By Douglas Gillison, Nupur Anand, Chris Prentice and Pete Schroeder
NEW YORK (Reuters) -A new category of employees at the U.S. Consumer Financial Protection Bureau received termination notices on Thursday, according to five sources and termination letters, in a sign that the Trump administration was going beyond probationary employees as it looks to fire federal staff.
Notices to dozens of so-called “term employees,” full-time workers on contracts with end dates, began arriving Thursday evening, letting them know they were being terminated the same day, according to the sources and copies of two termination notices sent to employees that were reviewed by Reuters.
Some staff discovered they had lost access to the agency’s IT systems before receiving their termination letters, two of the sources said.
The Office of Management and Budget, which is also run by the CFPB’s acting director Russell Vought, and the CFPB, did not respond immediately to requests for comment.
Reuters could not immediately ascertain how many employees were fired.
The firings are part of a sweeping effort by President Donald Trump and his aide, billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk, to scale back the federal bureaucracy. Trump has said the government is bloated and too much money is lost to waste and fraud. Firings had also begun elsewhere in the federal government, including at the Department of Education and the Small Business Administration.
But the Trump administration’s actions are increasingly being challenged. Critics have questioned the administration’s approach and experts have flagged concerns about the legality of the firings, as most civil service employees can be fired only for bad performance or misconduct.
Earlier on Thursday, a CFPB employee union and organizations including the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People filed a federal lawsuit asking a court to block the Trump administration’s efforts to kill the agency.
TERM EMPLOYEES
The latest termination letters to CFPB employees, dated February 13, were sent by Adam Martinez, acting chief human capital officer at the agency.
Term employees have contracts of more than one year and up to four years, which can be extended, according to federal regulations. Their first year of service is a trial period, when they can be terminated by the agency at any point. The two notices reviewed by Reuters were for employees who had been at the agency for more than one year.
“The purpose of this memorandum is to notify you that your employment will be terminated effective at the close of business on February 13, 2025,” Martinez wrote.
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