House Republicans are taking heat from their constituents, who are worried about Elon Musk’s fast and furious slashing of federal jobs.
Members of Congress say that while the voters who sent them to Capitol Hill are cheering a shrinking bureaucracy, they’re not happy with how President Donald Trump’s head of government efficiency is executing a “ready, fire, aim” approach to cutting the federal civilian workforce.
All of which is causing anxiety for the lawmakers themselves.
“I like the transparency and the spotlight on what the spending is going towards,” one lawmaker told the Daily Beast. “But the rashness in firing is backfiring. Measure twice and cut once is not their philosophy.”
In particular, GOP elected officials are sounding the alarm over probationary employees—those with less than a year on the job—who have been fired in droves by Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency. DOGE has cited poor performance as the reason for getting rid of employees, even when that isn’t the case.
“They are probationary—last in, first out—they don’t have poor performance reviews,” another lawmaker told the Beast. ”If they are working in the intel or defense [spaces], security clearances have been pulled.”
These fired federal employees are “looking for jobs” and being “stigmatized,” the member added.
“It’s too far—we need to rectify things for those folks,” the member of Congress said, referring to probationary workers who fall victim to Musk’s ax.
Representatives have been back in their districts this week on an extended President’s Day holiday, hearing from their constituents in person for the first time since the worst of the DOGE bloodbath. The vast majority of federal workers live outside Washington, D.C., and some 220,000 federal employees who had been on the job less than a year were laid off on Feb. 13.
The apparent haste with which the Trump administration is acting has prompted some congressional offices to rush to shield government programs and employees in their districts.
“When something is announced, my office gets flooded with calls,” another representative said. “We reach out to the administration to protect the programs we need. Usually when we make a case for something it gets reinstated.”
Rep. Rich McCormick (R-GA) was confronted at a town hall on Thursday over cuts at the CDC. One attendee said Republicans shouldn’t support a “radical and extremist and sloppy approach to this.” And Rep. Cliff Bentz faced an upset voter at a town hall who argued the cuts are not being done in a way that is ”humane and treats people with dignity.”
Others argued the aggressive cuts could trigger a showdown between Congress and the White House over which branch of government controls federal spending if a line isn’t drawn soon. Republicans in Congress so far have been largely complaisant with Trump’s unprecedented transformation of the federal infrastructure.
But not everyone in Congress is losing sleep over the disruption, with one moderate telling the Daily Beast: “The only way to fix it is going this route. There are going to be some mistakes along the way but you fix it and move on.”
“In terms of Joe Sixpack, nothing but accolades,” one source said, adding that “Democrats are losing the narrative” by protesting outside government agencies being impacted. “The public’s not sympathetic to federal workers.”
