Trump’s federal workforce overhaul faces a new Congress after Democratic wins

Democrats will retake the House and Senate, several news outlets projected on Tuesday. 

With control of Capitol Hill, Democrats are in a stronger position to push back on President Donald Trump’s federal workforce reforms that they’ve expressed opposition to, such as widespread cuts to agency headcounts and budgets, removing civil service protections from roughly 8,000 federal positions through the Schedule Policy/Career job classification as well as perform oversight over matters like the former Department of Government Efficiency cost-cutting initiative. 

The oversight implications were already on display Tuesday night. Rep. Robert Garcia, D-Calif., the ranking member of the House Oversight Committee, posted “LAWYER UP” on social media Tuesday night. 

Democrats flipped Senate seats in several states, including North Carolina, South Carolina and Ohio. 

Government Executive previously identified several congressional races that have an outsized impact on feds, generally because they feature an incumbent lawmaker who is involved with the annual agency funding process or veterans’ issues. While many of these elections are still uncalled, the Associated Press projects that:

• Sen. Jon Ossoff of Georgia, the top Democrat on the Appropriations subcommittee that oversees military construction and the Veterans Affairs Department, has retained his seat. 
• Democrat James Talarico will represent Texas’ more than 130,000 federal employees in the Senate. 

Democrat Zach Dembo, a former federal prosecutor who said he resigned due to the president’s “politicization” of the Justice Department, won his race to represent Kentucky’s 6th District.