Crowds of current and recently licensed federal workers met at a job show in Maryland on Saturday to seek new career opportunities while the Trump administration continues its purge of federal workers.
Many were filled with despair and frustration in the face of the cuts, led by the Ministry of Elon Musk’s government efficiency.
Daniel Leckie was a specialist in the historic preservation of the General Services Administration who was dismissed in February. He attended the job show with his 6 -month -old wife and baby.
“We are now incredibly terrified and we are trying to find new jobs to keep the roof over our head and feed our little one,” he told ABC News.
A former worker of the American Agency for International Development (USAID) leaves USAID while he holds a box with his personal effects, when sending to Washington, DC on February 27, 2025.
Nathan Howard / Reuters
Leckie said he had been dismissed for his probation employee and that he was one day fully satisfying his probation period.
Leckie and his wife, Jennifer Hopkins, have just bought a new house in Maryland, making their first mortgage payment just a few weeks ago. He also worked to carry out the pardon program for public loans.
“I may have left about two or three months before I satisfied the terms of my student loans. It is a proposal of $ 80,000 for our family. It is between this work, the forgiveness of student loans that we are counting and the work we have taken included a promotion potential as long as I fully played, successfully in my tasks, what I was,” he said.
“This is what we have based on a large part of our financial future, in particular by deciding to start a family and to withdraw a mortgage and to become owners here in the DC region,” added Leckie.
Former employees of the American Agency for International Development (USAID), dismissed after the Trump administration dismantled the agency, collected their personal effects at the USAID headquarters on February 27, 2025, in Washington, DC
SOMODEVILLA / GETTY Images chip
William Dixon, a 30 -year -old veteran who has worked in the federal government for 23 years, told ABC News that dismissals are a “stab” against veterans.
“Because after we sat here and put the sacrifice, as if we don’t even matter, we do not count,” he said.
Dixon works in logistics for the body of American army engineers, but he and his wife, who also work for the Pentagon, are preparing for the Cup of their work every day while the Ministry of Defense is preparing to do radical layoffs.
Dixon said he and his wife had received the staff from the staff management office asking them to list what they accomplished last week, but they refrained from responding according to the advice of their supervisors.
Elon Musk listens to President Donald Trump speaks in the White House Oval office in Washington on February 11, 2025.
Kevin Lamarque / Reuters
However, he had a message for Musk and Trump.
“Stop. You hurt families. You hurt people,” he said. “Everyone depends on having a pay check to take care of their family as well as to build for their retirement and take care of young people. You are just injuring, injuring the whole nation and their families. That’s all you are doing.”
