Fired, rehired and baffled: Confusion reigns for thousands of reinstated federal workers
Raphael Garcia is one of 24,000 probationary federal workers on a career roller-coaster ride as Elon Musk’s DOGE attempts to reshape the government.
Raphael Garcia, an analyst at the Department of Veterans Affairs who was abruptly fired last month amid President Donald Trump’s sweeping push to shrink the federal workforce, learned this week that he was being reinstated following court orders from two federal judges.
But that news did not end the professional limbo that has defined Garcia’s life for over a month. He is not actually back on the job. Instead, he has been placed on administrative leave while the Trump administration appeals rulings from those two judges.
Garcia has received verbal reassurance that he’ll get back pay while he’s on leave, but the whiplash of Trump’s first 100 days in office has not exactly left him in a trusting state of mind. “I’ll believe it when I see it,” Garcia told NBC News in an interview this week, adding that he won’t know whether his salary has restarted until the end of the pay period in late March.
Garcia is one of 24,000 probationary federal workers who have been on a career roller-coaster ride as Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency attempts to reshape the federal bureaucracy. These workers have been unceremoniously fired and rehired, but some remain in the dark about what comes next.
In many cases, the rehired probationary workers — meaning people who have held their positions for less than two years — were immediately placed on administrative leave, a temporary suspension with pay intact. Meanwhile, civil servants still face the looming prospect of more rounds of firings in the months and years ahead.
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