Source: United States House of Representatives – Congresswoman Sharice Davids (KS-3)
Last week, Representative Sharice Davids held a conversation with recently terminated federal workers to discuss the devastating impact of the Trump Administration’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) initiatives, led by Elon Musk. The discussion highlighted the personal and community consequences of these sweeping job cuts, which are hitting Kansas City especially hard.
Davids also shared her Job Seekers Guide to help affected workers navigate unemployment and find new opportunities. Participants included former employees from key agencies like the Internal Revenue Service (IRS), Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), U.S. Department of Transportation (DOT), and more, many of whom were abruptly laid off despite good performance.
With Kansas City serving as a major federal employment hub, these cuts are already disrupting families, local economies, and critical public services. Davids acknowledged the federal government can work more efficiently, but has repeatedly pushed back on these cuts, warning of risks to aviation safety, veterans’ services, and Social Security operations. As more layoffs loom, she continues to advocate for Kansas workers and the essential services they provide.
Davids’ efforts to push back on DOGE’s reckless terminations made headlines across Kansas:
Kansas City Star: Fired federal workers in Kansas City raise alarm: ‘Chaos costs the American taxpayer’
“Rep. Sharice Davids, a Democrat representing Kansas’ 3rd Congressional District, convened a roundtable of terminated federal workers on Friday. The event, opened to news media, underscored the local effects of President Donald Trump’s lightning-fast push to cut the federal workforce.
[…]
At a union hall in Kansas City, Kansas, a small sliver of former federal employees shared their stories. They hailed from different agencies and work backgrounds, but all cast the firings as a short-sighted and haphazard effort that will place public services at risk. The roundtable also included a current Social Security Administration employee, who spoke about concerns within the agency over looming job cuts.
[…]
At 6:45 p.m. on Feb. 14, [Selina] Zapata Bur received an email saying she was fired. She was told her email access would be cut off 15 minutes later. DOT also sent her a termination letter but tried to recall the message because of typos and missing links before sending a new version an hour later. ‘So that tells you the attention to detail they’re giving,’ Zapata Bur said.
[…]
Davids, a fourth-term congresswoman whose district spans southern Wyandotte County, all of Johnson County and stretches into rural areas southwest of the Kansas City metro, consistently emphasizes her willingness to work with Republicans and kicked off the event by noting that the federal government can be made more efficient. But she has grown increasingly vocal in criticizing the Trump administration over the DOGE effort.
‘I can tell you the idea of vilifying and demeaning our federal civil service is reprehensible to me,’ Davids said. ‘Because just right here we’ve got folks who make sure, like with Social Security, make sure that people are getting the benefits that they’re entitled to because folks have been paying into this system for a long time.’
[…]
The one current employee in the group, Garth Stocking of the Social Security Administration, previewed the harms he and his co-workers fear are coming if the agency moves forward with a plan to eliminate 7,000 jobs nationally.
[…]
SSA currently operates 68 field offices across the four-state Kansas City region that employ 943 workers, in addition to nearly 1,000 at a service center based in Kansas City. The agency plans to consolidate the Kansas City region into a new Mid-West/West region.
What that means for what kind of presence SSA will have in Kansas City – and Kansas and Missouri more broadly – is unknown. ‘It’s not too hard to connect the dots from closing a field office to lack of services,’ Stocking said Friday.”
KMBC: Former federal workers share concerns about job cuts at roundtable with Kansas congresswoman
“A handful of former federal workers gathered at a local union hall in Merriam on Friday with U.S. Rep. Sharice Davids, D-Kan., to share concerns about federal workforce reductions. Davids heard their concerns about federal job reductions under the Trump administration.
Donny Newsom, a Navy veteran recently let go from a construction supervisor role for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, shared his concerns with the cuts and losing his job. “I think I owe it to the American people to, to at least push back a little bit and push back for the folks that can’t, that don’t have the capability to push back,” Newsom said.
The number of people losing federal jobs in the Kansas City area is still not fully known.
‘I think it’s going to be extremely difficult to undo what’s happening right now, because the service and stability is what drew people to the federal government,’ said Scott Curtis, whose job status has remained in limbo as chief of staff for the Federal Emergency Management Agency.
Davids shared her thoughts about the trimming federal workforce so rapidly.
‘Our communities are already expressing just how irresponsible this is,’ she said. ‘At the same time that I feel anger and heartbreak for the people who have been impacted by this.’”
The Olathe Reporter: Former federal workers detail confusion, chaos following mass layoffs
“Hosted in the LiUNA Local 1290 Union Hall in Kansas City, Kansas, Davids asked four former employees and one current social security employee to detail their experiences with recent layoffs by the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE). Each person had a unique story, with consistent themes of miscommunication and confusion throughout. Details related to their individual firings are their own accounts.
Prior to hearing those stories, Davids, a Democrat, prefaced the conversation by saying she likely has never met someone who thought the federal government ran efficiently, but in her opinion mass layoffs are not the way to improve its effectiveness.
‘These terminations are not the way to get there … both because of the impact on our individual federal civil servants, and the community services to keep us safe,’ Davids said.
[…]
‘Elon Musk and the so-called Department of Government Efficiency have taken a very reckless and thoughtless approach to firing people who are literally public servants,’ Davids said. ‘It has cut against the idea that they’re working for a more efficient government. These are services and folks who are mission-driven, who keep our community safe, who keep us healthy, who make sure we have roads and bridges.’
[…]
Those who received layoff emails or letters in the group noted inconsistent reasoning for their firings — some were told their continued employment ‘was not in the best interest of the American people,’ while others were told it was performance-based despite never receiving a poor performance report.
‘I wasn’t even there long enough to be evaluated for anything,’ Hudgins-Bradley said. ‘I barely had access to the systems to do the job, so ‘Based on poor performance’? What poor performance, what have you got?’
Outside of the unusually handled layoffs, the speakers discussed Project 2025, a document written in 2023 in anticipation of President Donald Trump’s reelection, detailing policies and actions the president should take in his second term in office… It details the weakening of federal programs, among other rightwing agendas, through the use of Trump’s powers as president. Vought has said in the past he wants federal workers to be “traumatically affected” and to not want to work as they are ‘increasingly viewed as the villains.’
‘I think the thing that disturbs me the most is the use of language and vilification of civil servants,’ Newsom said of the Trump Administration’s handling of the layoffs. ‘Who does that? What sort of mentality? … Where are we at as a country at this point? What sort of sick, twisted person says things like that, but then has a whole backing that’s following them up?’”
Topeka Capital-Journal: ‘We made a horrible mistake’: Fired federal employees from Kansas share stories
“U.S. Rep. Sharice Davids, D-Kansas, hosted a town hall with fired federal workers from Kansas at a union office, where they shared how they were terminated from their jobs.
The employees… described a chaotic scene at their offices as it maneuvered through mass terminations of probationary employees that have served less than a one- or two-year term, an email asking them to describe five things they did in the past week and the unfulfilled promise of benefits offered to people who agreed to resign.
[…]
Scott Curtis, a Navy veteran who was fired as a probationary employee, said he agreed to the deferred resignation program but then was fired as a probationary employee before the agency tried to rehire him.
‘I got a call from FEMA saying: ‘Oh, sorry, we made a horrible mistake. You shouldn’t have been fired. We’re rescinding your termination and you’re going to go on the deferred resignation program.’ Now I’m still not getting paid,’ Curtis said.
[…]
Davids called the approach to the terminations ‘thoughtless’ and not a real solution to inefficient government.
‘One of the things that I work on, and my team works on, is trying to figure out ways to make the federal government work better, more efficiently and effectively,’ she said. ‘These terminations are not the way to get there, from my perspective, both because of the impact that it has on our individual federal civil servants like you guys, and the community services to keep us safe, to keep us healthy.’
Davids said she’s trying to find ways to conduct oversight on the Trump administration with the help of Republican colleagues, which would be necessary with the GOP holding four more seats in the House than Democrats.
‘I am trying to figure out ways to work with my Republican colleagues, because it is the nature of being in the Legislature that we are supposed to be providing oversight on this administration and the things that they’re doing,’ Davids said. ‘We only need four or five of them to help us push back.’”
Fox4:
“Kansas Democratic Congresswoman Sharice Davids, who represents Wyandotte and Johnson Counties, hosted a roundtable with federal workers who’ve recently been laid off. The group includes employees from both sides of the state line who once worked for the Department of Transportation, FEMA, NOAA, and IRS. 1,000 workers in the metro have already bene let go, with more expected down the line. The VA has announced plans to cut more than 80,000 jobs by the end of the year.
‘But I definitely was terminated as a new probationary employee despite bringing well over three decades of experience in the federal government along,’ [said Scott Curtis].
‘It takes $10,000 just to get someone sitting there ready for training and I think my class was 150 people. So, even if just 50 of those were internal and already had everything, you’re still looking at a good amount of money that’s basically being thrown away because I didn’t even make it through training,’ [said Jasper Hudgins-Bradley]”
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