AUSTIN, Texas — For a year-and-a-half, Leander resident Keith Marshman has been unemployed, keeping his nose to the grindstone to find a job.
“I’ve gone through my savings and I had a significant amount of savings. I had a significant amount in my medical account that’s gone now,” Marshman said. “I’m basically living off credit cards.”
Marshman said he has a chronic condition and needs a job with more sedentary work.
“I’m older. I want to be in front of a computer and put in entry data, search through databases, things like that,” Marshman said.
Finally, Marshman saw light at the end of the tunnel after going to a job fair and landing a job as a clerk at the IRS in Austin. Then, he heard about President Donald Trump’s executive order to freeze federal hiring, which is expected to last 90 days. It was not long before he got an email, saying the IRS is now rescinding his job offer.
“And I go, ‘Well, there goes my hopes and dreams for the year,'” Marshman said.
Other ways President Trump is revamping the federal workforce is by requiring all federal workers to return full-time to in-person work. He is also directing all Federal Diversity Equity and Inclusion staff to be put on paid leave and directing agencies come up with plans to lay them off.
Jeremi Suri is a history professor at the University of Texas at Austin.
“Federal workers are like police. We complain about them all the time, but we need them when there’s an emergency,” Suri said.
Suri has concerns with all these changes.
“We’re going to lose one of the most essential elements of our democracy, which is a nonpartisan, consistent, competent federal workforce,” Suri said.
They are workers who will have to scramble and now start from scratch.
“I was so close to being able to do things, and then not being able to do things now, very frustrating,” Marshman said.
According to the White House website, directors will also submit a plan to reduce the size of the federal government’s workforce. Agencies must also cancel any DEI-related trainings.