Sam Peterson is one of thousands of fired federal workers who was offered his job back under a judge’s order, but he didn’t jump at the chance to go back to his park ranger position at Washington state’s Lake Roosevelt National Recreation Area.
Instead, he quickly turned it down, opting to move with his wife to start a career outside the government at an Oregon museum.
“We signed a lease Monday and who knows what the next few months would bring if I were to return to federal employment,” said Peterson, 26.
Whether to return to the federal workforce is a decision confronting thousands of fired employees after two judges this month found legal problems with how President Donald Trump is carrying out a dramatic downsizing of the U.S. government. One ruling by a California federal judge would reinstate 16,000 probationary employees.
On Monday, the Trump administration sought to stop giving fired workers any choice by asking the U.S. Supreme Court to halt the rehiring orders. It was not clear how quickly the nation's high court could rule on the emergency appeal, which argued that U.S. District Judge William Alsup, who was appointed by Democratic President Bill Clinton, went beyond his legal authority.
Although it is unknown how many federal workers are taking up the offers to return to work, some employees have already decided to move on, fearing more reductions down the road.
Others who were asked to return were immediately put on administrative leave, with full pay and benefits, or offered early retirement. For those who chose to return, some say the decision came down to their dedication to the work and a belief that what they do is important.
Eric Anderson, 48, got word last week that he can return to his position as a biological science technician at the Indiana Dunes National Park. He said he’s excited to go back on Tuesday, where he'll lead a crew conducting prescribed burns to limit wildland fire impacts, but is concerned about the uncertainty.
“I’ve heard that some people’s positions have changed from doing what they normally do to doing something completely weird and different,” Anderson said. “It’ll be interesting going back and seeing if stuff still changes by the day.”
Trump's Department of Government Efficiency, overseen by billionaire Elon Musk, has not disclosed how many probationary workers were cut, how many were reinstated or how many rehired workers were placed on leave.
Democratic U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts asked the Government Accountability Office to seek answers to those questions and to study the impacts of the firings, arguing that removing people from critical areas of government — such as air travel, wildland firefighting, infectious disease control, nuclear security and veterans' health care — has put the county's health and safety at risk. In a letter to Warren and other Democratic senators, the federal office said it accepted their request to review the firings.
One agency, the National Park Service, was authorized to rehire 1,000 workers, according to the National Parks Conservation Association. The group celebrated the reversal but criticized the process.
“This chaotic whiplash is no way to manage the Park Service, especially as they are welcoming millions of visitors right now," said association president and CEO Theresa Pierno. “This administration needs to stop playing games with the future of our national parks.”
Brian Gibbs, who was fired from his environmental educator job at the Effigy Mounds National Monument in Iowa in February, returned to work Monday. In a widely shared Facebook post, Gibbs said he's committed to serving the American public “to the best of my abilities as long as I am authorized to" and leading field trips at the park.
Some Department of Interior workers were given their jobs back only to be offered an early retirement package, according to a letter reviewed by The Associated Press.
Other returning workers were placed on administrative leave as the Trump administration appeals the court rulings on mass firings. That means some workers were fired as part of an effort to eliminate government waste only to be rehired and paid, at least for a time, to not work.
Sydney Smith, 28, was a probationary employee with the Forest Service who was on a temporary assignment to the Library of Congress when she was terminated. She was rehired but was immediately placed on administrative leave with backpay. Smith said she’s ready to get back to work and hopes others get back too.
“It’s not clear at what point they would have me return to work," she said. "So I am being paid but not working. That feels inefficient.”
Associated Press reporter Gary Fields contributed from Washington, D.C.
President Donald Trump, left, and Elon Musk depart the White House to board Marine One en route to New Jersey, Friday, Mar. 21, 2025, in Washington. (AP Photo/Mark Schiefelbein)
WASHINGTON (AP) — The attempts by President Donald Trump and top leaders of his administration to downplay a security breach that revealed military strike plans in a Signal group chat including a journalist stand in stark contrast to their reaction to Hillary Clinton's use of a home server as secretary of state.
This time, they've largely focused their ire not on sweeping potential security lapses, or punishments as a result, but on the journalist who was errantly added to the group text and reported on it: editor-in-chief for The Atlantic, Jeffrey Goldberg. Some of the text's participants who spoke out against Clinton haven't commented publicly at all about the Signal leak.
One of the chief concerns about Clinton’s email server was that it was insecure, and that sensitive information could fall into the wrong hands. But former FBI Director James Comey said in recommending that no charges be brought against Clinton that there was no evidence that her email account had been hacked by hostile actors.
Trump insisted Tuesday that no classified information was divulged in the group chat, though Goldberg wrote that messaging revealed “precise information about weapons packages, targets, and timing” of strikes in Yemen. The White House’s National Security Council has said it is investigating.
For her part, Clinton's reaction to Goldberg's reporting was one of astonishment: “You have got to be kidding me,” Clinton said in an X post that spotlighted The Atlantic article and included an eyes emoji.
Here's a look at what some of the officials in the group chat, and some of those steadfastly standing by them, are saying now versus then.
Now: “The main thing was nothing happened. The attack was totally successful,” Trump said during a meeting with a group of his ambassadors at the White House on Tuesday.
He also called his national security adviser, Michael Waltz, “a very good man” and insisted “he will continue to do a very good job,” while adding, “I think it’s very unfair how they attacked Michael" and labeling Goldberg a “total sleazebag.”
Later, in an interview with Newsmax, Trump said a Waltz aide had Goldberg’s number and “this guy ended up on the call." He also added that he felt good about what occurred. "I can only go by what I’ve been told ... but I feel very comfortable, actually.”
Then: “Hillary is the one who sent and received classified information on an insecure server, putting the safety of the American people under threat,” Trump said in an October 2016 speech in Warren, Michigan.
“The rigged system refused to prosecute her for conduct that put all of us, everybody in this room, everybody in this country at risk. Hillary Clinton went to great lengths to create a private email server and to bypass government security in order to keep her emails from being read by the public and by federal officials,” he said in a November 2016 speech in Virginia Beach, Virginia.
And, during a Florida rally in July 2016, he even urged Russian hackers to help find a batch of emails said to have vanished from Clinton’s private server. “Russia, if you’re listening, I hope you’re able to find the 30,000 emails that are missing."
Now: “I think there’s a lot in the lessons for a lot of journalists in this city who have made big names for themselves making up lies about this president,” Waltz said during Tuesday’s White House meeting with Trump and the ambassadors.
He also said of Goldberg, “This journalist, Mr. President, wants the world talking about more hoaxes.”
In a subsequent interview on Fox News Channel’s “The Ingraham Angle,” Waltz said, “I take full responsibility. I built the group.” He also contradicted Trump by saying that no staffer was responsible.
Waltz further acknowledged, “embarrassing, yes” and said, “We made a mistake. We’re moving forward.”
Then: “How is it Hillary Clinton can delete 33,000 government emails on a private server, yet President Trump gets indicted for having documents he could declassify?” Waltz posted in June 2023, referencing charges against Trump for mishandling classified documents. The case was scrapped after Trump won a second term.
Now: “Nobody was texting war plans,” Hegseth told journalists traveling with him in Hawaii on Monday. He said of Goldberg, “You’re talking about a deceitful and highly discredited so-called journalist who’s made a profession of peddling hoaxes.”
Then: “Any security professional, military, government or otherwise, would be fired on the spot for this type of conduct and criminally prosecuted for being so reckless with this kind of information," Hegseth, then a regular contributor for Fox News Channel, said of Clinton's emails on the network in 2016.
That same year, Hegseth asked on Fox News, “How damaging is it to your ability to recruit or build allies with others when they are worried that our leaders may be exposing them because of their gross negligence or their recklessness in handling information?”
In another 2016 Fox News segment, Hegseth said, “If it was anyone other than Hillary Clinton, they would be in jail right now for what has been done. Because the assumption is, in the intelligence community, if you are using unclassified means, there is the potential for, and likelihood, that foreign governments are targeting those accounts and gathering intelligence from them."
Now: No public comment on the Signal group chat.
Then: “Nobody is above the law, not even Hillary Clinton – even though she thinks she is," Rubio told Fox News in January 2016.
The previous year in a Fox News interview, Rubio referred to the same emails when he said, “What they did is reckless — it’s complete recklessness and incompetence.”
Now: No public comment on the Signal leak.
Then: Miller posted in 2022: “One point that doesn’t get made enough about Hillary’s unsecured server illegally used to conduct state business (obviously created to hide the Clintons’ corrupt pay-for-play): foreign adversaries could easily hack classified ops & intel in real time from other side of the globe.”
Now: “My communications, to be clear, in a Signal message group were entirely permissible and lawful and did not include classified information," Ratcliffe said at a Tuesday congressional hearing.
Then: On Fox News in 2018, Ratcliffe suggested of officials who mishandle sensitive information: “It’s always a good thing that we see that there is investigation and prosecution of folks if they’re not handling that information appropriately.”
Now: “There’s a difference between inadvertent release versus careless and sloppy, malicious leaks of classified information,” Gabbard said at the same congressional hearing.
Then: Gabbard posted on X earlier this month, “Any unauthorized release of classified information is a violation of the law and will be treated as such.”
President Donald Trump attends a reception celebrating Greek Independence Day in the East Room of the White House, Monday, March 24, 2025, in Washington. (AP Photo/Mark Schiefelbein)
