Panic as US federal workers scramble to find out if they’ve been fired: ‘I don’t have email access’ | US federal government shutdown 2025

Federal workers are struggling to know if they still have a job after the Trump administration launched a new wave of layoffs amid a federal government shutdown, causing widespread confusion and panic.

A hearing is scheduled for Wednesday after unions filed a lawsuit to block the latest layoffs, setting the stage for a new legal battle against Donald Trump’s efforts to drastically reduce the federal workforce.

About 4,200 federal employees across seven agencies were furloughed Friday, the administration said, although 700 layoffs at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) were quickly reversed over the weekend.

It’s unclear whether Trump, who told reporters that “a lot” of civil servants would be laid off, plans to go further. This year, the federal workforce has already laid off hundreds of thousands of employees under his leadership.

As unions seek to establish the scale of the latest layoffs, Department for Education workers have said they did not have access to their work email accounts during the shutdown – and therefore could not check whether they had received “reduction in force” (RIF) notices.

“My colleague in the Office of Special Education Programs was a victim of the RIF. She accessed her government email and found out,” said an education department employee, who asked to remain anonymous for fear of retaliation. “The rest of us are panicking. I think I may have been fired and I have no way of knowing. They sent the RIF notices to our official government emails which we don’t have access to.”

Another Department of Education employee said: “I don’t have access to my emails due to the shutdown. Some have been given permission to check. I haven’t.”

They were then able to access their email, where they received an update of a downsizing from earlier this year that was interrupted by legal challenges, with a revised separation date of November 3.

The first employee criticized the timing of the layoffs, which came the day before the funeral of the office’s longtime division director, Greg Corr, who had recently retired after 38 years of service. The majority of employees in the Department of Special Education and Rehabilitation Services, which houses the Office of Special Education Programs, were reportedly laid off as part of the downsizing.

A copy of a Department for Education reduction notice seen by the Guardian claimed that “continued lack of funding” made it “necessary” to implement the redundancies and cited a separation date of December 9. No previous government shutdown has resulted in staff reductions.

“This is what they do to people with 1,000 years of experience working to improve the lives of children with disabilities the day before our principal’s funeral,” the first employee said. “What kind of humanity is this?”

Trump is wrong to suggest that the agencies targeted by these layoffs are “Democratic-leaning,” they argued, saying, “This is not a ‘Democratic’ agenda.” This is special education. »

The administration outlined a downsizing of the Education Department in March, but attorneys general and unions sued to block efforts to dismantle it. A preliminary injunction to block those firings was granted by a federal court in May. The Supreme Court authorized the layoffs in a brief, unsigned order issued in July that provided no explanation, while the legal challenge to the department’s closure continues in court.

More than 4,100 employees worked at the Department of Education when Trump took office. Between a previous downsizing and these latest layoffs, the agency’s workforce is now less than 2,000 people.

“This administration is using the same scheme that led to the firing of 1,500 employees in March to illegally further dismantle the Department of Education without any regard for the impacts on the American public, and we have had enough,” said Rachel Gittleman, president of AFGE Local 252, a union representing Department of Education workers.

Gittleman was herself an employee of the department, but she received a notice of reduction in force in March. “These RIFs will double the harm to K-12 students, students with disabilities, first-generation students, low-income students, teachers and local school boards, who are already feeling the impacts of a crippled department because of the March RIF,” she said.

These notices have increased anxiety and fear among other federal employees at agencies that were not expected to experience reductions during the shutdown, where many workers are already either furloughed or working without pay.

“Our staffing levels are pretty low, so it’s hard to understand how many more cuts are going to be made and who,” said Imelda Avila-Thomas, president of AFGE Local 2139 and a Department of Labor employee. About 75 percent of the department’s staff has been laid off, but the agency has not yet enacted a reduction in force. “This chaos is so debilitating to everyone’s mental and physical health and, in general, it’s demoralizing,” she said. “Morale is already low, and then this happens. I don’t want to say that anyone is safe, I think we all understand that’s not a thing.”

The White House referred comment to the Office of Management and Budget, which did not respond to multiple requests for comment.

The Department of Education responded with an out-of-office message stating “due to expiration of appropriations, we are currently on leave. We will respond to emails once government functions resume.”