Under Trump, DC faces more federal control, fewer federal workers

Mass layoffs have begun across the city’s largest employer, tipping economic forecasts for the Washington, D.C., region toward recession. Real estate agents are bracing for a housing slump. And the existence of the municipal government itself, which manages the day-to-day affairs of a city with more residents than some U.S. states have, is under direct threat.

The Trump administration’s upheaval of the Washington that the president sees as the citadel of the so-called deep state necessarily also means upheaval of the real Washington, a sprawling metropolitan area of millions of people who go to work every day.

With more than 300,000 federal government employees, the capital city and the surrounding area have one of the most highly educated and well-compensated workforces in the country. The federal government’s essential role in the local economy has allowed the region to weather recessions better than much of the country. But times are changing.

“For the District of Columbia, the federal government has always been a reliable pillar of stability,” said Yesim Sayin, executive director of the D.C. Policy Center, a research organization. “I don’t think that’s the case anymore.”

The Trump administration, along with Elon Musk and his initiative known as the Department of Government Efficiency, have taken a hammer to that pillar of stability. The president began with a Day 1 order revoking federal employees’ flexibility to work remotely, and the changes have only intensified since, with round after round of layoff announcements. Nationwide, 75,000 federal employees have already submitted resignations in response to an incentive offer, and Musk has announced plans that, if allowed to go through, would mean thousands more workers will lose their jobs.

Dan Binstock, a partner at Garrison, a Washington-based search firm for legal professionals, said his office had received perhaps 10 times as many resumes from federally employed lawyers as would be usual after a presidential transition. “The floodgates opened,” he said. The exodus has created a logjam in the private sector. “There’s a feeling of helplessness because there are just not enough positions or openings to absorb everybody.”

State and local officials are bracing for rough waters. The Virginia House of Delegates has formed an emergency committee to respond to the Trump administration’s actions involving the federal workforce, with the House speaker, Don Scott, declaring that the plans so far “raise serious concerns for Virginia’s economy and the ability to maintain essential services.”

In Maryland, Gov. Wes Moore, a Democrat, warned in his annual State of the State address Feb. 5 of “the danger that new leadership in Washington might pose to our economy.” Despite a historic relationship between the capital and Maryland, which nearly surrounds it, Moore said it was time to break the state’s “distinct reliance on Washington.”

Municipal leaders in D.C. have so far been more muted. Mayor Muriel Bowser, a Democrat in her third term, traveled to Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resprt in Florida before the inauguration to talk with Trump, saying afterward that they “discussed areas for collaboration between local and federal government.”

© 2025 The New York Times Company