Bailey Langley was almost one year into what she calls her “dream job” when it ended with one phone call and one email.

Langley, 23, who lives in Pendleton and worked in public affairs for the Umatilla National Forest, said she learned on Valentine’s Day that she was fired immediately as part of the Trump administration’s effort to trim the federal government.

Langley, who started work for the Umatilla as an intern in July 2023, the month after she graduated from Oregon State University, said she was hired as a permanent employee in April 2024.

Her one-year probationary period would have ended in April 2025.

Nathan Morga, who also was hired in April 2024, also uses the term “dream job” to describe his position as the NEPA writer on the Umatilla National Forest’s Walla Walla Ranger District office.

(NEPA stands for National Environmental Policy Act, the 1969 federal law that requires federal agencies to study the potential environmental effects of their actions. A typical example for the Forest Service is an environmental assessment looking at the possible effects of a timber sale.)

Morga’s job ended in much the same way, with a phone call and then an email.

But Morga’s phone call, from the Umatilla’s supervisor, came on Sunday, Feb. 16, two days after Langley learned her job was ending immediately.

Unlike Langley, Morga, 39, has had other jobs with the federal government.

He said his career includes four years of active duty with the U.S. Air Force, and three years with the California National Guard.

Morga said he has mental and physical disabilities from his military service. After working for three years with two other federal agencies, the National Weather Service in Alaska and the federal fisheries agency in Long Beach, California, he said he planned to finish his career on the Umatilla.

He and his wife, who have two children in middle school, bought a home last year in Walla Walla and were becoming, as Morga put it, “part of the community.”

Morga said he and his co-workers learned a couple weeks ago that the Trump administration’s effort to reduce the size of the federal government, including its workforce, likely would make “probationary employees” more vulnerable.

Those typically are employees who started less than a year ago, but some longer-term federal workers can also be designated as probationary if they have changed jobs or moved to a different agency or national forest.

Morga said he hoped that his status as a disabled veteran would make a difference.

But on Sunday he got a call from the forest supervisor.

Morga said he was asked to come to the Walla Walla district office to take his personal items and fill out paperwork.

The email message he received from Deedra Fogle, director of human resource management for the Forest Service, an agency of the U.S. Department of Agriculture, states in part:

“The Agency finds, based on your performance, that you have not demonstrated that your further employment at the Agency would be in the public interest.”

Yet Morga said his most recent performance review showed that he was doing his job well.

Reading the email, he said, was “devastation.”

“I don’t how else to describe it,” he said. “I’m still processing.”

Morga said he hopes legal action taken by the National Federation of Federal Employees, which represents most Forest Service workers, will help him regain his job.

“But I don’t have a lot of hope,” he said.

The federation is one of several unions coordinating in a lawsuit intended to block the Trump administration’s reduction of the federal workforce.

Morga, who has a master’s degree in public health, said he was not a federal bureaucrat but rather a “civil servant,” who lived paycheck to paycheck as many workers do.

An ‘urgent’ email

Langley said she had jury duty on Thursday and Friday, Feb. 13 and 14. She said that when she went to the Umatilla supervisor’s office on Thursday, she talked with co-workers who told her they had heard that all probationary employees were being fired.

The next day, while she was on jury duty, her supervisor called and told her she had an “urgent” email.

Langley said the email informed her that she was being fired.

Langley said she was given two hours to clean out her desk and fill out the termination paperwork.

She said she learned that forest supervisors in the Forest Service’s Region 6, which includes Oregon and Washington, had complained to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, of which the Forest Service is a part, about the reference to “performance” being the reason for the firings.

Langley said the supervisors complained because employees who had strong performance evaluations were being fired.

She said she heard that agriculture department officials contended that the firings were legal because probationary employees haven’t been properly evaluated.

Langley said that although she hopes to eventually regain her job with the Umatilla, in the meantime she is trying to adjust to the sudden change in her career, and life.

“The past few days I’ve just been trying to process everything,” she said.

As part of her work in public affairs, she helped inform regional residents about the ongoing effort to write new longtime management plans for the three Blue Mountains national forests — Umatilla, Wallowa-Whitman, based in Baker City, and Malheur, with headquarters in John Day.

Langley said she has heard that about 20 employees on the Umatilla were fired, including some who were asked to come in on Saturday, Feb. 15, to clean out their desks.

Wallowa-Whitman National Forest

An employee from Baker City, where the forest has its headquarters, said they learned, much like Langley, they had been fired via an email on Valentine’s Day.

The Wallowa-Whitman employee requested anonymity because of a potential class-action lawsuit filed by unions on behalf of workers. The employee said they don’t want to affect the legal challenge.

The employee, who has lived in Baker City for about two years, worked as a contract employee for the first year and then was hired about a year ago as a permanent worker in the Wallowa-Whitman supervisor’s office at the David J. Wheeler Federal Building in Baker City.

The employee said co-workers have been concerned since the Trump administration offered federal employees a severance package, consisting of salary and benefits through September, if they retired.

Then, about a week ago, employees learned that Forest Service officials have been asked to compile a list of “probationary” employees.

The employee had a phone call on Valentine’s Day from a supervisor about an “urgent” email that had been sent.

The email stated that the employee had been terminated immediately “based on your performance.”

There were no details about how the employee had fallen short of expectations.

The employee who requested anonymity said their performance evaluations were all well above satisfactory.

The employee said it appears that “at least 30” of the Wallowa-Whitman’s approximately 200 employees were fired.

The forest includes 2.4 million acres, primarily in Baker, Grant, Union and Wallowa counties.

The employee, who moved to Baker City for the job with the Wallowa-Whitman, has an uncertain future.

The person is interested in volunteering while looking for a job.

The employee worked two days per week from home and three days at the federal building.

“You don’t expect it to happen to you until it happens to you,” the employee said. “I can’t imagine the people who have kids. It’s devastating.”

The employee attended a protest in La Grande on Monday afternoon where topics included the Trump administrator’s DOGE (Department of Government Efficiency) campaign in general, as well as the recent firings of federal workers.

There was a similar protest in Pendleton on Monday.

Randy Erwin, national president of the National Federal of Federal Employees, said in a press release: “Federal workers are your friends and neighbors who have dedicated their careers to serving our country. We cannot let the President disrupt their lives and dismantle critical services relied upon by the American people. If this Administration and Elon Musk truly wanted to make our government more efficient, they would have taken the time to understand that these actions will only lead to chaos and poor service for the American people.”

Federal workforce in NE Oregon

The Forest Service and the Bureau of Land Management are two of the larger federal employers in Northeastern Oregon.

The two agencies manage half of Baker County’s 2 million acres.

According to the Oregon Employment Department, there were 190 federal employees in Baker County in December 2024, the same as in December 2023.

The figures for other counties:

• Grant: 200 (down from 220 in December 2023)

• Union: 200 (down from 210 in December 2023)

• Wallowa: 90 (up from 80 in December 2023)

Other federal agencies employing residents in the region include the Farm Service Agency, the National Weather Service and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.