Myles McManus (top left) holds a sign for NOAA during a Stand Up for Science rally on the Arkansas Capitol steps on March 7, 2025. (Antoinette Grajeda/Arkansas Advocate)
Since being fired last month amid efforts to slash the federal workforce, Christopher Ford has been hopeful about getting his job back at the Veterans Health Care System of the Ozarks.
Ford’s hopes were bolstered Thursday when a federal judge ordered the Trump administration to immediately reinstate jobs for thousands of probationary federal workers — employees who had been recently hired or promoted.
“It’s a good feeling,” he said. “I’m very happy about this, and I’m excited that other people are seeing exactly what I saw — that how they conducted this was illegal.”
The Trump administration swiftly appealed the ruling, which directed the rehiring of tens of thousands of workers in various federal agencies, including the departments of Agriculture, Interior and Veterans Affairs. A second federal judge late Thursday also ordered probationary workers to be reinstated.
Though the appeals process could take time, Ford said he’s confident the courts will ultimately deem the administration’s actions illegal.
Beyond the shock of being fired, Ford was frustrated by his termination letter citing poor performance because he said he’s never been disciplined and has consistently received positive appraisals.
“That impacts me being able to get a federal job in the future,” he said. “As someone who’s done 13-and-a-half years of federal service, I’m committed.”
The Florida native’s experience includes nine years of active military duty and three deployments to the Middle East. He moved to Arkansas in 2019 and worked in a remote position until he was hired as an Equal Employment Opportunity program manager last June.
Having invested so much time as a federal worker, Ford said he’d prefer to remain in the federal workforce for a few more years to earn a pension. The Northwest Arkansas resident said he’d take his job back “in a heartbeat” because he loved what he did and working with veterans.
“The VA fit me and I understood, and it was an honor and privilege working for all the people I worked with,” he said. “That’s why for me, I just want my job back.”
To assist in that goal, Ford filed a complaint over his firing with the U.S. Merit Systems Protection Board. But there’s been little movement on that front, he said, which is why he’s grateful to the American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE) for joining other organizations in suing the Office of Personnel Management.
AFGE Local 2201 is hosting a rally at noon Saturday at VHSO’s Fayetteville campus, which Ford said he’ll attend. Local union President Bruce Appel said they began planning the rally prior to the Department of Veterans Affairs announcing last week a reorganization that will include cutting 80,000 jobs.
The announcement just “added fuel to the fire,” Appel said.
“Our focus of the rally is going to be to try to get the public to understand that what they read in the news about all these federal employees getting cut and getting their jobs screwed with, hey, it’s going to impact our ability to take care of grandpa when he comes to our hospital,” Appel said. “That this has real consequences to their lives, and I’m not sure that the general public is really understanding that.”
Amid the chaos and confusion of the last few months, protesting has become an accessible form of action for fired federal workers like Myles McManus, a former National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) data scientist working in Tulsa who participated in a Stand Up for Science rally at the Arkansas state Capitol last week while he was passing through town.
McManus, who grew up in Alabama, has about eight years of experience working for the federal government and was hired for his most recent position nearly 11 months ago. He was fired on Feb. 27.
“These cuts are putting NOAA under the weather, and I’m sick about it,” he said.
The long-term effects of the federal workforce reduction is a concern for McManus, who said accurate, accessible datasets are needed for research and studies that can help predict things like 100-year floodplains.
While it’s been a challenging time for many federal workers, McManus said the upheaval has provided an opportunity for the scientific community to rally and help the public understand how much science affects their lives — from weather forecasts to how fish get into their recreational lakes.
“NOAA is an organization that does premiere scientific work that’s used worldwide, and its primary strength are the people that work there,” he said. “So to minimize NOAA’s efforts to bring commerce and science to the American people by going after the scientists that work there, in a way that is kind of blindsiding and a detriment to what public service is all about.”
McManus has secured a new job, but said he’d like to go back to NOAA because “the agency will need people who can sustain any attacks on scientific integrity,” and he feels called to provide that service.
“It’s not about the job availability on the private side, it was about doing something beyond just the monetary value, doing something beyond myself, and so losing that hurts in a way that getting another job for more money can’t replace,” he said.
An estimated 650 NOAA workers have been fired nationally, and 1,000 more are on the chopping block. NOAA falls under the Department of Commerce, which was included in the second lawsuit ruled on by judges Thursday. The department was also sued over improper terminations in a separate lawsuit filed Tuesday.
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