Democrats on the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee convened last week for a “shadow hearing,” assessing a range of impacts from the Trump administration’s federal workforce overhauls throughout 2025.
Marking nearly one year since the administration directed agencies to compile reduction-in-force (RIF) and reorganization plans to reduce headcount, committee members reflected on the various consequences across agencies, calling them “devastating.”
“We had a lot of people who struggled — people who were career employees, who were doing outstanding work, getting great reviews year after year, who found their calling in the federal government and then were forced out,” Rep. Glenn Ivey (D-Md.) said at the Feb. 12 hearing, held in Fairfax County, Virginia. “We need to make sure we do everything we can to try and turn it around.”
During the hearing, lawmakers and witnesses both criticized the recent finalization of Schedule Policy/Career — a new employment classification that, once fully implemented, is expected to remove long-standing job protections for tens of thousands of career federal employees in “policy-influencing” roles, making it easier for agencies to fire them.
Faith Williams, director of the Effective and Accountable Government program at the Project on Government Oversight, said Schedule Policy/Career would “completely decimate our civil service.”
“What we end up having is a population not only that will have a harder time blowing the whistle, but a chilling effect across everybody who is left,” Williams said. “Who is going to put their neck out on the line at the risk of being fired at least, and bullied and harassed at worst? It’s really a many-pronged attack on whistleblowers.”
Doreen Greenwald, national president of the National Treasury Employees Union, highlighted another common challenge for federal employees who retired through the Trump administration’s deferred resignation program (DRP). The latest numbers show that more than 54,000 retirement applications are pending at the Office of Personnel Management and awaiting a final annuity — more than four times the typical level. Some applications are still stuck with agencies, as employees go months with no pension.
“They are waiting six to nine months for their first annuity payment because of these failures — some are facing foreclosure or have lost their homes. Some have even lost their health care benefits,” Greenwald said. “This is unacceptable.”
To reform the civil service for the future, Greenwald urged other policy reversals, including through restoring collective bargaining, halting further layoffs, preventing Schedule Policy/Career and improving federal pay.
“The federal government should be the place where talented Americans can dedicate their careers to serving their country, not a place they avoid out of fear of being abused and discarded,” Greenwald said, adding that, “having threats over people’s heads, having people removed that have decades of experience, you lose the expenses that the government has already paid.”
Coinciding with the Feb. 12 hearing, Rep. Robert Garcia (D-Calif.), the oversight committee’s ranking member, released a report detailing the broad-reaching impact of the Department of Government Efficiency. The new report, for instance, points to evidence showing that agency cuts led to delays and reduced services at the Social Security Administration, as well as significant challenges at the IRS ahead of filing season.
The report also noted the direct impacts on the federal workforce, particularly following the Trump administration’s February 2025 memo on RIF and reorganization plans.
“The following months involved insulting and threatening treatment of federal employees, waves of mass terminations of employees with outstanding performance and essential skills, fumbling efforts to rehire critical employees that had been carelessly and disrespectfully fired, and a stream of early retirements that signify a civil service so antagonized that many of its members were forced out of public service positions they once cherished,” the report states.
Former federal employees who were impacted by the Trump administration’s workforce overhauls throughout 2025 also testified at the Democrats’ hearing, detailing their personal experiences and raising concerns about what they saw at various agencies.
Kelly Jabar, a former program specialist at the Food and Drug Administration, described what it felt like to be fired as part of the Trump administration’s mass probationary terminations, despite receiving multiple awards and a recent promotion and having no performance issues.
“My dream job has turned into a nightmare,” she said.
Jabar also described several issues in how her agency managed employee separations, including confusion over where to send government equipment, mix-ups of sensitive personnel files, and no information on how long health insurance would last post-employment — something she said was especially important to her given a recent breast cancer diagnosis.
“I just wanted to heal, and this just keeps giving me more and more stress,” she said. “This is all breaking my heart.”
Jacob Cross, a former management and program analyst at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, testified about his experience last year, as he was caught up in NOAA’s workforce overhauls, and ultimately, layoffs.
“We lost staff, navigated executive orders and had crisis meetings on a near daily basis,” Cross said. “My program office went into survival mode. There wasn’t staffing or time to implement improvements, because everyone’s energy was needed just to keep the mission going.”
The hearing comes shortly after a group of House and Senate lawmakers launched a new Federal Workforce Caucus, attempting to more cohesively advocate for federal employees and assemble plans for long-term civil service reforms. While calling out DOGE’s harmful effects on federal employees and agencies, lawmakers also discussed paths forward in the long-term.
“One of the things that keeps me up is when this era ends, and it will, how do we convince the talented people who have been pushed out of the government to come back, or new talented people to come into the government, given what has taken place?” Rep. James Walkinshaw (D-Va.) said.
Rob Shriver, managing director of the Civil Service Strong and Good Government initiatives at Democracy Forward, said future civil service reforms must focus on rebuilding trust and reestablishing guardrails. During the hearing, he emphasized the importance of telling the stories of public servants, as a way to inform the public and restore trust in government.
“[Federal employees] are not waking up every morning and saying, ‘How can I thwart Donald Trump?’ They’re waking up every morning thinking about how they can do their job for the American people. We need to get those stories out there,” said Shriver, a former OPM acting director during the Biden administration. “We need to engage everybody to reimagine a government that works even better than what we had before. Because what’s happening right now, it’s not going to allow us to just go back to the status quo. We’ve got to think bigger and bolder about what comes next.”
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