They were civil rights lawyers, Social Security employees and labor experts. And now they're all in completely different jobs.
To fill vacancies left behind by waves of firing and resignations in the Trump administration's overhaul of the federal government, agencies are reassigning people to posts they know little about. That includes people who were forced out of jobs that are required by law or are essential to basic government functions, according to interviews with 20 federal employees across seven departments, most of whom spoke to The Washington Post on the condition of anonymity for fear of retribution.
Often, those moves reflect the administration's agenda: The Department of Homeland Security, for example, has reassigned dozens of employees at the Federal Emergency Management Agency to Immigration and Customs Enforcement to help bring on new hires for the government's mass deportation agenda. Justice Department officials gave a select group of senior career attorneys a choice between quitting or joining a new Sanctuary Cities Enforcement working group.
Many staffers have been moved from civil rights jobs, workers say. At the Justice Department, for example, attorneys who protected employees from workplace discrimination were moved to roles handling human resources complaints or Freedom of Information Act requests. At the Department of Housing and Urban Development, civil rights lawyers who pursued cases of housing discrimination were shifted to defend the agency from complaints. At the Transportation Department, an employee who spent a decade working in civil rights is now reviewing highway grants.
The result, employees said, is that work is being done less efficiently by people with little relevant experience or background, even if they have spent years in government in other positions. One former IT worker at the Social Security Administration - newly reassigned to disability benefits processing - described the changes as "leaving a Bugatti in the garage" and "a strategic decapitation of institutional knowledge."
The reassignments are "another thing, in the long line of efforts, to get us to just quit and abandon ship," said Paul Osadebe, a HUD civil rights attorney.
Not all the reassignments have met resistance. Multiple federal employees told The Post they were fine with their new roles, preferring to take on new work than lose positions or have to job-hunt. Sometimes, agencies give options. The Department of Veterans Affairs told payroll employees that they were being merged into a central office, but they could apply for jobs within that office or get their managers' help finding new ones, according to an August internal memo obtained by The Post.
White House spokesman Davis Ingle said in a statement that President Donald Trump "is committed to making our government as efficient and effective as possible. Everyone serves at the pleasure of the President and he will do what's best to deliver on his promises to the American people, which he overwhelmingly was elected to do on November 5."
HUD has the authority to reassign employees and match them to available positions, even if they're different types of roles, department spokeswoman Kasey Lovett said in a statement. Lovett said that the option "offers employees new opportunities to grow strengths and experience how different facets of the Department operate" and that such decisions happen frequently in and out of government. The Transportation Department did not respond to a request for comment.
The reassignments are just a part of how Trump's administration has reshaped the government since January. Early on, Elon Musk's U.S. DOGE Service attempted to cut costs through mass dismissals and a government-wide buyout offer. In several agencies, those efforts were blocked by courts or reversed, while others have offered additional incentives to get employees out. More than 154,000 federal workers have volunteered to leave government but remain on the payroll, The Post reported in July. But those moves have opened up holes that officials are trying to plug.
The Office of Personnel Management, the federal government's HR arm, has said that agencies have "extensive flexibility in reassigning an employee to a different position." Workers must agree to be reassigned. They also get to retain their pay level, meaning that some people who were previously in jobs at the highest pay grades available are continuing to earn that salary in lower-paid positions.
At VA, officials are looking to consolidate payroll operations for 50 VA medical centers, spokesman Pete Kasperowicz said. He said the agency is expected "to fill hundreds of upcoming openings with current VA employees who have payroll experience. This transition will open the door to advancement and greater promotion potential for many current VA employees."
But not every worker is happy about the potential moves.
In early June, managers told Osadebe, the HUD attorney, that they wanted people to voluntarily shift into vacant jobs because too many others had left. In his case, that would mean leaving a role he'd had for four years investigating and pursuing discrimination complaints.
Osadebe pushed back, he said, arguing that his work was a public service and required by law. But he is slated to transfer anyway. Osadebe said he is being reassigned to defending the department from lawsuits involving federal insured housing, which he says he has no experience doing.
After various rounds of firings and resignation offers, a staffer at a HUD field office who had enforced federal labor standards was pushed into a new role answering phones. The staffer compared that work to that of a customer service representative or secretary, which requires a totally different skill set. Ultimately, the staffer said, the change meant people who called or came in for help got poor service.
"I've never had a customer service job," the staffer said. "I avoid dealing with the general public - I pick jobs where I avoid that. And you're trying to force me to do what I'm worst at."
Lovett, the HUD spokeswoman, said in her statement that the administration is still focused on fair housing enforcement and that since Trump's inauguration, HUD has "totaled" more than 4,100 fair housing and equal opportunity investigations "with strong resolution rates, and continued enforcement." She declined to comment on individual employees.
Ejaz Baluch joined the Justice Department's civil rights division in 2019, fighting discrimination in the workplace. It was his dream job - until April, when he got an email saying he had been reassigned for at least four months to an office that handled internal human resources complaints.
The email coincided with another round of buyout offers, Baluch said. He hadn't planned on leaving. But the forced move added pressure. Baluch ended up getting a job outside government and resigned in May. Shortly after, though, he said, the government asked him to return to his old civil rights job because too many people had left.
"There were several people who received that reassignment, and that was the final straw," Baluch said. "If their goal is to demoralize the workforce, to thin out the workforce, to remove people they don't want in the agency, I think it's been successful in doing that."
In a statement, Justice Department spokeswoman Natalie Baldassarre said, "The mission and work of every section at the Civil Rights Division is important and it is a privilege to work here. The Division routinely evaluates staffing resources to allocate them in the most effective manner."
Similar shake-ups are happening around the government. In parts of the Agriculture Department, one employee said, reassignments of staff members to new roles for which they have no background or experience has become so common that some managers have coined a term to describe it: "cross-training."
In April, Social Security announced that about 2,000 employees had agreed to take new assignments. But the transition has slowed down work, according to eight employees closely involved in the process. Reassigned employees said they have received minimal or rushed training, including for positions as claims specialists or disability examiners. Those positions require deep knowledge of the agency's rules and systems. Another reassigned worker said that when inexperienced workers take phone calls, they often can't answer questions that might normally be settled in 15 minutes.
USDA "occasionally utilizes reassignments to allow for a more nimble, responsive government agency that puts farmers first," a spokesperson said, declining to provide a name. The department has reallocated resources if, for example, certain programs see an influx of applications or farmers and ranchers are threatened by disease outbreaks. Earlier this year, USDA also exempted national security and public safety positions from the federal hiring freeze to carry out critical work.
Social Security spokesman Barton Mackey said, "All reassigned employees receive the same level of training provided to newly hired or promoted employees to ensure their effective performance in their new roles," adding that prior experience and background in technical roles is taken into consideration when determining the appropriate training class. Mackey also noted that reassigned employees are matched with mentors, who give on-the-job training, and that trainees' casework is reviewed.
"This process ensures they can ask questions, request necessary assistance, and possess the required knowledge to be effective in their new roles," Mackey said.
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Perry Stein and Brianna Sacks contributed to this report.