Republican Rep. Don Bacon of Nebraska has noticed some of the Trump administration’s recent troubles, and last week the congressman offered his fellow Republicans on the other end of Pennsylvania Avenue some sensible advice. “Before making cuts rashly, the administration should be studying and staffing to see what the consequences are,” Bacon said. “Measure twice before cutting.”

It’s a lesson the White House has been slow to learn. NBC News reported:

The Trump administration is reinstating some employees in the Food and Drug Administration’s medical devices division after dozens were laid off as part of a government-wide cost-cutting initiative led by billionaire Elon Musk and his Department of Government Efficiency, according to two people familiar with the matter. Around 180 employees from the FDA’s Center for Devices and Radiological Health, including physicians and cybersecurity experts, were let go on Feb. 15, two workers said they were told by their supervisors.

NBC News’ report added that those who work in the medical devices division are responsible for “approving and monitoring the safety of a range of products, from X-ray machines to surgical implants.” In this specific case, some of the fired employees apparently worked in the cardiac devices unit, “which oversees devices such as pacemakers and implantable defibrillators,” though the administration is apparently now in the process of trying to bring some of them back.

For those who might soon rely on a pacemaker to live, the reversal might sound encouraging, though the same report added that, at least for now, it’s “unclear how many employees were offered their jobs back, or how many would ultimately return.”

Just as notable, of course, is the familiarity of the circumstances. We recently learned, for example, that the Trump administration fired a group of employees at the National Nuclear Security Administration, whose job it is to oversee the country’s nuclear weapons stockpile. Soon after, the administration came to realize what these fired workers do and why they are important, and they decided it’d be a good idea to rehire the people they had fired.

Soon after, Americans learned that the U.S. Department of Agriculture accidentally fired “several” employees who are working on the federal government’s response to the H5N1 avian flu outbreak.

I’m glad that Donald Trump’s increasingly shambolic administration keeps recognizing its personnel errors and keeps trying to undo misguided firings. But it’s not unreasonable to expect that officials exercise a little common sense and stop firing federal employees in the first place.