The John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum resumed normal operations after the federal government reinstated five employees who it laid off last month.
The museum closed abruptly Feb. 18 after President Donald Trump’s administration laid off five probationary employees. Guests who were in the museum at the time were escorted out of the building. The museum reopened the next day, but without charging for admission.
According to reports from WGBH and The Boston Globe, admission was temporarily free because the terminated employees worked at the ticketing counter, and the remaining staff was not trained to operate the museum’s ticket system.
The museum resumed charging their normal admission rate — $18 for adults and $10 for teens — once the five staff members were reinstated Feb. 26. UMass Boston students can always visit for free using their student ID.
Presidential libraries are funded partially by the federal government and operated by the Office of Presidential Libraries, a division of the National Archives and Records Administration. Each library is affiliated with a nonprofit, which provides the library with supplementary private funding and is “committed to furthering the vision and ideals of their respective President through a variety of programs and initiatives,” according to NARA.
The five staff members were government employees, not employees of the JFK Library Foundation. The layoff came on the heels of a Feb. 11 order that directs agency heads to “undertake preparations to initiate large-scale reductions in force.”
“Due to the executive order, the JFK Library will be closed until further notice,” a sign on the library’s door said during the closure.
“As the foundation that supports the JFK Library, we are relieved that all five of the JFK Library staff members who were let go last week have been reinstated. They are all critical to Library revenue generating operations, which can now resume as normal, and it is wonderful to have our valued colleagues back,” the foundation wrote in a statement.
Matt Porter, the associate director for communications at the JFK Library Foundation, said NARA asked the foundation to refer requests regarding the closure to their press office in Washington. The museum does not have its own press office and the foundation cannot speak on behalf of the government.
NARA did not respond to The Mass Media’s request for comment. Phones in the White House Office of the Press Secretary went unanswered.
The five employees were all considered probationary, meaning they were hired within the last year and are not subject to civil service protections.
The New York Times reports that firing and quickly rehiring government employees after realizing they are essential has been a trend across the federal government — in part due to directives from the Department of Government Efficiency, led by billionaire and Trump political patron Elon Musk. Some firings have also been reversed by government watchdogs and federal judges. Even for probationary employees, the law requires the government to follow specific “reduction in force” procedures or show the employee’s “work performance or conduct fails … to demonstrate his fitness or his qualifications for continued employment” before terminating them.
According to the Associated Press, Trump fired Archivist of the United States Colleen Shogan in February, replacing her with Secretary of State Marco Rubio as the historically-nonpartisan agency’s acting head. Other senior staffers with the agency have also quit or been fired, and an unknown number of employees — including those with the museum — were fired or accepted buyout offers to resign.
Also caught in the chaos were Department of Energy workers who maintain the U.S. nuclear arsenal and Department of Agriculture employees who conduct inspections and respond to the bird flu outbreak.
