Federal workers discuss the personal toll of Trump’s layoffs at state Senate hearing

Leslie Desmond, a mother of two from Dearborn, loved her job as a financial analyst with the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. Desmond oversaw the state’s public housing services to ensure vulnerable residents were able to keep a roof over their heads.

Desmond is now suddenly struggling: She was one of thousands of federal employees caught in the crosshairs in President Donald Trump’s administration’s efforts to reduce the federal workforce. She was fired from her HUD position in February, reinstated in March, and then was placed on administrative leave.

“These past few months have caused me unnecessary turmoil and stress,” Desmond testified at a Michigan Senate Labor Committee meeting on April 17. “I’ve lost paychecks. I’ve started bartending to feed my kids. I’ve taken loans from family members, and I worry about losing my house that I’ve worked so hard for. My two sons have asthma, and I’ve had to pay out of pocket to make sure they have the health care that they need.”

The April 17 Senate Labor Committee meeting is the latest in a series of special legislative hearings Democrats have held to gauge how the Trump administration’s actions have affected the lives of Michiganders. 

Michigan was home to approximately 30,000 federal civilian workers as of December 2024. Michigan residents laid off by the administration said that being fired without warning and continued uncertainty over their employment have put a lot of stress on them and their families.

“The whirlwind of joblessness, unknown status, lack of communication, not to mention the influx of media and social media describing civil servants as, quote, government waste, bureaucrats and frauds and worse, have taken a toll on our mental health and well-being,” said Nicole Rice of Washtenaw County.

Before she was laid off in February, Rice worked for the U.S. Department of National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration laboratory in Ann Arbor as a communications specialist.

Rice read aloud for the committee the email she received in February, which said, “The agency finds that you are not fit for continued employment because your ability, knowledge and/or skills do not fit the agency’s current needs.”

Rice said her firing couldn’t have been performance-related: She had recently received a performance-based promotion. Instead, she believes, her probationary status had left her “vulnerable to the current administration’s wave of politically motivated firings.”

The state has set up a new website to provide information and assistance to Michigan workers who have been laid off from federal positions, but the mass layoffs and funding cuts have rattled the state social service agencies that operate federal programs such as Medicaid and food and housing assistance. An influx of newly fired workers could create an additional strain on those programs, too.

“I wonder what will happen if many more people have the same story that I do, and they won’t have the services there to assist them,” Desmond said. “In addition to being chaotic, these fires have been inefficient, wasteful and without purpose.”

In some instances, terminated workers like Rice aren’t receiving the necessary information from their former employers that would allow them to obtain interim health insurance coverage or unemployment benefits.

“My income, my health care and my dignity were stripped away without warning and without cause,” Rice said. “As a disabled person, this has left me vulnerable to debt, illness or worse. And I’m not alone.”

Andrew Lennox had a similar experience when he was laid off from his job as an administrative officer at the Veterans Affairs Medical Center in Ann Arbor in mid-February.

“After the termination came the silence,” Lennox said. “We weren’t told if we still had health insurance. Nobody told us if we didn’t get another paycheck or when one would come.”

Lennox was later rehired, put on administrative leave, and then fully reinstated in April. He called the lack of mental health support or resources to cope with the trauma of being fired without cause “a failure of leadership” and “negligence.”

Lennox, a U.S. Marine Corps veteran who only recently started working at the VA in December, said his job gave him a renewed purpose since it allowed him to support his fellow service members. Even after he was laid off, he felt it was his duty to continue working.

“I kept working because there had been no transition of authority,” Lennox said. “There’s no transfer of duties. I had projects that I was still working on, I was actively working on. If I were to walk away right then, our veterans would be in jeopardy.”

Former and current federal workers in the thick of the employment chaos said they are also hearing comments from congressional Republicans invalidating their troubles. Rep. Lisa McClain, a Republican representing Michigan’s 9th Congressional District, dismissed the accounts of laid-off workers as “sob stories from bloated bureaucrats with six-figure salaries” during a press conference in February.

Those who testified before the Senate Labor Committee in April said they wanted to send a message to the Republicans dismissing their experiences that they’re average citizens who are passionate about their work and communities.

“We live in Michigan. We live in your neighborhoods. We want to keep your water clean, our veterans healthy. We want to make sure that people have housing that’s affordable,” Lennox said. “And that’s why I got to ask myself, what kind of patriot talks about traumatizing people who’ve dedicated their lives to public service? Who would say this about our veterans, people that are willing to die for this country? And it’s not patriotism; it’s cruelty. It’s not leadership; it’s bullying.”