WASHINGTON — Rather than boycott President Donald Trump’s address to a joint session of Congress, some Democratic lawmakers are inviting former federal workers to Tuesday’s speech as a way to protest the mass firings and funding cuts that have defined Trump’s first month back in office.

Federal workers’ treatment by Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency has energized constituents across the country in recent weeks, with many overloading lawmakers’ phone lines and showing up at town halls to voice their displeasure.

“What the Democrats are showing with our guests is that it’s the American people who are being hurt by the actions of Elon Musk and Donald Trump,” said Rep. Brad Schneider, D-Ill. Schneider said he chose not to skip the address — other Democrats such as Sen. Chris Murphy, D-Conn., have said they won’t attend — so that the president “didn’t get a free pass” and would see the effects his administration has had on people.

White House Says Democrats Are ‘Exploiting’ Americans

Asked for comment, White House spokesperson Harrison Fields said Democrats were “exploiting the American people for political points.”

Schneider’s guest, Adam Mulvey, is a 20-year Army veteran who in February was terminated from his role as an emergency management specialist at a federal health center in North Chicago that serves veteran and active-duty personnel.

Also invited to the address is Gabriel D’Alatri, a Marine Corps veteran and former IRS project manager from Connecticut who was fired just five days before he completed his probationary period. D’Alatri said his termination letter indicated that he was fired for “performance issues” even though he never had a bad performance review.

“It came as a shock to me and my family,” said D’Alatri, who will attend Trump’s address as a guest of his Congress member, Rep. Joe Courtney, D-Conn. As an IRS project manager, D’Alatri managed the department’s facilities in Connecticut and also coordinated reasonable accommodation requests for employees with disabilities. D’Alatri said that he voted for Trump in November and that it was too early to decide whether he regretted his choice.

Courtney said his constituent’s story was an example of how “indiscriminate and mindless” the Trump administration’s cuts had been.

D’Alatri said he hoped that by sharing his story and attending the address, the Trump administration would sign an executive order to rehire all veterans who were on probation and fired en masse.

“I like to think that veterans are a nonpolitical issue,” D’Alatri said. “For us to be thrown to the side like that, I wasn’t expecting that to happen.”

Schumer Invites Disabled Army Veteran

Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., and the minority leader, has invited Alissa Ellman, a disabled Army veteran who served in Afghanistan. Schumer said she was recently fired from her job at the Veterans Affairs Department in Buffalo, New York.

“This is not how you treat our veterans — it’s not just unacceptable, it’s un-American,” Schumer said in a statement. “Jobs and care for our veterans in Upstate New York is not government waste.”

Rep. Chrissy Houlahan, D-Pa., invited Jessica Malarik Fair, a constituent who was an architect at Valley Forge National Park tasked with restoring George Washington’s office in preparation for the country’s 250th anniversary next year.

“I hope people will understand that these are actual human beings and not just numbers that we can sort of strike arbitrarily,” said Houlahan, “and that they represent work that will no longer happen on behalf of all of us.”

Malarik Fair, who also lost her job last month in the firing of probationary employees, hopes she can be one more face to humanize the federal workforce for Americans.

“I’m proud of the work that I was doing there, and I’m anything but corrupt or lazy,” she said.

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This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

By Maya C. Miller/Samuel Corum
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