Summarize this content to 2000 words in 6 paragraphs The F.B.I. has taken drastic steps to comply with President Trump’s hiring freeze, causing deep uncertainty in the bureau’s ranks and rattling new employees.The moves appear at odds with the executive order that the president issued hours after taking office, which specifies that such a freeze would not apply to national security or public safety officials. Given that one of the F.B.I.’s core missions is to safeguard against terrorism and the possibility of other threats, it remains unclear why the bureau would not be exempt.Regardless the steps are all but certain to hobble the agency’s efforts to recruit, retain and train employees.The bureau’s human resources division, in an internal memo issued on Friday, detailed the moves it was taking as a result of the order, including supplying the White House with a list of probationary employees.Employees’ concerns have only been compounded by the deep suspicion and relentless attacks President Trump and his pick to be the agency’s director, Kash Patel, have leveled at the bureau over its previous criminal investigations that ensnared Mr. Trump. Mr. Patel has promised to turn F.B.I. headquarters into a museum of the “deep state,” dismantle the bureau intelligence cadre and slash the general counsel’s office, which provides the director with key legal advice.Already on edge, current F.B.I. employees wonder whether the directive signals the administration’s intent to gut parts of the country’s premier law enforcement agency, even as Mr. Trump has pushed to rapidly overhaul the federal bureaucracy.The F.B.I. declined to comment and referred questions to the Justice Department, which, like other government agencies, has been subject to the hiring freeze. A spokesman for the department did not immediately comment.Among the moves that have stoked concern at the F.B.I. is a request by the White House for the names of probationary employees, or employees who joined the bureau in the last two years — some of whom are military veterans. The list encompasses nearly 1,000 agents in field offices around the country.The memo said the bureau had to justify which employees on the list the agency wanted to retain.“To be clear, our employees on that list are on that list because we hired them to do mission critical jobs,” the memo said. “We will do everything that we can to ensure that they stay here at the F.B.I.”Firing new agents would be a considerable blow to the F.B.I., which spends tens of thousands of dollars recruiting, hiring and putting them through 20 weeks of extensive training.The F.B.I. said that new agent and analyst classes would begin their training at the bureau’s facility in Quantico, Va., as planned on Sunday. But future classes, the backbone of the agency’s ability to protect the country, appear to be on hold as job offers made to agents and analysts are put on pause.The field offices, which struggle to keep their squads filled, will have to scramble to make sure investigations and other operations continue to run smoothly if the agents are let go and more cannot be hired to keep pace with retirements.All recruitment events and activities were also paused. The bureau said that job postings had been removed but that it was trying to seek an exemption for special agents.The F.B.I., which has about 38,000 employees, was already facing budget cuts before Mr. Trump’s hiring freeze.In June, Christopher A. Wray, who fell out of favor with Mr. Trump and resigned before the inauguration, told a Senate appropriations subcommittee that the agency was already stretched thin from previous budget reductions.He warned that the threats to the country had never been greater.“Our adversaries are not scaling back their efforts because of the constrained budget environment,” he said. “In fact, threat actors may try to take advantage of federal budget reductions to conduct nefarious activities.”Similar to the Justice Department, the F.B.I. also put its coveted honors interns program on pause for the 2026 fiscal year, the memo said.
