By Idrees Ali and Joseph Ax
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 faced 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. “The conservative approach is to take this in a slow and methodical way so you make sure you do it right, and that’s not happening.”
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.
In West Bend, Wisconsin, about 40 miles north of Milwaukee, frustrated constituents of Republican U.S. Representative Scott Fitzgerald voiced their displeasure at a town hall on Thursday.
“Presidents are not kings,” said one attendee in a video broadcast by TMJ 4, 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 off his full answer with a chorus of jeers. Trump carried his district, 64% to 36%, in November.
In Westerville, Ohio, Republican U.S. Representative Troy Balderson expressed some concern that Trump and Musk were going too far, describing the president’s bevy of executive orders as “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.
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 used the power tool as a symbol of cutting government spending in his campaign.
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 the “chainsaw” approach to cuts, White House spokesperson Karoline Leavitt attacked the media.
“I love how the media takes a few critics when the overwhelming response from the American people is support for what this administration is doing,” she told reporters.
“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 added.
PENTAGON BEGINS IDENTIFYING EMPLOYEES TO CUT
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 to 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.
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 could take some time, as the Pentagon works through exemptions, which the official said could be fairly broad because of national security implications.
In a video message on X, U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said on Thursday that “it is simply not in the public interest to retain individuals whose contributions are not mission critical.”
Hegseth said the cost-saving efforts would focus on trimming fat at places like military headquarters, which includes the main Pentagon building with its 22,000 staff.
Democrats and labor unions say the DOGE campaign has been chaotic and haphazard rather than a targeted effort. Several unions have filed lawsuits challenging the legality of the layoffs. Trump and Musk say the government is bloated and wasteful.
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 Joseph Ax; Additional reporting by Doina Chiacu, Susan Heavey, Brendan O’Brien and David Morgan; Editing by Scott Malone and Diane Craft)
