The FTC is being hit by terminations

At least a dozen probationary staffers at the Federal Trade Commission were terminated last week, The Verge has learned.

The terminations took place across the agency, according to two sources familiar with the matter, one of whom said that included both the Bureau of Consumer Protection and Bureau of Competition. The sources did not definitively link the terminations to actions by Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), but the move followed a familiar DOGE playbook: apparently indiscriminate cuts targeting probationary employees, who may be new to the agency or a specific role. The FTC did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

This appears to be one of the first times during the current Trump administration that the FTC has been impacted by staffing cuts of this scope, even as DOGE has driven mass firings across the federal government. Republican FTC Chair Andrew Ferguson has largely aligned himself with Trump, but the cuts indicate that the agency still may not be safe from broader changes to government staffing — though it’s still unclear how far it will go.

In an email obtained by The Verge, the FTC chapter of the National Treasury Employees Union acknowledged to members last week that it was aware of terminations at the agency, but did not yet know their scope. The email also included information about ongoing legal efforts by the national organization, including the filing of claims at the Office of Special Counsel of the Merit Systems Protection Board, as well as institutional grievances at each agency where probationary employees have been terminated. The FTC union website now hosts a similar notice, with next steps for terminated employees.

The Washington Post reported last week that the FTC’s internal equal opportunity office had been cut from six to three staffers. Last month, Ferguson had declared that “DEI is Over at the FTC,” and said he had “Terminated the Diversity Council” at the agency. The scope of the recent probationary terminations, however, appear distinct from these directives.

Also last week, FTC staff in Washington were told by DOGE that they’d soon be moving into the building being vacated by the US Agency for International Development (USAID), according to Bloomberg, which DOGE had effectively dismantled.