PARKERSBURG: Jennifer Piggott proudly hung a red-and-blue Trump campaign flag outside her one-storey home during the November election race. Now, after she was abruptly fired from her civil service job, her days of supporting the president are over.

Piggott is among more than 125 people dismissed last month from the Treasury Department’s Bureau of Fiscal Service in Parkersburg, West Virginia, unsettling a community that voted overwhelmingly for Donald Trump.

“Nobody that I’ve talked to understood the devastation that having this administration in office would do to our lives,” Piggott, 47, said in an interview, saying she would not have supported Trump if she knew then what she knows now.

“As much as I think that President Trump is doing wonderful things for the country in some regards, I don’t understand this at all,” she said.

Piggott worked at BFS for five years and had recently been promoted. That promotion made her a target as the Trump administration began firing thousands of probationary federal workers _ a group that includes new hires but also existing workers moving from one internal position to another.

The renunciation of allegiance to Trump by Piggott, a church-going conservative and three-time Trump voter, comes as political analysts are parsing early signs of a possible backlash in Republican strongholds where the government-slashing efforts of the president and his cost-cutting czar Elon Musk are beginning to be felt.

A White House spokesman said Trump had been given a popular mandate to overhaul the federal government to combat waste, fraud, and abuse. Trump edged out his opponent, Democratic former Vice President Kamala Harris, by 1.5 percentage points in the November contest.

“The personal financial situation of every American is top of mind for the president, which is why he’s working to cut regulations, reshore jobs, lower taxes, and make government more efficient,” Harrison Fields added.

The Musk-led Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) did not respond to requests for comment.

Spokespeople for Riley Moore, who represents Parkersburg in the House of Representatives, and Senator Jim Justice did not respond to requests for comment. Senator Shelley Moore Capito said that while she understands the concerns some have about the DOGE cuts, she supports the Trump administration’s efforts to “right-size” government.

Trump spoke at length about eliminating unnecessary programmes during his address to Congress on Tuesday, but made no mention of the mass government firings that have roiled the country. So far 100,000 workers have been fired or taken a buyout.

Reuters/Ipsos polling shows Americans’ attitudes toward Trump are so far essentially unchanged since he began firing federal workers. As of March 4, his approval rating was holding steady at 44 per cent.

West Virginia is also strong Trump country. He won the state in November with 70pc of the vote, among his biggest victories.

Still, the economic impact of the mass dismissals across America may not be felt immediately.

A handful of Republican voters who lost their federal jobs joined Democrats for a rally of more than 100 people protesting the cuts near the two BFS office buildings in Parkersburg last week, cheering on a local union leader as he criticised Trump and Musk.

Support for Trump’s shrinking of government can, however, be heard in places around Parkersburg — a middle-aged couple singing DOGE’s praises over breakfast at a local diner; a hotel patron saying remote workers deserved to be fired; a bartender lamenting federal workers’ relatively high pay.

Published in Dawn, March 8th, 2025