Federal employees impacted by the sweeping cuts ordered by President Donald Trump’s administration have a lot on their minds, and a Maryland state senator heard from dozens of them at a town hall meeting on Sunday in Montgomery County.
About 200 people attended the meeting in Wheaton, which was hosted by Maryland State Sen. Jeff Waldstreicher after he called on federal employees to show up and share their concerns.
Waldstreicher said many of the workers expressed pain, anger and frustration.
“We’re hearing about people losing their jobs, people losing their income,” he said. “It’s heartbreaking.”
The Trump administration has intensified efforts to shrink the size of the federal workforce — the nation’s largest employer — by ordering agencies to lay off nearly all probationary employees who have not yet gained civil service protection. The move could potentially affect hundreds of thousands of workers.
In addition, employees at some agencies have been warned that large-scale job cuts are on the way.
Waldstreicher said that while some people at his meeting talked publicly about their concerns, others approached him privately for a conversation.
“Folks who have been definitively let go have been very open about their pain and their stories and what’s happened to them over the last couple of weeks,” Waldstreicher said. “Folks who are at risk of getting let go obviously are much more circumspect about sharing their identity and their stories.”
The civilian federal workforce, excluding military personnel and postal workers, consists of about 2.4 million people.
Roughly 20% of those employees work in D.C. and the neighboring states of Maryland and Virginia.
Trump’s initial attempt to reduce the workforce was the deferred resignation program, commonly described as a buyout, which offered to pay employees until Sept. 30 if they agreed to resign. The White House said 75,000 people signed up, and a federal judge cleared a legal roadblock for the program.
However, the number of employees who accepted the offer fell short of the administration’s target, and Trump has made it clear he intends to take further steps.
“What surprised me most is the sense of betrayal,” Waldstreicher said. “Folks feel scared, they’re not getting much sleep, and they’re thinking about if the worst were to happen, how they’d put food on the table.”
“People are anxious to the extreme,” he added.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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