Minnesota veteran fired as part of DOGE cuts to be Rep. Omar’s guest at Trump’s address to Congress

Chris Wicker isn’t quite sure which emotions will bubble to the top when he walks into the House Chamber at the U.S. Capitol on Tuesday night for President Donald Trump’s speech before a joint session of Congress.

He knows he’ll be humbled. As a six-year Air Force veteran who has saluted the American flag more times than he can count, the 40-year-old Woodbury native will be in awe to stand amid history at the gathering of the joint session of Congress.

But he also knows that, as Rep. Ilhan Omar’s guest, some more complicated emotions will seep in.

Such as anger at the new administration’s policies toward refugees. Wicker originally connected with Omar’s office to resettle three Afghan interpreters who helped him when he spent parts of four years in the war-torn country working for a defense contractor. Two of the interpreters now live in England; the third lives in Denver. Wicker visited him last year.

Also, there will be defiance. Wicker took his dream job last year as deputy director of the Minnesota district office of the Small Business Administration. In that job, he helped small businesses get off the ground, just like the federal agency helped Wicker get his cleaning business off the ground when he returned from Afghanistan.

But on a Saturday morning last month, he opened an email saying he’d been fired and had two weeks left in his job. Two days later came an email saying there’d been a mistake, that he hadn’t been terminated. The next day, another email correcting the correction. His termination was effective immediately.

“To this day, no human beings have been involved,” Wicker said. “I’ve been fired by robots twice.”

Wicker’s trip to Washington is part of a wider campaign by Democratic lawmakers to highlight the plight of fired federal workers at Tuesday’s presidential speech. While some Democratic lawmakers are boycotting Trump’s address, others are inviting as their guests former federal workers to protest the new administration’s mass firings and funding cuts.

“They thought they’d shut me down by aimlessly firing me because of the month and year I started,” Wicker said. “But I know this was wrong. I know there was no bad performance. So I’m speaking up on behalf of all the federal workers who are being treated like garbage and being scapegoated, and for the people who lost their jobs wrapped in a lie based on performance.”

Wicker knows his role Tuesday night will be as a small political symbol. He’s no activist and not really a political person. He’s been deeply saddened by the ugly turn in American political dialogue in the past decade, with neighbors turning against neighbors.

As a military intelligence analyst for a decade, he sees himself as data-driven, not emotions-driven.

“My wife and I try very hard to be center of the road, objective, data-driven, almost apolitical,” he said. “But I have a lot to say about policies, like how policies with the federal workforce are affecting communities. When we talk about big government versus small government, I just want good government.”

Wicker sees the mass firings of federal workers by Elon Musk’s so-called Department of Government Efficiency as an ineffective “sledgehammer approach.” “I didn’t expect someone would put a blindfold on and swing a hammer in every direction, and that would be the strategy of improving the federal government,” he said.

Omar hopes Wicker’s attendance at Trump’s speech can humanize the toll of cuts to the federal workforce, especially when paired with similar guests of Democratic lawmakers. Sen. Tina Smith’s guest will be a fired park ranger from Voyageurs National Park.

“Right now the federal employees are nameless and faceless,” Omar told the Minnesota Star Tribune. “People are talking about there being two million of them, but that’s just a number. People don’t know who these people are, their dedication and service to our country, and what their jobs were, how they served people, what this loss means for them, and what it means for our state.”

Wicker knows his situation isn’t as dire as other fired federal employees. His wife has a job. He’s not panicking about paying rent. His son, whom he and his wife adopted out of foster care, is grown and out of the house; he’s currently on active duty in the Army. But they’re not saving any money, not contributing to retirement, not going to restaurants or movies while he looks for work.

His one splurge: a trip to D.C. to elevate the stories of fired federal workers.

“I’m honored and humbled and really excited, and I’m also really, really sad,” Wicker said. “As a veteran, this [D.C. trip] is the coolest fricking thing ever. But I’m absolutely furious about how the federal workforce has been treated. Federal workers aren’t disposable pawns. This is not some experiment where American people are the test subjects. It’s horrible, the demonization of people who every day walk past American flags in their lobby to serve their communities.

“Nobody here is in a hedge fund,” he said. “Nobody is sitting on a golf course in Mexico and collecting paychecks. And 30 percent are veterans who’ve already served their country. They’re being treated like hot steaming garbage, and it’s enraging.”