A large number of federal employees living around the region may be feeling embattled and concerned about paying mortgages and raising families while the Trump Administration works to overhaul the federal workforce.
Protecting merit-based positions from being replaced by politically connected “cronyism,” as Sen. Chris Van Hollen, D-Md., described it, is one of his top priorities. But during a briefing with state lawmakers who represent Prince George’s County, Van Hollen admitted it won’t be Congress fighting back against the Trump Administration.
“I do think the immediate fight right now is in the courts,” Van Hollen told the collection of state delegates Friday morning. “And NTU, one of the federal employee unions, has already filed a lawsuit. We’re going to be working with them.”
But it’s not just the lawsuits themselves that will help — U.S. Rep. Glenn Ivey, D-Md., said federal courts will need to file injunctions against the Trump Administration for feds to have any chance of repelling Schedule F.
Under that new classification, tens of thousands of federal workers who are considered apolitical now would lose out on merit-based protections, under the argument they influence policy.
“A critical aspect of this executive function is the responsibility to maintain professionalism and accountability within the civil service. This accountability is sorely lacking today,” President Donald Trump wrote in an executive order on the matter during his first day back in office.
He argued it was needed because of “numerous and well-documented cases of career federal employees resisting and undermining the policies and directives of their executive leadership.”
While some of those changes will be litigated, federal judges could end up influencing how swift those changes may occur.
“We need injunctions up front, because the alternative is people could get forced out of their jobs during the first year or two, while the litigation goes forward, and you know, most regular folks can’t afford that,” Ivey said. “They can’t sit around waiting for the court to resolve the case, so they’ll have to move on and get other jobs. And I think that’s the strategy of the Trump administration.”
About 50,000 federal employees live in Prince George’s County alone, and that doesn’t include all the federal contractors who live there. Ivey admitted some of the actions taken against federal workers go farther than anyone was expecting.
“They put all probationary employees on notice that they may be terminated — and that’s across the board. That’s across the country,” Ivey said. “There’s not much the unions can do about that, because probationary employees have very limited protections in place because they’re on probation. So that’s thousands of people across the country, and that’s potentially devastating.”
He also didn’t expect an across-the-board hiring freeze to be put in place.
“There are doctors and nurses that had been committed to starting jobs with the Veterans Administration hospitals that have been put on hold,” Ivey said. “Doctors and nurses don’t have to stick around and wait till things get resolved. They got plenty of other options. So there’s going to be damage there too.”
It’s his belief the Trump Administration wants to “scare people into leaving” the federal workforce and, eventually, replace them with political loyalists. He said the swift process of converting employees to Schedule F means there isn’t much time to push back.
“So my hope is the litigation can get up and running as fast as possible. Several suits have been filed already,” Ivey said. “We need more of these directed directly at Schedule F and DEI employees.”
