COLUMBUS, Ohio — Federal employees in Ohio — and across the United States — are in limbo, awaiting their possible layoffs due to the Trump administration's sweeping effort to downsize the government. It's unclear how they will impact the Buckeye State at this point.
Thousands of government workers may be without jobs due to President Donald Trump and tech mogul Elon Musk's reform efforts.
Musk, who is leading the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), is helping to orchestrate layoffs for up to 200,000 “probationary” employees — or workers who have only been at agencies for a couple of years — across, citing a need to get rid of “fraud.”
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"He's cutting a lot of wasteful spending, that's what we need to do," state Rep. Phil Plummer said. "We need to downsize government."
Plummer is on board, saying these layoffs will help put money back in the pocket of citizens.
"He wants to get our deficit down, which will then lower our taxes," he said. "All I hear in my community is our taxes are too high, so if we get rid of all this wasteful spending, we can lower taxes."
But Case Western Reserve University constitutional law professor Jonathan Entin explained that it’s unclear how this will really benefit Ohioans.
"The administration has not presented much information, much specific information, that would give us a way to say — with any degree of confidence — how much they're actually saving or how much they're saving that could not have been saved if they had proceeded in a more orderly fashion," Entin said.
Right now, he said it's likely that citizens will just see a decrease in services.
I reached out to different agencies in Ohio. Only NASA responded, saying they weren’t sure about the impact, then later saying it was premature to discuss the impact. However, they will be "complying with the guidance and direction" from the federal government.
NASA, which has the major center Glenn Research Center in Cleveland, has more than 1,500 federal employees with 3,700 contractors across the state, according to the agency.
But layoffs could also come to the Veterans Affairs department.
"They're going to cut people who work at the VA," state Sen. Bill DeMora said. "Already the VA is so far behind, it takes so long to get appointments."
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Firing all of these employees should be illegal, DeMora said.
"Cutting scientists, cutting experts who have been working in the government for both parties — getting rid of all of them because... You want to have somebody loyal to you and have nobody actually run the government who knows how to run the government, is scary," DeMora said.
The government is only targeting “probationary” employees, and the law doesn’t protect them as much as workers who have been employed for years, Entin said.
"You can get rid of them essentially for any reason or no reason," the professor said. "As a legal matter, it seems to me that the government can do this, whether it's sensible or not."
When I brought up the potential NASA layoffs, which would impact people who live in Plummer’s district, he seemed surprised. Dayton is home to the Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, which partners with NASA consistently.
"Well, it depends on what jobs are being gone, you know, have some people that can retire, right?" he said.
The Trump administration said more cuts are coming.
