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Chaos and fear in Wisconsin as Trump administration plans to slash federal workforce

By: Erik Gunn

U.S. Rep. Mark Pocan (D-Black Earth) addresses union members at a weekend rally in support of federal workers whose jobs are on the line under the administration of President Donald Trump. (Photo by Erik Gunn/Wisconsin Examiner)

Moves by the Trump administration to cut the federal workforce have caused chaos and fear inside agencies ranging from the U.S. Forest Service to the Social Security Administration, advocates for federal employees say.

Some two dozen Forest Service employees in Wisconsin returned to work Monday, five weeks after receiving termination notices and being walked out, as a result of a court order March 13 holding the termination notices issued on Valentine’s Day were illegal.

Wisconsin is home to some 18,000 federal workers, U.S. Rep. Mark Pocan (D-Black Earth) said at a rally in Madison Saturday — workers whose jobs are on the line under orders from Washington, D.C.

“I am getting record numbers of calls in our office, literally thousands of calls every single week,” Pocan said. “People are pissed. They’re upset about cuts to the Veterans Administration. They’re upset about what’s happening with the Social Security Administration. They’re upset about Medicare and Medicaid potential cuts. They’re upset about cuts to agriculture and education.”

At the Social Security Administration, the acting Social Security commissioner has announced plans to close regional offices and cut 7,000 jobs “through buyouts, layoffs, resignations and terminations,” said Jessica LaPointe, president of American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE) Council 220, who joined the Saturday rally at the headquarters of the South Central Federation of Labor. The council represents Social Security field office employees.

Social Security operations have been “historically understaffed,” LaPointe said, and the planned reductions “will lead to longer service delays, systems failures, and even inevitably benefit disruptions.”

In an interview with the Wisconsin Examiner during a Wisconsin visit in October, Martin O’Malley, Social Security commissioner at the time, said staff at the agency’s Madison field office has dropped by 40% since 2019. O’Malley said he told members of Congress they should increase staffing at the agency to restore “at least an adequate level of customer service.”

The cuts the agency has announced are “exacerbating the chaos, confusion and anxiety felt by workers under siege,” LaPointe said Saturday. She added that the Trump administration and Elon Musk’s project to slash operations across the federal government “are destroying the public’s ability to access timely and effective service from the Social Security Administration, with the intent — let’s be real about their intent — of turning the American people against Social Security.”

William Townsend, president of the AFGE local at the Department of Veterans Affairs VA hospital in Madison, said the department’s plan to cut 80,000 or more positions nationwide would be detrimental to the health care of veterans counting on the agency.

AFGE also represents employees at the Transportation Security Administration. The union and the Biden administration signed a new contract in 2024, but Trump administration TSA leaders told the union last month they were canceling the contract and would no longer recognize the union.

Nevertheless, said TSA worker and AFGE Local 777 president Darrell English, the union will continue to stand up for its members’ rights while conducting a legal battle to restore their union contract. “We know it’s going to be a long fight, but we’re here,” English said at Saturday’s rally.

At the U.S. Forest Service, 24 Wisconsin employees were fired on Feb. 14 — part of a wave of thousands of “probationary” employees let go, said Carl Houtman, a union official.

Houtman works at the Forest Service Products Laboratory in Madison and is president of the National Federation of Federal Employees union local there. He is also the national negotiation chair for the union’s Forest Service Council. In an interview Monday, he stipulated he was speaking strictly as a union leader, not as a Forest Service representative.

About 170 of the Forest Service’s 672 Wisconsin employees work at the laboratory, researching the use of wood as a building material and wood chemistry for papermaking and in a variety of new applications. Most of the other Forest Service employees in the state are associated with the Chequamegon-Nicolet National Forest in northern Wisconsin.

After a series of legal challenges, a federal judge in California ordered the Trump administration to reinstate the fired probationary workers, ruling that Trump administration officials hadn’t followed required procedures.  

The fired workers returned Monday, said Houtman, including a colleague who was among those who had been dismissed.

“It’s crazy the inefficiency that has caused,” he said Monday. “They walked her out the door, took her computer and her door card, and they basically had to hire her back. In this intervening month she could have been reasonably doing her job, but the agency was forced” by the federal Office of Personnel Management, now under the Trump administration’s control, “to fire these people.”

The federal judge’s ruling requires the administration to follow the legal procedures for reducing the federal workforce. Houtman said federal workers and their unions involved in the February firing expect to learn more about the administration’s intentions in the next month.

“We anticipate about the middle of April getting an idea about what’s going on,” he said. “It’s possible that a large number of people in Wisconsin will get wiped out — we just don’t know.”

Houtman said there are concerns among employees that “this administration wants to wipe out the science arm of the Forest Service” and possibly sell most or all federally owned forest land, harming the nation’s natural resources.

Established in 1910, the forest products lab remains a vital source of research, he said. Its findings help shape codes and standards for building as well as for product manufacturing — such as a project currently underway to develop a consistent test for how recyclable consumer packaging is.

The lab also plays a role in training new scientists, he added.

“Most of the probationary employees were new hires, starting to learn wood science from us,” Houtman said. “You basically have wiped out the next generation of scientists. It’s going to do irreparable harm.”

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Republican lawmakers no show as western Wisconsin farmers complain of Trump chaos, disruption 

An Eau Claire County farm. (Photo by Henry Redman/Wisconsin Examiner)

Seven western Wisconsin Republican lawmakers did not appear at an event hosted by the Wisconsin Farmers Union in Chippewa Falls Friday as farmers from the area said they were concerned about the effect that President Donald Trump’s first month in office is having on their livelihoods. 

Madison-area U.S. Rep. Mark Pocan (D-Black Earth), state Sen. Jeff Smith (D-Eau Claire) and state Reps. Jodi Emerson (D-Eau Claire) and Christian Phelps (D-Eau Claire) were in attendance. 

U.S. Reps. Tom Tiffany and Derrick Van Orden, state Reps. Rob Summerfield (R-Bloomer), Treig Pronschinske (R-Mondovi) and Clint Moses (R-Menomonie) and state Sens. Jesse James (R-Thorp) and Rob Stafsholt (R-New Richmond) were all invited but did not attend or send a staff member. 

The Wisconsin Farmers Union office in Chippewa Falls. (Photo by Henry Redman/Wisconsin Examiner)

“All four of us want you to know that there are people in elected office who want to fight for you,” Phelps said. “Because I think there’s a lot of fear that comes from the fact that we’re seeing a lot of noise and action from the people who aren’t and some of the people that didn’t show up to this. So I hope that you will also ask questions of them when you get a chance.” 

Multiple times during the town hall, Pocan joked that Van Orden was “on vacation.” 

Emerson, whose district was recently redrawn to include many of the rural areas east of Eau Claire, told the Wisconsin Examiner she had just been at an event held by the Chippewa County Economic Development Corporation where a Van Orden staff member did attend, so she didn’t understand why they couldn’t hear about how Trump’s policies are harming local farmers. 

“I get that a member of Congress can’t be at every meeting all the time, all throughout their district,” Emerson said. With 19 counties in the 3rd District, “it’s a big area. But I hope that they’re hearing the stories of farmers and farm-adjacent businesses, even if they weren’t here. There’s something different to sit in this room and look out at all the farmers, and when one person’s talking, seeing the tears in everybody else’s eyes, and it wasn’t just the female farmers that were crying, the big tough guys, and I think that talks about how vulnerable they are right now, how scary it is for some of these folks.”

Carolyn Kaiser, a resident of the nearby town of Wheaton, said she’s never seen her congressional representative, Van Orden, out in the community. Despite Van Orden’s position on the House agriculture committee, Kaiser said her town needs help managing nitrates in the local water supply and financial support to rebuild crumbling rural roads that make it more difficult for farmers to transport their products.

“When people don’t come, it’s unfortunate,” Kaiser said. 

Emmet Fisher, who runs a small dairy farm in Hager City, said during the town hall that he was struggling with the freeze that’s been put on federal spending, which affected grants he was set to receive through the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA).

Fisher told the Examiner his farm has participated in a USDA program to encourage better conservation practices on farms and that money has been frozen. He was also set to receive a rural energy assistance grant that would help him install solar panels on the farm — money that has also been held up.

The result, he said, is that he’s facing increased uncertainty in an already uncertain business.

U.S. Rep. Mark Pocan speaks at a Wisconsin Farmers Union event in Chippewa Falls on Feb. 21. (Photo by Henry Redman/Wisconsin Examiner)

“We get all our income from our farm, young family, young kids, a mortgage on the farm, and so, you know, things are kind of tight, and so we try to take advantage of anything that we can,” he said. “[The] uncertainty seems really unnecessary and unfortunate, and it’s very stressful. You know, basically, we have no idea what we should be planning for. The reality is just that in farming already, you can only plan for so much when the weather and ecology and biology matter so much, and now to have all of these other unknowns, it makes planning pretty much impossible.”

A number of crop farmers at the event said the looming threat of Trump imposing tariffs on Canadian imports is alarming because a large majority of potash — a nutrient mix used to fertilize crops — used in the United States comes from Canada. Les Danielson, a cash crop and dairy farmer in Cadott, said the tariffs are set to go into effect during planting season.

“How do you offer a price to a farmer? Is it gonna be $400 a ton, or is it gonna be $500 a ton?” he asked. “I’m not even thinking about the fall. I’m just thinking about the spring and the uncertainty. This isn’t cuts to the federal budget, this is just plain chaos and uncertainty that really benefits no one. And I know it’s kind of cool to think we’re just playing this big game of chicken. Everybody’s gonna blink. But when you’re a co-op, or when you’re a farmer trying to figure out how much you can buy, it’s not fine.”

A recent report by the University of Illinois found that a 25% tariff on Canadian imports — the amount proposed by Trump to go into effect in March — would increase fertilizer costs by $100 per ton for farmers.

Throughout the event, speakers said they were concerned that Trump’s efforts to deport workers who are in the United States without authorization  could destroy the local farm labor force, that cuts to programs such as SNAP (commonly known as food stamps) could cause kids to go hungry and prevent farmers from finding markets to sell their products, that cuts to Medicaid could take coverage away from a population of farmers that is aging and relies on government health insurance and that because of all the disruption, an already simmering mental health crisis in Wisconsin’s agricultural community — in rural parts of the state that have seen clinics and hospitals close or consolidate — could come to a boil.

“Rural families, we tend to really need BadgerCare. We need Medicaid. We need those programs, too,” Pam Goodman, a public health nurse and daughter of a farmer, said. “So if you’re talking about the loss of your farming income, that you’re not going to have cash flow, you’re already experiencing significant concerns and issues, and we need the state resources. We need those federal resources. I’ve got families that from young to old, are experiencing significant health issues. We’re not going to be able to go to the hospital. We’re not going to go to the clinic. We already traveled really long distances. We’re talking about the health of all of us, and that is, for me, from my perspective as a nurse, one of my biggest concerns, because it’s all very interrelated.”

Near the end of the event, Phelps said it’s important for farmers in the area to continue sharing how they’re being hurt by Trump’s actions, because that’s how they build political pressure.

“Who benefits from all the chaos and confusion and cuts? Nobody, roughly, but not literally, nobody,” he said. “Because I just want to point out that dividing people and making people confused and uncertain and vulnerable is Donald Trump’s strategy to consolidate his political power.”

“And the people that can withstand the types of cuts that we’re seeing are the people so wealthy that they can withstand them. So they’re in Donald Trump’s orbit, basically,” Phelps said, adding  that there are far more people who will be adversely affected by Trump’s policies than there are people who will benefit.

“And you know that we all do have differences with our neighbors, but we also have a lot of similarities with them, and being in that massive group of people that do not benefit from this kind of chaos and confusion is a pretty big similarity,” he continued. “And so hopefully these types of spaces where we’re sharing our stories and hearing from each other will help us build the kind of community that will result in the kind of political power that really does fight back against it.”

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