U.S. Rep. Jill Tokuda remains alarmed over ongoing job cuts among Hawaii-based federal workers, which could lead to more workers leaving the islands while residents lose access to federal services they rely on.
Tokuda spent the past several days reviewing feedback from 70 or so federal workers so far who sent her their experiences through her website — overlaid by a new culture of fear, intimidation and uncertainty — following Elon Musk’s continuing purge of the federal workforce, all with President Donald Trump’s blessing.
Trump and Musk repeatedly say they need Musk to oversee a new federal Department of Government Efficiency to eliminate waste, fraud and inefficiency in an otherwise bloated federal government.
Tokuda agrees with the stated goals, but no one in the Trump administration has identified specific examples.
At the same time, she said, the so-called DOGE effort has unleashed uncertainty among federal workers that also will chop resources for people in Hawaii who rely on a wide range of federal programs, including Social Security, farm support, airport agricultural inspections, food stamps, Medicare and the Internal Revenue Service in the middle of tax season, among a long list of others.
“It runs the range,” Tokuda said. “We are feeling the pain everywhere.”
The future of $1.6 billion in federal aid to rebuild Maui after the August 2023 wildfires also remains in doubt, Tokuda said.
Musk’s blanket approach, meanwhile, has insulted and humiliated federal employees who have often dedicated their entire careers to public service.
“They’re being painted as somehow lazy or unproductive,” Tokuda said. “It’s humiliating for them. It’s demoralizing.”
Tokuda has invited federal workers to share their stories, the first large-scale effort of its kind in Hawaii, to both document what they’re going through and the impacts on Hawaii residents.
“There’s a person on the other end of all these cuts,” she said. “For me it’s really about putting a human face on these really inhumane actions.”
Some of them told Tokuda that working for the federal government in Hawaii allowed them to come back home, where they now take care of their aging parents or are the sole earners in their families.
“They came home for jobs but now have to think about whether they can still call Hawaii home,” Tokuda said. “We’re supposed to be fighting to keep kamaaina home, bring kamaaina home.
“Their family members are worried about their loved ones who are worried they’re going to lose their jobs,” Tokuda said. “It’s heart-breaking.”
Many of them served in the armed forces before turning their love of country into civilian public service, Tokuda said.
Especially for them, she said, “this is nothing they’ve ever seen before. It’s nothing they expected and kind of hard to hear.”
“There were no bad evaluations, no unnecessary work. It’s being fired with no cause.”
Two Hawaii-based Department of Defense workers were fired for being transsexual and for no other reason, Tokuda said.
While some of the Hawaii job losses are small — such as two on Maui and one on Hawaii island who worked on federal farm programs — they translate into the loss of federal resources for entire counties, Tokuda said.
The cuts will have unintended consequences on state unemployment benefits, a state government that cannot make up for the loss of federal programs and, especially, for Hawaii residents who have come to expect federal services, she said.
The firings continue while the remaining IRS workers still process “your tax returns, which is going to be a whole lot harder this year to the benefit of the uber rich,” Tokuda said. “These are programs that help everyday people. … If we don’t have someone picking up the phone to help somebody, then we can’t do our jobs.”
Tokuda and other Hawaii officials are still trying to account for the number of federal workers and federal contractors who make up Hawaii’s workforce.
But that’s proved difficult for even a member of Congress because calls to local federal offices are directed to Washington, D.C., where little information remains accessible, Tokuda said.
“It has been clear they have been gagged,” she said.
Share online
To share the stories of Hawaii-based federal workers, visit tokuda.house.gov/share-your-story.
