Mass. delegation presses feds for details on mass firings: ‘Reckless purge’
Members of the Massachusetts congressional delegation want more details from the Trump administration on the scope of its federal workforce cuts in Massachusetts. In a letter Friday, they accused the president of overseeing a “reckless purge” with negative implications on disaster preparedness, public health, public safety and national security.
Downsizing the federal government, including eliminating thousands of jobs and slashing key functions from education to foreign aid, has been a central tenant of President Donald Trump’s return to office.
On Thursday, the president signed an executive order aimed at eliminating the Department of Education, an effort likely requiring congressional approval. Massachusetts Attorney General Andrea Campbell signaled a legal challenge is all but certain.
But the administration’s other widespread cuts have already begun to hit the Bay State, home to 46,000 federal employees.
Those workers “play an essential role in safeguarding the health, safety and economic well-being of Massachusetts,” the state’s 11-member congressional delegation wrote Friday to Charles Ezell, acting director of the Office of Personnel Management, or OPM. “These indiscriminate cuts threaten the core functioning of critical federal services and will harm our constituents.”
The letter, initiated by Rep. Ayanna Pressley, D-7th District, walked through the administration’s attempts to reduce the federal workforce since President Trump returned to power two months ago.
As the president’s second term began on Jan. 20, OPM — the office that manages the federal civil service — ordered government agencies to submit the names of employees on probationary periods, those relatively new to their positions with fewer job security protections.
On Jan. 28, OPM sent an email blast to more than 2 million federal employees outlining an offer for them to provide “deferred resignations” ahead of any potential job cuts.
Efforts by President Trump’s Department of Government Efficiency, led by billionaire Elon Musk, to fire thousands of probationary employees have since been halted by two federal judges who separately found issues with how the mass terminations were executed. But the wide-reaching solicitation of resignations has been allowed to continue.
In Massachusetts, the Department of Education laid off every employee at its Boston office earlier this month, “upending the Commonwealth’s ability to administer Title I funding and resolve more than 300 pending education-related civil rights cases,” the congressional delegation wrote in its letter. “This reckless purge directly harms children and families who rely on Head Start, after-school programs and disability accommodations.”
Another 10,000 Massachusetts-based employees of the Department of Veterans Affairs face job cuts, the delegation said.
“Many of those targeted are veterans themselves, betrayed as they seek to continue serving our country,” the letter read. “These attacks on public servants and the communities they support are unacceptable, and our constituents deserve better.”
About 30% of federal workers are veterans, U.S. Rep. Stephen Lynch said at a protest outside the Veterans Administration Hospital in the Boston neighborhood of West Roxbury last month.
The delegation sought details from OPM on the number of Massachusetts-based federal employees who have been fired, placed on administrated leave, taken early retirement or been subject to other cuts. It also requested specific data on the number of veterans affected by the cuts and information on employees who accepted the administration’s resignation offer.
Additionally, the delegation requested a detailed plan for how OPM will work with federal agencies and Massachusetts officials to prevent impacts to Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid and other federal programs and benefits amid workforce reductions.
Since the administration’s campaign to trim the federal bureaucracy began, members of the delegation have sought to draw attention to the plight of fired federal employees and the impact cuts to programs would have on both basic services and America’s standing in the world.
When President Trump addressed a joint session of Congress earlier this month, Pressley invited an Everett resident whose position in the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development was a casualty of the administration’s cuts.
Other members of the delegation extended similar invitations to the speech.
Rep. Richard Neal, D-1st District, brought a U.S. Army veteran laid off from the Springfield Vet Center as a result of cuts to the Department of Veterans Affairs. Rep. Jake Auchincloss, D-4th District, invited the former assistant administrator for global health at the U.S. Agency for International Development, or USAID, one of the first agencies President Trump targeted for elimination.
By: Will Katcher
Source: MassLive