, ‘Hey, while your reconsideration is processing, your appeal is processing, you could actually work.’ So I go into the office on Tuesday and then still don’t have account access or anything.”
On Feb. 19 he said he received a call telling him to “turn in all my stuff tomorrow.”
Bafundo’s termination letter also came with an email that stated, “An orderly off-boarding process is critical to successfully closing out your employment. Please work with your district ranger or supervisor for off-boarding.”
This story was originally published February 20, 2025 at 5:15 AM.
