For fired fed workers, a rough road ahead

Politico

25-02-2025

Presented by the Coalition for Medicare Choices
With help from Sophie Gardner
Driving the Day
PATH FORWARD — D.C.-based law firms that specialize in federal employment law say they have gotten thousands of requests from fired federal workers, including those in health care agencies, for legal help to get their jobs back.
But those firms warn the process could take years — with no guarantee of success, Chelsea reports.
Context: The job losses are part of a Trump administration effort led by billionaire Elon Musk and his Department of Government Efficiency to trim federal spending. A spokesperson for DOGE did not respond to requests for comment.
Those dismissed at health agencies included probationary NIH, FDA, CDC and CMS staff, including medical device reviewers, frontline health care workers and Medicare employees.
Some termination letters, obtained by POLITICO, justified firing employees because their 'performance has not been adequate.'
Since the firings, 2,600 workers have filled out interest forms from law firm James & Hoffman regarding legal action, partner Danny Rosenthal said but had no further comment. Greg Rinckey, founding partner at Tully Rinckey PLLC, which specializes in federal employment law, told Pulse the firm has also received hundreds of calls from workers seeking assistance.
A third firm, Alden Law, is asking fired workers to provide them with their personal information, their job title and agency, and a copy of their termination notice to support a complaint the firm is exploring to file with the Office of Special Counsel, per an email viewed by POLITICO. Alden did not respond to requests for comment.
Still, firms warn it could be a rocky road ahead. A federal judge has allowed the mass firings to continue, denying a request for a temporary pause last week. Rinckey suggests that the termination letters' wording could be an attempt to avoid the so-called reduction-in-force language. A reduction in force is a specific regulatory process to dismiss federal workers that comes with legal protections.
And while some workers might be eligible to appeal their case to the Merit Systems Protection Board, an entity housed in the Office of Special Counsel created to protect federal employees from being fired for partisan reasons, Rinckey warns it might not be able to do much.
'I don't think they're going to find an alliance with the MSPB,' Rinckey said, because they could argue that the cuts were nondiscriminatory across the board.
James & Hoffman intends to bring a class-action appeal on behalf of terminated federal workers to the MSPB, according to an email viewed by Pulse, which would argue that federal agencies 'wrongly conducted a reduction in force without calling it a RIF.'
But both Rinckey and James & Hoffman warn that this approach would take years and might be unsuccessful.
WELCOME TO TUESDAY PULSE. We're anxiously awaiting the National Park Service's announcement of peak bloom dates for the D.C. cherry blossoms. Send your tips, scoops and feedback to [e-mail] and [e-mail], and follow along @Kelhoops and @ChelseaCirruzzo.
In Congress
REPUBLICANS' MEDICAID PLAN B — House Republicans are scrambling to find alternatives to steep Medicaid cuts they're considering as part of their sweeping domestic policy package, POLITICO's Meredith Lee Hill and Ben Leonard report.
The search for a plan B comes as GOP leaders tee up their fiscal blueprint for floor action today. The bill targets $2 trillion in spending reductions, and swing-district members are nervous about the potential impact on safety-net programs their constituents rely on.
Speaker Mike Johnson and other House leaders are exploring whether tariff revenue and savings from President Donald Trump's Department of Government Efficiency can primarily cover the extra $500 billion in spending cuts that the House Freedom Caucus negotiated earlier this month as Republicans' fiscal blueprint moved through the House Budget Committee, according to three people familiar with the conversations who were granted anonymity to speak freely.
An after-hours confab: After private late-night talks Monday with Johnson, GOP leaders provided some generic but reassuring details about how they would protect certain Medicaid services and not cut into the share of federal payments for Medicaid. A group of swing-district Republicans and others representing redder areas were in the meeting, along with House Energy and Commerce Chair Brett Guthrie (R-Ky.). That panel is expected to deliver at least $880 billion in savings over the coming decade, with the bulk of those cuts likely coming from Medicaid.
Leaving the meeting, Rep. Nicole Malliotakis (R-N.Y.) said that Guthrie addressed some of the issues that had been of concern to her — including increasing the share of states' responsibility in the joint state-federal Medicaid program. She said she is now leaning toward voting for the budget plan.
Some House Republicans who've doubted Johnson's budget plan said Monday night that they're more inclined to support the blueprint after GOP leaders ruled out certain cuts to Medicaid in a private meeting
Key context: GOP leaders have assured a group of worried Republicans that they'll focus on 'waste, fraud and abuse' within the program and not cut benefits. But there are fears that lawmakers won't be able to reach the $880 billion threshold without cutting deeply into program benefits — which is why Republicans are furiously scrambling for any plausible alternatives.
What's next: Johnson and other leaders indicated in the earlier private meetings that they plan to hold a vote this evening, according to four Republicans familiar with the conversations. But the progress is good news for Johnson, who's hoping to hold a floor vote on the budget plan Tuesday night. It advanced out of the Rules Committee on Monday night in a key procedural step.
MEDICAID COST-SHIFTING — Some Republican proposals to cut federal Medicaid funding would either force states to significantly increase their spending or kick millions of people off the health insurance program for low-income people, according to an Urban Institute analysis published Monday.
The analysis examined two scenarios: The first looked at the impact of eliminating the 90 percent federal matching rate if all states that have adopted Medicaid expansion kept the expansion in place. Those states would need $44.3 billion in state budget cuts or additional revenues that year to replace reductions in federal spending, the analysis found.
The second scenario examined the impact of all states dropping Medicaid expansion in response to the loss of the enhanced federal matching rate. That would lead to 15.9 million people losing Medicaid or Children's Health Insurance Program coverage and a nearly 38 percent increase in the national uninsured rate, according to the analysis.
DEMS PLOTTING — With the House Energy and Commerce Committee to adopt its oversight plans for the new Congress today, Democratic members intend to force Republicans to take difficult votes, POLITICO's Ben Leonard reports.
Members of the minority party who sit on the powerful panel could propose amendments to the Republicans' 18-page plan outlining the committee's priorities, and some of those amendments could put Republicans on the record about their support for Medicaid.
'Democrats are going to offer amendments to address the glaring loopholes in Republicans' proposed oversight plan, which is consistent with what we've seen from Republicans over the last month as they stick their heads in the sand,' said a spokesperson for E&C Democrats in a statement.
The oversight roadmap is similar thematically to the one adopted by the Energy and Commerce Committee in the previous Congress, which also focused on keeping the safety-net insurance program Medicaid and other health programs.
'Making sure taxpayer dollars are spent wisely is imperative to ensuring the long-term sustainability of each program so that [Medicaid] can continue to support the most vulnerable, especially pregnant mothers, children, seniors, and the disabled,' reads the proposed oversight plan.
AROUND THE AGENCIES
EXAMINING THE HIGH-RISK LIST — The House Oversight and Government Reform Committee will hold a hearing today on the list of federal programs, including HHS programs, deemed to be at the highest risk of waste, fraud and abuse.
Why it matters: The list maintained by the Government Accountability Office is being eyed by the Trump administration's unofficial Department of Government Efficiency, an effort to trim federal spending.
While the hearing notice issued by Chair James Comer (R-Ky.) doesn't mention HHS by name, its public health emergency leadership was added in 2022 after the GAO said it found deficiencies in the department's preparation for and handling of emergencies. The office has called for stronger communication and more coordination among HHS agencies and offices as well as improved data-sharing practices for public health crises.
Other areas within HHS that have been on the list for a number of years include the integrity of the Medicaid program, the management of health programs for American Indian and Native Alaskan populations and food-safety oversight. According to the GAO, the department has taken some corrective action on those programs since being placed on the list.
Public Health
LISTERIA OUTBREAK BLAMED FOR 12 DEATHS — A Listeria outbreak that has sickened 38 people and killed 12 is tied to supplement shakes distributed in long-term care facilities, according to a food safety alert released by the CDC on Monday.
The shakes, under the brand names Sysco Imperial and Lyons ReadyCare, were recalled on Saturday. They were sent to 'institutional settings' — like long-term care facilities — nationwide and typically given to people on soft diets.
The outbreak began in 2018, though more than half of the people affected got sick in 2024 or 2025.
'It is common for Listeria outbreaks to last several years because it is an incredibly hardy germ that can survive on surfaces for long periods of time,' according to the alert.
Names in the News
Patrizia Cavazzoni will join Pfizer as chief medical officer, POLITICO's David Lim reports. Cavazzoni was formerly the top regulator of the FDA's drug division.
Aliza Silver will be senior director of health policy and government affairs at Oracle. She previously was deputy health policy director for the Senate HELP Committee.
WHAT WE'RE READING
STAT's Helen Branswell reports on the U.S. joining a flu vaccine meeting led by the World Health Organization, despite the Trump administration's plans to withdraw from the agency.
KFF Health News' Aneri Pattani reports on how a Kentucky town spent $15,000 of its opioid settlement money on an ice rink.
POLITICO's Alice Miranda Ollstein, Rachel Bluth, Cris Seda Chabrier and Maya Kaufman report on how gender-affirming services are in limbo despite court orders putting federal restrictions on hold.