Janice Kelble bundled up to brave the biting wind Friday morning. At the intersection of Pleasant and South streets, in front of the James Cleveland Federal Building in Concord, she held up a sign to passersby that targeted Elon Musk: “Billionaires are the real parasites.”

Kelble, a 75-year-old retired postal worker from Manchester, joined a few dozen other people in a show of support for federal workers, and to protest the Trump administration’s firing of thousands of people across the federal government. She fears the U.S. Postal Service could be next, as Elon Musk has suggested privatizing it.

“They’ll privatize the profitable part, and there’s people chomping at the bit to have that, but they don’t want to deal with the parts that are not profitable,” Kelble said. “They’ll leave those people in the dust … People in rural areas will really seriously be hurt.”

As of December, New Hampshire was home to 5,066 federal employees, according to the Congressional Research Service. The Trump administration has fired about 31,000 federal workers across the country, and New Hampshire hasn’t gone untouched. 

Eleven recent hires were laid off from the White Mountain National Forest last month, and Sen. Jeanne Shaheen said earlier this week that nearly two dozen people in the state were also terminated from the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Organizers on Friday told the Monitor they don’t know anyone personally who has been laid off in New Hampshire.

Demonstrators said layoffs don’t just affect federal employees – they affect scientific research, the economy, national parks and the country’s well-being as a whole.

Rep. Eric Gallager, who represents Concord Ward 6, said there’s not much that state lawmakers can do at this point in the session – any attempt would need to come as an amendment on an existing bill, he said.

“It would probably be pretty difficult to do so in a timely manner,” Gallager said. “I think a more likely  avenue would be for action  from the executive branch.”

He’d like to see Gov. Kelly Ayotte follow suit with other governors, like Josh Shapiro in Pennsylvania, who have directed state agencies to prioritize hiring fired federal employees.

Elizabeth Harkins, who works with the regional chapter of the American Federation of Government Employees union, equated the firings to “harassment” and “bullying.”

“We are the people of America, we’re not individuals,” Harkins said.  “If it affects one, it’s going to affect all.”

 

 Charlotte Matherly is the statehouse reporter for the Concord Monitor and Monadnock Ledger-Transcript in partnership with Report for America. Follow her on X at @charmatherly, subscribe to her Capital Beat newsletter and send her an email at cmatherly@cmonitor.com.