Trump’s initial federal layoffs hit Tri-Cities, WA area. Here’s what we know so far
KENNEWICK – Northwest Democrat U.S. senators are tallying up the initial cuts to staff in federal agencies, some of them with workers in the greater Tri-Cities area or who are key to projects here.
They include the Department of Energy, Veterans Affairs, Fish and Wildlife Service, Department of Agriculture, the National Weather Service and Veterans Affairs.
“We are talking about safety engineers at the Hanford nuclear cleanup site, VA doctors and nurses, utility line workers in my home state, CDC (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention) health experts who investigate disease outbreaks, and so many others,” said Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., in a statement.
On Monday afternoon more than 100 people gathered along George Washington Way in Richland to protest President Trump’s policies on topics ranging from federal jobs to immigration to transgender rights.
Cars honked as demonstrators waved signs that said “Trump is destroying my country” and “Audit Musk federal contracts.”
“Trump doesn’t care about you” and “Honk to end DOGE,” said other signs.
The largest federal presence in the Tri-Cities is indirect – workers paid with mostly federal dollars who are not employed by the federal government but by Department of Energy contractors at the Hanford nuclear site and Pacific Northwest National Laboratory.
Together, Hanford and PNNL employ roughly 19,000 people, most of them in the Tri-Cities area, with their work overseen and directed through a staff of about 340 DOE workers in the Tri-Cities.
Brian Vance, the DOE Hanford manager, told the Hanford Advisory Board Wednesday morning that he could not speculate on job cuts.
About 2,000 DOE workers nationwide were laid off on Thursday, according to Sen. Maria Cantwell, D-Wash.
They included more than 12 workers at the DOE Hanford offices in Richland, plus some additional workers associated with PNNL, who apparently worked for the DOE Pacific Northwest Site Office.
Initial layoffs appeared to be workers who had been hired in the past one to three years and were still in probationary periods for their new jobs or who had been recently promoted and were on probation in their new positions.
The number of employees impacted at Hanford remains unclear, Cantwell said Saturday.
More layoffs are expected as DOE workers in the Tri-Cities who volunteered for the deferred resignation program are laid off. By one estimate, at least 30 DOE Hanford workers volunteered for the layoffs, with pay promised through the end of the federal fiscal year in September.
DOE has not commented on Hanford layoff numbers. Tri-Cities DOE officials left work early Thursday afternoon as snow closed the nuclear site, and they were not due back at work until Tuesday after the long Washington’s Birthday weekend.
Layoffs Thursday also included up to 400 National Nuclear Security Administration workers, with the Trump administration quickly reversing course and working to rehire them.
Hanford is a Department of Energy Office of Environmental Management cleanup site and is not involved in NNSA work on nuclear nonproliferation and nuclear weapons production. There does not appear to be any reversal on DOE job cuts in the Tri-Cities.
Bonneville Power Administration
U.S. Sens. Ron Wyden and Jeff Merkley, both D-Ore., are asking President Trump for answers about job cuts at the Bonneville Power Administration it calls “reckless and financially ludicrous.”
The Tri-Cities is dependent on low-cost electricity from BPA.
BPA markets wholesale electrical power from 31 dams, including on the Columbia and Snake rivers, and the Columbia Generating Station, a nuclear power plant 10 miles from the Tri-Cities. BPA also operates and maintains 15,000 miles of high-voltage transmission lines.
“The imminent departure of nearly 20% of BPA’s workforce – including linemen, engineers and power dispatchers – poses a direct and immediate threat to the reliability of the electrical grid that serves millions of American families and businesses in the Pacific Northwest,” the two senators said in a joint statement Monday.
They said that about 200 BPA employees have signed up for a buyout offer, 90 new job offers have been rescinded and up to 400 employees are in their probationary employment periods and could be laid off.
The cuts come despite BPA being entirely self-funding and not relying on taxpayer dollars, they said.
“ These workforce reductions do absolutely nothing to reduce the federal deficit,” the senators said. “If the administration’s goal is truly to ensure reliable, secure and affordable energy, then why are you actively dismantling the most effective and self-sustaining power system in the country?”
The senators are asking for the Trump administration to tell them by the end of them month how they will prevent grid failures caused by understaffing, what role the Department of Government Efficiency led by Elon Musk played in the cuts and how it will address safety risks posed by the loss of experienced linemen, engineers and dispatchers.
Department of Veterans Affairs
About 1,000 VA employees have been laid off, according to Murray and Cantwell.
None of them supported direct benefits or services for veterans and their beneficiaries, according to information Cantwell received from the VA.
But according to information from the Senate Committee on Appropriations and its vice chair, Murray, the layoffs will undercut the ability to process claims and benefits and mean longer wait times for medical care.
Doctors, nurses medical researchers and disability claims raters have not been explicitly exempted from layoffs, according to Murray’s information.
The VA provides medical services to Tri-Cities veterans at a medical center in Walla Walla and also has an outpatient clinic in Richland.
Environmental Protect Agency
The EPA has notified 1,700 of 15,572 workers that they could be terminated, according to Murray and Cantwell.
EPA, along with the Washington state Department of Ecology, is a regulator of DOE at Hanford. The three agencies negotiate legally binding standards and deadlines for environmental cleanup of the Hanford site.
In addition, the Pasco Sanitary Landfill just east of Pasco is an EPA Superfund Site. Most recently chemicals were detected in groundwater beyond the landfill’s boundaries. The contamination is not now in an area used for drinking water.
National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration
NOAA’s work includes National Weather Service forecasts and work with firefighters to understand weather conditions as they battle forest and wildfires.
The Senate Appropriations Committee says more than 1,000 employees may be laid off, including meteorologists.
The weather service already struggles with staffing shortages but has made a concerted effort to increase the number of meteorologists, according to the committee. As a result, many meteorologists are new and still within their probationary periods.
The weather service provides forecasts for southeast Washington, including the Tri-Cities, through its Pendleton, Oregon, office.
Department of Agriculture
The Washington Hop Commission and Hop Growers of America reports that a researcher at the Washington State University Irrigated Agriculture Research and Extension Center in Prosser and a technical assistant who worked for him were laid off Thursday.
The researcher’s work focused on the water needs of hop crops, according to Capital Press.
In the past three years, the federal government has spent $1.6 million to establish the Hop Stress Physiology Lab at WSU’s Prosser worksite and bring the researcher who was fired on board, said the hop commission.
Another worker at the research center said additional scientists and staff also lost their jobs.
Cantwell’s staff said that 800 workers from the USDA Agricultural Research Service are expected to lose their jobs.
The hop commission said that public agricultural research is estimated to generate $20 in economic benefit for every tax dollar spent.
Federal Bureau of Investigations
The FBI has over 2,800 employees on probationary status, with nearly 600 of them special agents, according to information from the Senate Appropriations Committee.
It is reportedly developing a list of those employees, according to the committee’s information.
FBI agents have been instrumental in high-profile federal cases with Tri-Cities area defendants, including COVID loan frauds, a series of car crashes to defraud insurance companies, a white supremacist drug trafficking ring and Hanford time card fraud.
U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service
Fish and Wildlife manages the Hanford Reach National Monument and several national wildlife refuges, including the Umatilla and McNary refuges, from an office in Burbank near Pasco.
The National wildlife Refuge Association said Friday that 420 U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service employees nationwide have lost their jobs.
The firings disproportionately targeted biologists and natural resource professionals, it said.
“This sweeping, mass firing comes at a time when the refuge system is already struggling with a decimated workforce,” the association said.