They can lay off people legally - Clinton laid off hundreds of thousands of federal employees over 8 years - it's just that laying off non-probationary employee

They can lay off people legally - Clinton laid off hundreds of thousands of federal employees over 8 years - it's just that laying off non-probationary employees takes time and effort and they don't want to spend the time. And, unlike probationary employees, if they choose to save time when firing people by breaking the law, the non-probationary employees have legal recourse. They can't legally do what they're doing now, they are just counting on the fact that it's very difficult for probationary employees to appeal the illegal firings. Probationary employees can be terminated for performance, but the government legally has to actually show how it concluded that the employee was underperforming. They are not doing this - they are firing people regardless of whether they had good or bad performance reviews or even if they weren't around long enough to have a performance review at all. However, probationary employees have very limited rights to appeal (they can only appeal to MSPB if they allege they were fired for partisan political reasons or for merit status) and Trump now controls MSPB anyway, so they are just counting on the employees not having a way to actually get legal redress even though the firings were illegal. https://www.mspb.gov/appeals/infosheets/Probationary_Employees.pdf https://www.mspb.gov/appeals/infosheets/Probationary_Employe...