WASHINGTON—Paul Osadebe still holds his job as a lawyer at the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. Still, with so many of his coworkers having lost their jobs, he says it is endangering the mission of providing housing and revitalizing communities.
“They’ve tried to force so many people out that we might not be able to make sure that housing is safe. The process for people applying to housing and actually getting it so they can have a roof over their head, it takes people to make that happen, and we’re under such assault that it's very hard for us to do our jobs,” said Osadebe, who was speaking as an organizer for the Federal Unionist Network, a union.
Osadebe spoke at the Emancipation Day Speak Out on Wednesday evening to commemorate the day when slaves were freed in Washington. D.C. and voice concerns about the Trump administration’s mass firings and budget cuts in Washington at the Metropolitan AME Church in downtown Washington, D.C.
The Department of Government Efficiency, led by Elon Musk, has shrunk the 2.4 million federal workforce by what is estimated to have been hundreds of thousands of people by firing, laying off, and pushing federal employees into buyouts to “maximize governmental efficiency and productivity,” according to the White House. No official tally of the federal workforce cuts exists.
“We were told to go into [federal jobs] for security that now is subject to the whims of a billionaire who has no attachment to their realities,” said Ty-Hobson Powell, 29, a local activist.
Sam Epps, President of the Metropolitan Washington Council at the AFL-CIO, a federation of labor unions in the United States, emphasized the importance of federal workers’ job security and access to healthcare.
“This is about working people, organized or unorganized,” Epps said. “This is a huge transfer of power where you [federal workers] are.”
In addition to cutting many federal jobs in the first three months of his presidency, President Donald J. Trump signed an executive order, “Making the District of Columbia Safe and Beautiful,” in March.
“Washington, D.C., is the only city that belongs to all Americans and that all Americans can claim as theirs. As the capital city of the greatest Nation in the history of the world, it should showcase beautiful, clean, and safe public spaces,” Trump said in the executive order.
The executive order sets up a D.C. Safe and Beautiful Task Force to work closely with local officials, create joint priorities and work together to keep D.C. safe. But city officials and activists see the administration’s actions as an overstep.
“You can’t make D.C. safe and beautiful by cutting over a billion dollars from its budget,” Osadebe said.
Congress adopted a bill that would freeze funding at 2024 levels, resulting in a billion-dollar budget cut. The DC government also expected funding shortfalls because of all the federal workers who have lost jobs and will not pay the same level of taxes.
Osadebe said he sees the Trump administration’s cuts to the federal government and exertion of authority over D.C. as a testing ground for the whole country and urges workers to fight back.
“The way forward is to get organized,” Osadebe said. “If it’s you versus the administration, that’s not going to work but, if everyone who is feeling demoralized and scared or just kind of beaten down find other like minded people and take concrete steps towards defending the thing that they care about, we'll see a big enough coalition to stop all this in its tracks.”
Erin Drumm is a reporter for the Medill News Service covering politics. She graduated from the University of Notre Dame in 2024 with a BA in American Studies and is now a graduate student at Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism specializing in politics, policy and foreign affairs.
Democratic U.S. Senate candidate Graham Platner speaks to voters at a town hall at the Elks Lodge 188 on June 7, 2026, in Portland, Maine.
McConnell and Platner both feel entitled
The two men could not be more different. One, a Republican, octogenarian, seven-term Southern senator, the other a progressive, millennial Maine oysterman who’s never spent a day in elected office.
But Mitch McConnell, the senior senator from Kentucky who’s been MIA for the past few weeks and Graham Platner, the Maine Senate candidate who’s facing calls to drop out of his race against Sen. Susan Collins, apparently do have something in common: an outsized sense of entitlement.
McConnell, who is 84 and not running for reelection, has been hospitalized for three weeks, and yet we still don’t fully know what he was admitted for or what his condition is. Per CNN, “his office has not disclosed a medical reason for the hospitalization or provided specifics on his health status beyond saying last week that he ‘continues to improve’ and ‘is working closely with his staff on Kentucky and Senate matters.’ ”
While several legislators have said they’ve talked to him and insist he sounds strong, others have said they are completely in the dark. One MAGA influencer, Laura Loomer, posted ”High level source close to the White House tells me ‘Mitch McConnell is officially brain dead. He’s not coming back.’ ”
Meanwhile, up in Maine, Platner has been artfully dodging calls from his own party to drop out of his race after several allegations of misconduct from women, including a sexual assault allegation from a former girlfriend, came to light. While Platner, who has managed to survive a Nazi-tattoo scandal, a sexting scandal, and several old tweets scandals, denies the allegations, he has not quit.
High-profile Democrats including Sens. Bernie Sanders and Chuck Schumer, the latter of whom had unsuccessfully hand-selected Maine Gov. Janet Mills to face Collins instead of Platner, have urged Platner to drop out, while other Dems have accused him of trying to influence the picking of his replacement.
Maine Democratic Party Executive Director Devon Murphy-Anderson released a statement Tuesday, which said in part:
“Unfortunately, Graham Platner’s team has repeatedly reached out to us in an attempt to put their thumb on the scale of what this process looks like. We have repeatedly reiterated to Graham Platner’s team that they have no role in determining our next Democratic nominee for the U.S. Senate nor in determining what this process looks like.”
Both incidents show a deep lack of accountability to voters, who in one case deserve to know whether their senator is capable of performing his duties, and in another deserve a candidate who isn’t being accused of crimes, bigotry and deception.
The offensive and odious entitlement of both McConnell and Platner stands out not because it is particularly unique among today’s political class. Tom Kean, the New Jersey GOP congressman, missed more than 100 votes, only sharing after a three-month mystery absence that he was dealing with depression.
Former President Joe Biden’s Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin failed to disclose a hospitalization for prostate cancer surgery, flouting the established rules for Cabinet members and senior U.S. officials.
From Biden’s insistence on running for reelection despite his obvious cognitive and political weaknesses to Trump’s brazen flouting of laws and norms, few politicians seem to appreciate that their public service job comes with responsibilities to constituents, including transparency and honesty.
But both parties increasingly justify the chicanery, because the stakes of winning elections and keeping power are simply too high. But that’s no excuse. If we’ve learned anything over the past decade, it’s that character and accountability do, in fact, matter. And when we, the voters, stop caring about it, well, so do they.
S.E. Cupp is the host of "S.E. Cupp Unfiltered" on CNN.