# Federal Whistleblower Roster Federal law protects government employees who report illegality, waste, abuse of authority or dangers to public health and safety to Congress, an inspector general or the [[Office of Special Counsel]]. This page tracks the federal employees who did that during the [[Second Trump Administration]] and were then fired, suspended, put on indefinite leave or pushed to resign. Each entry has its own page with the details and sources. The list is limited to people who reported misconduct inside their own agencies and were punished in their jobs. Fired senior officials who did not make disclosures, and the wider campaign against the administration's critics, are covered in [[Criminalizing Whistleblowers]] and the [[Trump Retribution Ecosystem]]. ## The roster Status as of November 1, 2026. | Who | Agency | What they reported | What happened to them | Where it stands | |---|---|---|---|---| | [[Paul Osadebe]] and [[Palmer Heenan]] | HUD, Office of Fair Housing | Aug. 27, 2025, to Sen. Elizabeth Warren: HUD leadership was halting enforcement of the Fair Housing Act and breaking up the office that brings its cases | Sept. 29, 2025: Heenan fired; Osadebe put on leave with removal proposed. HUD cited unauthorized disclosures | Their suit over the office's break-up was dismissed Sept. 28, 2026; a request to file an amended complaint is pending | | [[Erez Reuveni]] | Justice Department, Office of Immigration Litigation | June 24, 2025, to Congress, the inspector general and the Office of Special Counsel: [[Emil Bove]] suggested the department might have to defy court orders over deportation flights | Put on leave April 5, 2025, after telling a judge that Kilmar Abrego Garcia's deportation was an error; fired later that month | The inspector general sent the disclosure to the department's internal ethics office; no lawsuit reported | | [[Jeanne Marrazzo]] | NIH, director of NIAID | Sept. 2025, to the Office of Special Counsel: politically driven grant and trial cancellations, and a senior official playing down vaccines | Removed as director March 31, 2025; fired by Robert F. Kennedy Jr. in fall 2025 | *Marrazzo v. Kennedy* pending in Maryland; the government's motion to dismiss was fully briefed in June 2026 | | [[Charles Borges]] | Social Security Administration, chief data officer | Aug. 26, 2025, to the Office of Special Counsel and Congress: DOGE staff had copied Social Security data on more than 300 million people to an unmonitored cloud system | Resigned days later, citing a hostile work environment after being shut out | The Justice Department acknowledged in Jan. 2026 that DOGE members had accessed and shared the agency's data without officials' knowledge | | [[Katrina Declaration]] signers | FEMA | Aug. 25, 2025, letter to Congress from more than 180 staff: the agency was being hollowed out and disaster response put at risk | Named signers put on leave the next day and investigated | At least 14 cleared to return to work April 29–30, 2026, after Markwayne Mullin replaced Kristi Noem at Homeland Security | | [[EPA Declaration of Dissent]] signers | EPA | June 30, 2025, open letter from hundreds of staff to Administrator Lee Zeldin | About 140 put on leave July 3, 2025; most later suspended or reprimanded; 15 to 20 fired | Six appealed to the Merit Systems Protection Board in Dec. 2025; seven fired probationary employees sued in June 2026 | | [[Nicholas Enrich]] | USAID, acting head of Global Health | March 2025 memos, then a formal disclosure: the aid freeze was blocking lifesaving programs and would cause preventable deaths | Put on leave days after the memos became public | USAID has since been dismantled | | [[Daniel Berulis]] | National Labor Relations Board, IT staff | April 2025, to the leaders of the Senate Intelligence Committee: DOGE was given sweeping access and about 10 gigabytes of data left the agency's network | A threatening note with drone photos of him was left at his door; he says his car's brake lines were cut the day after Elon Musk reposted a claim that his complaint was false | Defamation suit against Musk filed April 2026 | ## Other cases - **Jenna Norton**, a program officer at the NIH's kidney-disease institute who signed the June 2025 Bethesda Declaration criticizing NIH leadership and spoke publicly against the administration's research cuts, was put on administrative leave on November 13, 2025. NIH said the leave was not disciplinary. "It is intended as a threat," she said. - **[[Elizabeth Oyer]]**, the Justice Department's pardon attorney, was fired in March 2025 after refusing a request from political leadership. She went public only afterward, so she is not on the roster, but her lawsuit raises the same question as several cases above: whether fired career employees have any working path back. ## What the cases have in common - **The punishment often came first.** Reuveni, Marrazzo and Enrich were put on leave or removed for objecting internally or telling a court the truth, and filed formal disclosures afterward. Whistleblower law protects the disclosure; it does less for the internal objection that sets things in motion. - **Leave is the tool.** Paid administrative leave, often "until further notice," takes people out of their jobs without a firing that can be appealed. The FEMA signers spent about eight months on it. - **Job status decides the defense.** A [[Probationary Period]] employee like Heenan, or the probationary EPA staff, can be dismissed with almost no process and has no appeal to the [[Merit Systems Protection Board]]. That pushes those cases into federal court on First Amendment grounds instead. The mass dismissal of probationary employees in February 2025 is covered in [[Valentine's Day Massacre (2025)]]. The process for everyone else is mapped in [[How a Federal Employee Is Fired]]. - **The referees were weakened first.** The head of the Office of Special Counsel, the agency that defends federal whistleblowers, was fired in February 2025, and seventeen inspectors general were fired the month before. See [[Criminalizing Whistleblowers]]. - **Courts are asking whether they can hear these cases at all.** The HUD attorneys' suit was dismissed after the judge asked whether the Fair Housing Act lets anyone sue the federal government, and the government's main argument against Marrazzo is that the court lacks jurisdiction. - **[[DOGE]] runs through several of them.** Borges, Berulis and Enrich all reported problems tied to the Department of Government Efficiency's access to agency systems or money. ## Who represents them - [[Whistleblower Aid]]: Osadebe and Heenan, Enrich, Berulis. - [[Government Accountability Project]]: Reuveni, Borges, the FEMA signers. - Katz Banks Kumin, a private whistleblower law firm: Marrazzo. - Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility and Democracy Forward: the fired EPA employees. ## See also - [[Criminalizing Whistleblowers]] - [[Whistleblower Suppression Arc]] - [[Federal Whistleblower Protection Crosswalk]] - [[Office of Special Counsel]] · [[Merit Systems Protection Board]] - [[Resistance Hub]]