By Idrees Ali and Nathan Layne
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – President Donald Trump and his adviser Elon Musk’s unprecedented and frantic effort to slash the federal workforce, pushing tens of thousands of workers out of their roles, is starting to draw more significant backlash, even in strongly Republican areas.
At a town hall in his conservative northern Georgia district on Thursday, Republican U.S. Representative Rich McCormick heard catcalls and boos as he attempted to defend Musk’s assault on the federal bureaucracy.
“They’ve been indiscriminate and they’ve taken a chainsaw to these things,” said one attendee at the event in Roswell, about 20 miles (32 km) north of Atlanta. He noted the government had fired and then scrambled to rehire workers responsible for nuclear weapons security and efforts to combat bird flu.
McCormick was met with jeers when he suggested the agencies in question, rather than Musk, were able to decide which specific personnel to lay off. Trump won the district by a 30 percentage-point margin in November.
Another Republican congressman, Scott Fitzgerald, faced a similarly frustrated crowd at a town hall in West Bend, Wisconsin, about 40 miles (64 km) north of Milwaukee.
“Presidents are not kings,” said one attendee in a video broadcast by TMJ4, a local NBC affiliate. “Are you willing to use your subpoena power to tell Musk to stand in front of Congress and answer some hard questions?”
Fitzgerald told the room that Musk has been effective in finding waste and that Congress will have oversight over his efforts, but the crowd cut him off with a chorus of jeers. Trump carried his district, 64% to 36%, in November.
In Westerville, Ohio, Republican U.S. Representative Troy Balderson said Trump’s executive orders were “getting out of control,” the Columbus Dispatch reported.
“Congress has to decide whether or not the Department of Education goes away,” Balderson said at a business luncheon, referring to Trump’s vow to eliminate that department, the newspaper reported. “Not the president, not Elon Musk.”
Later on X, Balderson responded to the newspaper story, saying, “I fully support President Trump’s agenda to rein in our bloated federal government & put Americans first.” Balderson’s district voted for Trump by more than a 2-to-1 margin in November.
200,000 PROBATIONARY WORKERS
Musk, the world’s richest person, and a cadre of aides have laid off more than 10,000 workers and dismantled programs throughout the U.S. government, from the Department of Education to the Department of Veterans Affairs and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Most of the terminated employees began their current position in the last year and were therefore considered probationary, a status that affords them less job protection than other civil service workers.
Roughly half of the 200,000 federal workers with less than a year of service were employed in states that backed Trump in 2024, according to data posted last year by the Office of Personnel Management.
Texas had about 13,000 federal workers with less than a year on the job, slightly more than worked in Washington. Another 9,300 worked in Florida, and 7,400 worked in Georgia.
Nearly 60% of Americans are concerned that Musk’s campaign could eventually harm crucial federal programs such as Social Security retirement payments and student aid, double the number who said they were not worried, a Reuters/Ipsos poll released on Thursday found. Several recent polls, including the Reuters/Ipsos survey, have shown support for Trump’s performance softening since he took office a month ago.
Asked about complaints from constituents in traditionally conservative districts over Musk’s blunt-force approach, White House spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt accused the media of cherry-picking critics.
“There should be no secret about the fact that this administration is committed to cutting waste, fraud and abuse. The president campaigned on that promise, Americans elected him on that promise, and he’s actually delivering on it,” she said.
MUSK’S CHAINSAW
During an appearance at the Conservative Political Action Conference on Thursday, Musk, who was appointed by Trump to oversee the Department of Government Efficiency, waved a chainsaw on stage that was given to him by Argentine President Javier Milei, who wielded the power tool during campaign rallies as a symbol of cutting government spending.
DOGE’s access to sensitive government data systems has raised further privacy and security concerns among critics. On Friday, the Internal Revenue Service signed a deal with a key Musk aide limiting his access to data and preventing him from viewing information on individual taxpayers, according to an agreement seen by Reuters.
Data posted to the DOGE website detailing headcount and total wages for the National Reconnaissance Office, an intelligence agency that manages spy satellites, was “not intended for public release,” though it is not classified, an agency spokesperson told Reuters on Friday.
The NRO is working to “remedy” the situation, the spokesperson said.
Democrats and labor unions say the DOGE campaign has been chaotic and haphazard rather than targeted. Several unions have filed lawsuits challenging the effort’s legality. Trump and Musk say the government is bloated and wasteful.
The cuts will soon extend to the Defense Department. The Pentagon has identified about 50,000 civilian employees who work throughout the military and fall within the probationary period, an official said on Friday.
But the number who will eventually be removed is expected to be far smaller and the process could take some time, as the Pentagon works through exemptions, which the official said could be fairly broad because of national security implications.
The National Science Foundation, a federal agency that supports science and engineering, has reclassified hundreds of workers from permanent to probationary status in violation of the law, Democratic U.S. Congressman Don Beyer said, exposing the employees to termination.
(Reporting by Idrees Ali and Nathan Layne; Additional reporting by Brad Heath, Doina Chiacu, Susan Heavey, AJ Vicens, Brendan O’Brien and David Morgan; Editing by Scott Malone, Diane Craft and Daniel Wallis)
