This Midwestern city has long been a federal hub. The pain from DOGE’s cuts is everywhere

KANSAS CITY, Mo. (AP) — In her 28 years working for the federal government, Shea Giagnorio provided day care for the children of U.S. soldiers, training for employees and oversight for safety net programs.

Public service took her from Germany to Alaska to Kansas City, Missouri, where she moved last year for a long-sought promotion.

But when she reported to a downtown federal building for work one day last month, her access card did not work. After a co-worker let her into the building, she checked her email: Her entire office had been let go in the latest mass firing ordered by President Donald Trump’s administration.

The 46-year-old single mom has canceled her apartment lease, is selling her new furniture and may have to pull her daughter out of college. She wonders what will happen to the at-risk populations her team helped serve at the Administration for Children and Families, a part of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

“Not only me, but all these peoples’ lives are turned upside down,” Giagnorio said.

The impact of the cuts by Trump appointees and Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency can be found everywhere in the Kansas City metropolitan area, which has long been a major hub for federal agencies about 1,000 miles away from Washington, D.C. Money once promised to the region for public health, environmental, diversity, food aid and an array of other programs has been axed, and thousands of local jobs are in jeopardy.

With nearly 30,000 workers, the federal government is the largest employer in the region. One longtime Kansas City economic researcher said he believes the region could lose 6,000 good-paying federal jobs, which in turn would wipe out thousands of others in service industries.

An IRS worker said thousands of her coworkers fear they will lose their jobs, even as they put in overtime processing tax refunds in a building so crowded that they struggle to find desks. Under pressure, hundreds more agreed this week to retire early or take a buyout.

A U.S. Department of Agriculture grant revocation disrupted a historically Black neighborhood’s plan to expand its program growing fresh produce in a food desert. A nearby pantry reduced its monthly grocery allotment for those in need after federal cuts left food banks shorthanded.

The withdrawal of federal funding for new lab equipment and vaccines means the city may be less prepared for the next pandemic.

A landlord may have to sell an office building for a loss after his federal tenants were among several that abruptly canceled local leases, adding a glut of real estate to the market.

And the city's Tesla showroom has become a spot of weekly protest. Activists are seeking to have it closed by pushing a referendum intended to drive Musk’s electric car company out of Missouri.

The nation's health department is slashing its full-time national workforce from 82,000 to 62,000. Among them were Giagnorio and her colleagues in her agency's 10 regional offices around the country that helped deliver services through programs such as Head Start and emergency assistance for low-income families.

“The poor will become even more poor now,” Giagnorio said. “If we’re taking away social safety nets, what is the end result? If we’re not helping homeless people anymore, will they freeze to death in the winter? Is that what we want?”

Giagnorio, who spent most of her career as a U.S. Department of Defense civilian employee at bases in Germany and Alaska, is on paid leave until her June 2 termination. She wasted no time looking for another position after being locked out of her office, visiting a job fair hours later that Kansas City hosted for displaced federal workers.

But she doubts she will be able to find a public sector salary anywhere near the $117,000 she made and doesn’t know how her skills translate to the private sector. She worries about losing the health insurance that covers her family and having to pull her daughter out of Maastricht University in the Netherlands after her first year.

For now, she can’t get any answers from the agency to basic questions about her financial future. Does she still qualify for an early retirement buyout offer that had been extended? How much would she receive and when?

The days leading up to the April 15 tax filing deadline were always going to be busy for workers at the IRS processing center near Union Station, but this year, they were particularly stressful.

The IRS is considering a downsizing that could cut as many as 20,000 employees, or 25% of its workforce, in the coming weeks. The roughly 6,000 employees in Kansas City faced agonizing choices: decide whether to accept resignation or early retirement offers by April 14 or risk losing their jobs later.

“It’s a kick in the stomach to people that are doing everything they can to meet what’s required of them,” said Shannon Ellis, a longtime IRS customer service representative and president of the union representing local workers.

By Thursday, at least 238 Kansas City workers had taken the buyout offers and were expected to leave the agency in coming weeks. Ellis noted many of those same workers had been told they were essential and required to work overtime during tax season, some seven days per week.

Their building has been overcrowded since the IRS ordered remote employees back to the office in March. Workers sometimes struggle to find open desks. Some have to bring their own ink pens and share date stamps to perform basic job functions after budget cuts have depleted supplies.

Ellis said IRS workers share the public’s disdain for taxes but understand that collecting them is necessary to support important programs like Social Security. She said she’s decided to take a “roll of the dice” and stay in her job, spurning an early retirement offer.

“I love my job,” she said. “I’m not going to let the bully force me out.”

Urban farmer Rosie Warren grew 2,500 pounds of fruits and vegetables last year in community gardens to help feed the Ivanhoe neighborhood, where many Black families were concentrated under housing segregation policies of much of the 20th century.

Warren harvested greens, potatoes and watermelons as part of an effort to address food insecurity and health concerns in a neighborhood challenged by blight, crime and poverty. She was ecstatic last fall when the USDA awarded the neighborhood council a three-year, $130,000 grant to expand the gardens and farmers’ market serving the area.

Plans called for hiring an assistant to help Warren with growing more food and to add another market day aimed at serving more low-income older adults, mothers and children.

In February, the council received a notice terminating the grant. The USDA had determined the award “no longer effectuates agency priorities regarding diversity, equity, and inclusion programs and activities.”

On a recent morning, Warren took a break from preparing the soil for planting to ponder the USDA’s decision.

“What do you do if you don’t support providing access to food to people who don’t have it? Wouldn’t this make your job easier?” she said. “I think it’s absurd. It doesn’t make any sense.”

Other food aid in the neighborhood has taken a hit at a time when demand is rising.

At the Bishop Sullivan Center food pantry, hundreds of low-income families are getting fewer groceries in their monthly pickups after USDA halted $500 million worth of deliveries to food banks. That included a planned order for 41,000 cases of meat, dairy and other commodities to a bank serving Kansas City.

“It just means giving families less food,” said pantry director Christopher Lowrance, who said he’s able to provide less chicken and other meat products. “It’s as simple as that.”

The Kansas City Health Department’s laboratory is badly in need of an upgrade, with equipment dating to when the building opened in the 1990s.

One basement space is water damaged and rarely used. Another has equipment that is so inadequate that the city has to ship samples to a state laboratory 150 miles away, causing inefficiencies, agonizing waits for results and delayed response times.

Kansas City’s health director, Dr. Marvia Jones, made it a top priority to modernize the labs this year after studying their response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Her agency planned to use federal funding to purchase new microscopes and testing equipment.

“That early disease detection allows you to do more rapid intervention, more rapid treatment, more rapid isolation,” she said.

But the funding for lab upgrades was abruptly eliminated last month as part of the Trump administration's $11.4 billion cancellation of federal grants to states for public health. That news “crushed” the department's carefully laid plans, Jones said.

Jones said the cuts, $3 million and counting for her department, mean the city will also have fewer vaccines to administer to low-income residents.

“It would be a sad shame for us to be in a worse position than we were before the pandemic,” she said. “We had processed all of our lessons learned, and then now this happens.”

Amir Minoofar was surprised when two federal agencies notified him that they planned to vacate the office building he’s owned for a decade in Overland Park, Kansas, a suburb of Kansas City.

Minoofar said the Occupational Safety and Health Administration had recently agreed to extend its lease until 2029. The National Labor Relations Board, meanwhile, was paying month to month.

Minoofar said the government initially notified him the agencies would be out of the building in August, part of a DOGE-led blitz of hundreds of lease cancellations that has been marked by errors and subsequent reversals.

In the Kansas City metropolitan area, the government is moving to cancel 10 leases totaling 219,000 square feet that cost more than $4 million in annual rent, according to DOGE’s online “Wall of Receipts.”

Minoofar said he was more recently told the agencies will likely have to stay past August and their departure date is now unclear. He said he may have to sell the building, which has an appraised value of $2.9 million, and take a loss because of the difficult office market.

But he said he understands why the government would unload the space, which he said has often been sparsely used since the rise of telework during the pandemic.

“Businesswise, it makes sense for government to cut costs,” he said. “A lot of people are going to be unhappy but it’s a huge gigantic family and they need to take care of it. You cannot keep everybody happy.”

With liberal anger growing at Musk’s role in the government, protesters have gathered Saturdays outside his Tesla dealership in Kansas City to denounce the cuts.

State records show Tesla sales there have dropped amid calls for a boycott. Now, enough voter anger could even force the business to close.

Organizers of a newly launched “Unplug Musk” initiative are seeking to use democracy to strike at the world’s richest man by changing state law to ban car manufacturers from selling directly to consumers.

They say they plan to soon begin gathering the 111,000 signatures of registered voters that they would need to put the change on the statewide ballot in November 2026. If approved by voters, it would force the closure of the Tesla showrooms in Kansas City and St. Louis.

Missouri’s governor, Republican Mike Kehoe, a former auto dealer himself, sponsored a 2014 bill when he was a state senator aimed at requiring manufacturers like Tesla to sell through local dealers. The bill passed the Senate but died in the House after Tesla lobbied against it. The referendum revives that plan.

“There’s not a soul in this country who’s against trying to weed out government inefficiency but just taking a chain saw to people’s lives and their health care is a ridiculous way to achieve that. And it is going to cause some devastating impacts,” said organizer Brad Ketcher, a prominent Democrat and lawyer who helped draft the state’s 2022 marijuana legalization referendum.

An HHS spokesperson said the agency's downsizing, including cutting jobs and consolidating divisions, would save money and make the organization more efficient. As for the $11.4 billion in grant funding cuts, the spokesperson said, “HHS will no longer waste billions of taxpayer dollars responding to a nonexistent pandemic that Americans moved on from years ago.”

The IRS has offered a similar rationale for its downsizing, saying it is making process improvements that will ultimately more efficiently serve the public.

Musk said last year that Trump’s budget cuts would cause a “temporary hardship” that would soon put the economy on stronger footing.

One local economic researcher said it remained unclear just how deep that hardship will be in Kansas City, including whether it will just slow growth or cause population losses.

“It's a big burden that’s being placed on a narrow group of people,” said Frank Lenk, director of the Office of Economic Development at the Mid-America Regional Council, a nonprofit of city and county governments in the Kansas City region. “It will definitely take some of the steam out of the local economy."

Trump has credited DOGE with helping end “the flagrant waste of taxpayer dollars,” saving billions to help improve the nation’s finances.

The White House didn't respond to questions about Kansas City. But Trump said recently he would invite the Kansas City Chiefs to the White House to make up for a 2020 Super Bowl victory celebration that was canceled during the pandemic.

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Associated Press writer Heather Hollingsworth contributed to this report.

Demonstrators protest against Elon Musk and Department of Government Efficiency cuts outside a Tesla dealership, Saturday, April 12, 2025, in Kansas City, Mo. (AP Photo/Charlie Riedel)

Demonstrators protest against Elon Musk and Department of Government Efficiency cuts outside a Tesla dealership, Saturday, April 12, 2025, in Kansas City, Mo. (AP Photo/Charlie Riedel)

Public health director Dr. Marvia Jones, talks about federal grant cuts to the Kansas City Health department, Wednesday, April 9, 2025, in Kansas City, Mo. (AP Photo/Charlie Riedel)

Laboratory technician Asfaw Ayana examines a sample at the Kansas City Department of Public Health, Wednesday, April 9, 2025, in Kansas City, Mo. (AP Photo/Charlie Riedel)

Lee Roos packs bags for people to pick up at the Bishop Sullivan Center food pantry, Wednesday, April 9, 2025, in Kansas City, Mo. (AP Photo/Charlie Riedel)

A man collects food staples at the Bishop Sullivan Center food pantry, Tuesday, April 15, 2025, in Kansas City, Mo. (AP Photo/Charlie Riedel)

Pantry director Christopher Lowrance looks for items requested by Beth Anne Mollett, left, at the Bishop Sullivan Center food pantry, Tuesday, April 15, 2025, in Kansas City, Mo. (AP Photo/Charlie Riedel)

A client picks up staples at the Bishop Sullivan Center food pantry, Tuesday, April 15, 2025, in Kansas City, Mo. (AP Photo/Charlie Riedel)

People collect food staples at the Bishop Sullivan Center food pantry, Tuesday, April 15, 2025, in Kansas City, Mo. (AP Photo/Charlie Riedel)

Volunteers weed garden plots in preparation for planting vegetables at the Ivanhoe neighborhood community garden, Wednesday, April 9, 2025, in Kansas City, Mo. (AP Photo/Charlie Riedel)

A pedestrian walks past the The Richard Bolling federal building, left, Monday, April 14, 2025, in Kansas City, Mo. (AP Photo/Charlie Riedel)

Rosei Warren hauls compost to a garden plot in preparation for planting vegetables at the Ivanhoe neighborhood community garden, Wednesday, April 9, 2025, in Kansas City, Mo. (AP Photo/Charlie Riedel)

IRS customer service representative Shannon Ellis, stands outside a processing center where hundreds of her colleagues have taken buyouts and others face potential layoffs, Monday, April 14, 2025, in Kansas City, Mo. (AP Photo/Charlie Riedel)

IRS customer service representative Shannon Ellis, goes to work at the processing center where hundreds of her colleagues have taken buyouts and others face potential layoffs, Monday, April 14, 2025, in Kansas City, Mo. (AP Photo/Charlie Riedel)

Shea Giagnorio, left, talks to a recruiter at a job fair on the day she was laid off from her job at the Administration for Children and Families, Tuesday, April 1, 2025, in Kansas City, Mo. (AP Photo/Charlie Riedel)

Shea Giagnorio, left, takes a phone call while at a job fair on the day she was laid off from her job at the Administration for Children and Families, Tuesday, April 1, 2025, in Kansas City, Mo. (AP Photo/Charlie Riedel)

Shea Giagnorio, left, talks to a recruiter at a job fair on the day she was laid off from her job at the Administration for Children and Families, Tuesday, April 1, 2025, in Kansas City, Mo. (AP Photo/Charlie Riedel)

Shea Giagnorio packs belongings in her apartment days after getting fired from her job with the Administration for Children and Families, Monday, April 14, 2025, in Overland Park, Kan. (AP Photo/Charlie Riedel)

Shea Giagnorio packs belongings in her apartment days after getting fired from her job with the Administration for Children and Families, Monday, April 14, 2025, in Overland Park, Kan. (AP Photo/Charlie Riedel)

Shea Giagnorio packs belongings in her apartment days after getting fired from her job with the Administration for Children and Families, Monday, April 14, 2025, in Overland Park, Kan. (AP Photo/Charlie Riedel)

The Richard Bolling federal building is seen at right among other downtown landmarks, Monday, April 14, 2025, in Kansas City, Mo. (AP Photo/Charlie Riedel)

The Richard Bolling federal building, at center, rises among other downtown landmarks, Sunday, April 13, 2025, in Kansas City, Mo. (AP Photo/Charlie Riedel)

HAMIMA, Syria (AP) — A trickle of civilians left a contested area east of Aleppo on Thursday after a warning by the Syrian military to evacuate ahead of an anticipated government military offensive against Kurdish-led forces.

Government officials and some residents who managed to get out said the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces prevented people from leaving via the corridor designated by the military along the main road leading west from the town of Maskana through Deir Hafer to the town of Hamima.

The SDF denied the reports that they were blocking the evacuation.

In Hamima, ambulances and government officials were gathered beginning early in the morning waiting to receive the evacuees and take them to shelters, but few arrived.

Farhat Khorto, a member of the executive office of Aleppo Governorate who was waiting there, claimed that there were "nearly two hundred civilian cars and hundreds of people who wanted to leave” the Deir Hafer area but that they were prevented by the SDF. He said the SDF was warning residents they could face “sniping operations or booby-trapped explosives” along that route.

Some families said they got out of the evacuation zone by taking back roads or going part of the distance on foot.

“We tried to leave this morning, but the SDF prevented us. So we left on foot … we walked about seven to eight kilometers until we hit the main road, and there the civil defense took us and things were good then,” said Saleh al-Othman, who said he fled Deir Hafer with more than 50 relatives.

Yasser al-Hasno, also from Deir Hafer, said he and his family left via back roads because the main routes were closed and finally crossed a small river on foot to get out of the evacuation area.

Another Deir Hafer resident who crossed the river on foot, Ahmad al-Ali, said, “We only made it here by bribing people. They still have not allowed a single person to go through the main crossing."

Farhad Shami, a spokesman for the SDF, said the allegations that the group had prevented civilians from leaving were “baseless.” He suggested that government shelling was deterring residents from moving.

The SDF later issued a statement also denying that it had blocked civilians from fleeing. It said that “any displacement of civilians under threat of force by Damascus constitutes a war crime" and called on the international community to condemn it.

“Today, the people of Deir Hafer have demonstrated their unwavering commitment to their land and homes, and no party can deprive them of their right to remain there under military pressure,” it said.

The Syrian army’s announcement late Wednesday — which said civilians would be able to evacuate through the “humanitarian corridor” from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Thursday — appeared to signal plans for an offensive against the SDF in the area east of Aleppo. Already there have been limited exchanges of fire between the two sides.

Thursday evening, the military said it would extend the humanitarian corridor for another day.

The Syrian military called on the SDF and other armed groups to withdraw to the other side of the Euphrates River, to the east of the contested zone. The SDF controls large swaths of northeastern Syria east of the river.

The tensions in the Deir Hafer area come after several days of intense clashes last week in Aleppo city that ended with the evacuation of Kurdish fighters and government forces taking control of three contested neighborhoods.

The fighting broke out as negotiations have stalled between Damascus and the SDF over an agreement reached last March to integrate their forces and for the central government to take control of institutions including border crossings and oil fields in the northeast.

Some of the factions that make up the new Syrian army, which was formed after the fall of former President Bashar Assad in a rebel offensive in December 2024, were previously Turkey-backed insurgent groups that have a long history of clashing with Kurdish forces.

The SDF for years has been the main U.S. partner in Syria in fighting against the Islamic State group, but Turkey considers the SDF a terrorist organization because of its association with Kurdish separatist insurgents in Turkey.

Despite the long-running U.S. support for the SDF, the Trump administration has also developed close ties with the government of interim Syrian President Ahmad al-Sharaa and has so far avoided publicly taking sides in the clashes in Aleppo.

Ilham Ahmed, head of foreign relations for the SDF-affiliated Kurdish-led administration in northeast Syria, at a press conference Thursday said SDF officials were in contact with the United States and Turkey and had presented several initiatives for de-escalation. She said that claims by Damascus that the SDF had failed to implement the March agreement were false.

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Associated Press journalist Hogir Al Abdo in Qamishli, Syria, contributed.

Members of the Syrian military police stand at a humanitarian crossing declared by the Syrian army in the village of Hamima, in the eastern Aleppo countryside, near the front line with the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces in Deir Hafer, Syria, Thursday, Jan. 15, 2026. (AP Photo/Ghaith Alsayed)

Members of the Syrian Civil Defense, stand next to their vehicles at a humanitarian crossing declared by the Syrian army in the village of Hamima, in the eastern Aleppo countryside, near the front line with the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces in Deir Hafer, Syria, Thursday, Jan. 15, 2026. (AP Photo/Ghaith Alsayed)

A displaced Syrian family rides in the back of a truck near a humanitarian crossing declared by the Syrian army next to a river in the village of Rasm Al-Abboud, in the eastern Aleppo countryside, near the front line with the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces in Deir Hafer, Syria, Thursday, Jan. 15, 2026. (AP Photo/Omar Albam)

Displaced Syrian children and women ride in the back of a truck near a humanitarian crossing declared by the Syrian army in the village of Hamima, in the eastern Aleppo countryside, near the front line with the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces in Deir Hafer, Syria, Thursday, Jan. 15, 2026. (AP Photo/Omar Albam)

Displaced Syrians at a river crossing near the village of Jarirat al Imam, in the eastern Aleppo countryside, near the front line with the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces in Deir Hafer, Syria, Thursday, Jan. 15, 2026. (AP Photo/Omar Albam)