Gather round, everyone, for another installment in the ongoing series where the Trump administration frantically tries to rehire the same federal employees it shoved out the door mere months ago.
This time around, employees from the General Services Administration are being asked to return. Gosh, who wouldn’t want to go back?
The baby-faced racists at the so-called Department of Government Efficiency hit the GSA hard. Headquarters staff was cut by over 75%, real estate portfolio managers were cut by 65%, and facilities managers by 35%.
And who needs all those people anyway, when DOGE was planning to cancel almost half of the government’s 7,500 leases and sell hundreds of federally owned buildings? Don’t need any real estate staff if you get rid of all your real estate holdings, right?
Indeed, the DOGE kids, led by rich manchild Elon Musk, were so hyped to get started that they sent almost 800 notices of lease terminations to landlords but sometimes forgot to tell the government tenants. So, over 100 leases then expired, but the government tenants didn’t move out. And if there’s one thing landlords love, it is tenants illegally holding over and preventing them from renting the space to someone who will pay them.
Thousands of protesters gather for a rally around the Washington Monument on April 5.
Who knew that you couldn’t apply the “move fast and break things” ethos to the vast sprawling nationwide federal real estate portfolio? Who knew that you needed locations for pesky things like a local IRS office?
Federal employees. That’s who knew.
Now the GSA wants several hundred of those employees to come back, unwinding yet another of DOGE’s haphazard efforts. It’s becoming sort of a dog-bites-man story by now, honestly.
In August, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration had to grovel for an exception to an overall hiring freeze in order to hire 450 employees at the National Weather Service after the deadly Texas floods in early July. Turns out the DOGE geniuses didn’t grasp the basic concept of “weather” and how having people like meteorologists around is somewhat necessary.
Also in August, after shedding over 25,000 employees, the Internal Revenue Service suddenly remembered it couldn’t innovate or synergize its way out of needing people to work during next year’s tax season. So, please come back?
In March, it was the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, where 180 probationary employees were fired and then shortly told to come back. It then happened again, in June.
It isn’t just that this entire process has been comically inefficient. It’s that it shows a real disdain, disregard, and lack of understanding of the work of government and what it requires.
But in case you’re wondering: No, the administration has not learned its lesson.
The real problem, per a GSA spokesperson, is federal employees: “GSA’s leadership team has comprehensively considered workforce actions and is making adjustments in the best interest of the customer agencies we serve and the American taxpayers.”
Sure seems like it would have been in the best interest of the agencies and taxpayers if you just hadn’t forced people out in the first place? But really, isn’t it their fault for letting themselves be forced out? Indeed, according to the Trump administration, it is.
Here’s that GSA spox again: “When we talk about the size and scope of this, it’s important to understand that the majority of our separations have been voluntary—the employee’s choice.”
Good luck getting people to come back to this.