It was cold Thursday morning but the rhetoric was hot as union leaders and Democratic Congress Member Shontel Brown criticized President Trump and his billionaire advisor Elon Musk during a rally to show support for federal workers.  

More than 50 people gathered on the plaza in front of the Anthony J. Celebrezze Federal Building to protest cuts to the federal workforce by the Trump administration’s Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE. There, one union leader referred to Musk – who has become the face of the cuts – and his team as “Musk-rats.” 

Brian Pearson, who heads the North Shore AFL-CIO Federation of Labor, one of the rally’s organizers, used a curse word to described Musk.

Brown told reporters that her office wants to hear from workers being laid off or fired. She said her office will protect their identities. 

It’s unclear how many of the nearly 17,000 civil federal employees who work in Greater Cleveland have been cut. They work at places such as the federal building, the Louis Stokes Cleveland VA Medical Center and at local Social Security Administration offices.  Several Cuyahoga Valley National Park employees have lost their jobs.

Some of the federal workers are represented by the American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE). Its members attending the rally chanted “A-F-G-E”. The union says that none of its members has yet to lose their jobs, though some have been put on notice that they will be terminated or have been placed on administrative leave.

No federal workers identified themselves at the rally, though Signal Cleveland spoke with the father of a federal employee being laid off.