Since the start of his second term, President Trump has gone after the federal work force, shearing 17 percent of employees, stripping away centuries of experience in medicine, law and science, and politicizing jobs meant to be nonpartisan.
Embattled current and former workers are now looking to Democrats, newly empowered after the Republican rout in the midterm elections, for help.
But the sweeping Democratic victories came with competing ideas for change, starting with issues like affordability, health care and the war in Iran. That could mean that any reversal of Mr. Trump’s cuts may have to wait.
Then there is the reality that a Democratic-led Congress is only going to be able to do so much while Mr. Trump is still in the White House.
“We’re playing a long game here while we’re trying to prevent and undo as much damage as possible in the short term,” said Representative James Walkinshaw, a Democrat from a Northern Virginia district that is home to many current and former federal workers. Mr. Walkinshaw, who helped create the Congressional Federal Workforce Caucus earlier this year, said he expected the Trump administration to continue its attacks on the federal work force.
“But now we have some constitutional and legal authority to push back,” he said.
Current and former federal workers have been waiting 20 months for this moment. More than 389,000 employees left the government last year, a mix of people who were fired or pressured to leave, according to government data. The Agriculture, Health and Human Services, Interior and Treasury Departments suffered some of the biggest hits.
The White House has defended Mr. Trump’s cuts, and has said that the government is leaner and more efficient, an argument that former and current workers dispute. They point to widespread chaos and vacancies that have left basic work, such as getting grants out the door, delayed.
Their wish list for the incoming Congress is long.
Some want Congress to reconstitute the U.S. Agency for International Development and improve how it handles humanitarian and foreign assistance. They want their collective bargaining rights returned. They also want help burnishing the reputation of the federal work force after the Trump administration cast it as full of do-nothing bureaucrats.
Some current and former federal workers most want accountability, including congressional hearings that would force Trump administration officials to explain why they rescinded funds allocated by Congress, conducted widespread layoffs, and canceled contracts and grants.
“A lot of this will take a long time,” said Aryn Melton Backus, a co-founder of the National Public Health Coalition, a nonprofit group composed of fired and laid off members of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. She spoke in her personal capacity and not for the C.D.C., as she is still on paid administrative leave.
Ms. Melton Backus said that a Democratic majority in Congress still offered more hope to whistle-blowers, because lawmakers could hold hearings and call witnesses.
“Part of the attitude over the past year and a half,” she said, “is people have been like, ‘Well, if I do blow the whistle, nothing’s going to happen. So then, I’m risking my career for, you know, something potentially not happening.’”
Across the federal diaspora, there is a sense of guarded optimism.
“They feel like there is a real hope, you know, because these last 20 months have been very devastating for them,” said Everett Kelley, the national president of the American Federation of Government Employees, the largest labor union for federal workers. “Just the mere fact that they feel like somebody that is going to at least stand up to the corruption, stand up to the bullying, and, you know, the dismantling of the government. They feel good about that.”
Agan Smalley, the president of Local 777 of the International Federation of Professional and Technical Engineers and a geologist in the Army Corps of Engineers, said she was looking forward to her union’s annual legislative conference in Washington in February, after two years of being ignored by many Republicans. The conference provides opportunities for workers to speak directly with lawmakers and their staff members about policies and workers’ rights.
“Some of the way things are supposed to be done will be happening again,” she said.
Sarah Kobrin, an employee at the National Institutes of Health, said that she was happy with the midterm elections results, but that the deep cuts to medical research and grant funding had been so vast that it would take much more than federal dollars to recoup the losses.
“It was a big battle to win. But it is far from winning the war,” she said, speaking in her personal capacity and not for the agency. Part of winning the war, she said, was limiting the authority Mr. Trump had given to Russell T. Vought, the director of the Office of Management and Budget and the architect of the most consequential measures to dismantle the federal government.
The breadth of repairs to the government that will be needed is clear to Zach Dembo, a first-time Democratic candidate who flipped a House district in Kentucky that had been held by a Republican since 2013. Mr. Dembo, who served in the Navy and left his job as a federal prosecutor in 2025, is among several incoming lawmakers who are former federal workers.
Mr. Dembo said he saw the administration’s efforts to politicize the government as a part of the corruption that many voters had complained of during his campaign.
“We’re all committed to a federal government that operates free of politicization,” Mr. Dembo said. “I think a lot of us never would have ran. We wanted to stay being feds if it weren’t for all the nonsense going on.”
