Illinois federal employees protest against Trump's layoffs

CHICAGO - Federal employees in Illinois are speaking out against President Donald Trump's planned layoffs, gathering at Federal Plaza in Chicago to protest sudden job cuts and mass buyouts affecting thousands of workers.

The layoffs come as part of a cost-cutting initiative led by Trump and Elon Musk, who was recently put in charge of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE).

What we know:

Illinois is home to over 81,000 federal employees, making the federal government the state’s second-largest employer.

Although the exact number of job cuts remains unclear, the Trump administration offered a buyout package to nearly 2 million federal workers, providing full pay and benefits through September if they agreed to resign.

By the Feb. 12 deadline, 75,000 workers had accepted the offer.

On top of the buyouts, thousands of probationary employees were abruptly fired, including 388 Environmental Protection Agency workers who were notified by email without warning.

Nyla McCranie, an EPA scientist who lost her job, described the chaotic and unexplained nature of the firings.

"They went over my supervisor's head to fire me… No one really knew… the rhyme or the reason or the methods to how they were firing people," McCranie said. "People in my division were fired that were a week away from reaching their non-probationary status. So it was really random, really heartbreaking."

She also mentioned delays in receiving her final paycheck.

"I have not received a final paycheck… and it's been four days now. So that's something that's still up in the air. We don't know how that's going to go."

At the rally, Democratic Congresswoman Jan Schakowsky joined the protests, urging unity among workers.

"We want to make sure all the new hires are not fired. We all have to be together," Schakowsky said.

What's next:

A federal judge on Tuesday declined to block DOGE from accessing government data or firing federal employees.

U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan declined to grant the plaintiffs' request to issue a temporary restraining order, citing what she said was their failure to demonstrate evidence of "irreparable harm" caused by DOGE's access.

"Plaintiffs legitimately call into question what appears to be the unchecked authority of an unelected individual and an entity that was not created by Congress and over which it has no oversight," Chutkan, an Obama appointee, said Tuesday.

"In these circumstances, it must be indisputable that this court acts within the bounds of its authority. Accordingly, it cannot issue a TRO, especially one as wide-ranging as Plaintiffs request, without clear evidence of imminent, irreparable harm to these Plaintiffs. The current record does not meet that standard."

The decision from Chutkan is a blow to the coalition of 14 Democratic state attorneys general who sued last week to temporarily restrict DOGE's access to federal data about government employees.

Plaintiffs argued that the leadership role held by Musk, a private citizen, represents an "unlawful delegation of executive power" and threatened what they described as "widespread disruption" to employees working across various federal agencies and government contractors.