Minnesota’s more than 20,000 federal workers fear for their jobs after Trump’s first week

Many in Minnesota’s federal workforce — from border patrol workers up north to agency managers awaiting directives from Washington — are on edge after a flurry of executive actions during President Donald Trump’s first week back in office.

Most workers will not talk publicly, worried that would place them at further jeopardy as the new administration put many job protections — and possibly their jobs — in limbo.

“We will just have to wait and see what the individual agency guidance is,” said one federal loan officer, who was not authorized to speak publicly.

Trump ordered a hiring freeze and signed an executive order that peeled back civil service protections. His pick to head the Office of Management and Budget, Russ Vought, last week renewed his pledge to purge the federal workforce.

Economists noted changes flowing from the White House could swing broadly into Minnesota. That’s because the federal government is well embedded in the state’s economy.

There are about 20,000 federal civilian employees in Minnesota. When contractor jobs, postal workers and military members are included, the count approaches 35,000, according to the Minnesota Federal Executive Board.

Unions, lawyers and lawmakers sprang into action to figure out what Trump’s orders entail and which to fight.

His hiring freeze and any decisions to pull back protections for civil servants “will have far-reaching consequences for federal workers and the Minnesotans they serve,” Sen. Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn., said Thursday.

Minnesota’s other senator, Tina Smith, also a Democrat, has raised the alarm to ensure Veterans Affairs caregiving positions are filled.

Shannon Douvier, executive director of AFSCME Council 65, which represents 130 local unions in Minnesota, said Trump’s orders are government overreach.

“No one’s employment should be based on who the president is, who the governor is or who the administrator or mayor is,” she said.

“These are public servant jobs who are doing the work for the people. They are nonpolitical and they should not be treated as political pawns.”

The National Treasury Employees Union filed suit last week against Trump’s executive order, Schedule F, which empowered the administration to strip job protections from many career federal employees. The civil service workers currently are hired based on merit and cannot be arbitrarily fired.

Also filing suit was the American Federation of Government Employees, which has 40,000 members in Minnesota, Iowa, Nebraska and the Dakotas.

Other unions and several state attorneys general said they are also evaluating potential consequences of the executive orders and considering joining the fight.

The treasury union represents about 200 active members in Minnesota spread across six offices, most of them IRS employees and border patrol agents.

Already, at the Minnesota-Canada border, the patrol workers reportedly are stressed over persistent staffing shortages. Now, some wonder how a hiring freeze and possible cutbacks will hit them at the same time they are ordered to step up immigration enforcement, said Timothy Ronholm, president of the treasury union’s Minnesota local Chapter 29.

“I’m already trying to get funding and staffing increases up there on the north border between U.S. and Canada,” said Ronholm, noting there have been persistent staffing shortages there.

Other executive orders cancel diversity programs, say the federal government will not recognize people’s preferred genders if they differ from birth and halt federal contract compliance programs. Other orders paused payments on energy projects and outlawed external communications from federal health departments until a Trump appointee could review them.

The American Federation of Government Employees also went after the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), a task force headed by billionaire CEO Elon Musk to make recommendations on how to cut government spending.

In Minnesota, the union’s employees work in such agencies as the departments of Veterans Affairs and Agriculture, Social Security, the border patrol and immigration services, said its Midwest spokesman Ruark Hotopp.

Under Trump’s rewrite of worker rules “potentially, there could be a lot of job losses,” Hotopp said. “Part of the executive order is to re-evaluate the probationary employees.”

Under the president’s orders, probationary periods might change and those employees would be considered “at-will” workers, meaning they could be fired at any time.

“We have all been told, that agencies now need to report their probationary numbers,” Hotopp said. “They have to say how many they have and why the agency is retaining that employee. Agencies are going to have a hard time defining the ‘why.’

“We are guessing that it could be a 30% reduction in workforce just by eliminating those probationary employees inside their first year.”

Economic development officials and law firms also are trying to keep up so they can advise federal contractors and firms receiving government funds.

“Everybody’s antennas are up more than they’d normally be,” said Matt Lewis, vice president of strategic initiatives at the business nonprofit Greater MSP Partnership. “[With] this change from administration to administration, there seems to be more changes than maybe is normal. So certainly people are trying to interpret it.”

Law firms, including Dorsey & Whitney, are dashing off “client alerts.”

“We’re getting lots of clients with questions, trying to sort through this,” said Dorsey & Whitney attorney Alex Hontos, who works with federal contractors and federal grant recipients in Minnesota.

Dorsey clients are wondering how to interpret Trump’s executive order halting diversity language in federal contracts. Some have asked if the new instructions mean they should cancel upcoming seminars cover inclusiveness goals or partnerships with civil servant divisions.

It’s all unclear, Hontos said.

“Things are moving very rapidly, and we haven’t seen the end state yet of what this flurry of executive orders will look like,” he said. “We don’t know what’s coming tomorrow.”