This story is part of WTOP’s ongoing series, Trump Impact, which looks at how the new administration could change the D.C. region.
Come January, Donald Trump will be sworn in as the nation’s 47th president in D.C. With many anticipating Republican control of both chambers, Democratic lawmakers from around the D.C. area admit the change could end up being pretty “dramatic.”
For Prince George’s County, Maryland, Rep. Glenn Ivey, his concern is first and foremost with the federal workforce in the region, and the potential revival of plans from Trump’s first administration that would eliminate many civil service protections, allowing certain workers to be replaced by political appointees.
“We’ve got people who’ve been there, who developed expertise. They’ve got the right education, they’ve done the right work, and so they’re a great fit for their positions,” Ivey said. “And to eliminate them for political reasons, I think, is damaging and undermines the mission that the federal government performs for the American people.
“The federal government, I know it gets … a bad rap. But at the end of the day, we’re really the envy of the world for having a government that functions as well and as efficiently and with the level of expertise that ours currently does,” he added. “There’s always room for improvement, but there’s hopefully a ‘Do No Harm’ approach that will guide whatever efforts there are at governmental reform.”
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During Trump’s first term in office, the relocation of a new FBI headquarters to Prince George’s County was scuttled, with the president insisting the main facility should remain in downtown D.C., despite concerns that it’s a prime and easily accessible target for terrorists.
Concerns about terrorism are among the main reasons why the federal government has spent over a decade looking at suburban locales for a new building, ultimately settling on Greenbelt, which is part of Ivey’s district. He seemed to think there’s an argument for it remaining in the works over the next dozen or so years.
“Protecting the current FBI headquarters from terrorist attack is still something that’s important to the American people right now,” said Ivey. “From a public safety standpoint, you got parts of the building that have fallen off and put pedestrians and tourists at risk of being hit on the outside and put employees at risk on the inside.”
Ivey also said he believed Trump’s resistance to building a new headquarters during his last administration was the Hoover building’s proximity to the old Trump International Hotel, which the president-elect no longer owns. At the time, Trump was reportedly concerned about a new hotel being built right across the street.
“He doesn’t have a direct economic interest in it anymore,” said Ivey. “Hopefully that will allow him to focus on the merits instead of on his own pocketbook.”
Though, Ivey said, “You can never expect or anticipate what Trump’s going to do.”
Moving forward, Ivey said Democrats will need some introspection about how the party got 10 million fewer votes than in 2020.
“Frankly, this is something we should have been doing for the last decade,” he admitted.
Included in that is the exodus of Latino voters and the swing that demographic has taken toward Republicans in recent years. And he said the Biden administration took too long to focus on problems at the border.
“There was chaos at the border. I think the Biden administration got that under control in the last few months. In fact, the numbers are lower now than they were four years ago,” he said. “But it was sort of an accumulation of negative imagery of people coming and especially the New York City impact, I thought was significant.”
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