The White House has been inundated with phone calls from GOP lawmakers who increasingly fear Elon Musk's Department of Government Efficiency task force and its mass purge of federal workers is hurting their states.
And the White House is in damage control mode, Politico reported on Thursday.
"GOP lawmakers unleashed a frantic flurry of calls and texts after federal agencies undertook the latest firings this past weekend, with Republicans particularly worried about cuts affecting public safety and health roles," reported Meredith Lee Hill — even as many of them publicly praise and defend Musk's efforts. "Trump’s legislative affairs team, headed by former JD Vance aide James Braid, took the brunt of the frenetic fallout, according to four Republicans granted anonymity to discuss the conversations."
In particular, according to the report, many Republicans are alarmed at the new round of layoffs at the Department of Veterans Affairs, which could drastically impact health care for veterans around the country. They are also worried that veterans make up a disproportionate number of the "probationary workers" who got summarily terminated because their civil service protections are not the same as most federal workers.
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One such recent casualty of the layoffs was a disabled military vet from Northern Virginia who worked on the information technology systems for the Federal Emergency Management Agency — and had voted for Trump.
One GOP congressional aide raged to reporters, “I thought we were supposed to be in a new era of meritocracy. Not the indiscriminate firing of people.”
The GOP lawmakers' approach "to back-channel with any White House official who will pick up the phone has yielded some small, scattered successes. The Agriculture Department said Monday it would reverse some of the firings impacting the bird flu response after GOP lawmakers complained to the White House legislative affairs team and other Trump officials," the report noted. "The fears of Republican lawmakers in rural districts go deeper, though. They’re also worried about the long-term fallout of Trump’s moves as the federal government struggles to hire the next generation of federal employees who will keep farm and public health programs running across rural America."
Several previous reports have indicated that specific Republican lawmakers are increasingly raising concerns about DOGE's impact on their states and districts. Among them are Rep. Mike Simpson (R-ID), who is worried about the maintenance of national parks in his district, and Sen. Jerry Moran (R-KS), who fears the impact to farmers if Trump and Musk's suspension of foreign aid through the U.S. Agency for International Development continues.