Congressional Democrats are lining up to bring fired federal workers to President Trump’s high-profile speech before Congress on Tuesday night.
The Democrats have hammered Trump for the blitz of firings that have accompanied his return to the White House — a campaign being led by Elon Musk and the so-called Department of Government Efficiency — accusing the president of dismantling the very institutions that make the country run.
To broadcast that opposition, many lawmakers have invited former federal employees who were laid off in recent weeks to be in the House chamber for Trump’s first major speech since his return to power. The idea is to showcase the human effects of Trump’s firing spree all across the country. With that in mind, the list of attendees extends far beyond the Washington-metro region.
In north Illinois, Rep. Brad Schneider (D-Ill.) has invited Adam Mulvey, an Army veteran of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, who was fired last month from a federal health center in Chicago.
In the Bronx, Rep. Ritchie Torres (D-N.Y.) will attend with Nancy Bolan, another federal health worker who was fired in January from the U.S. Agency for International Development.
From coastal California, Rep. Jimmy Panetta (D-Calif.) is bringing Ben Vizzachero, a U.S. Forest Service employee who was recently terminated from his job at the Los Padres National Forest.