'I Wanted My Body to Be Counted': Furloughed Federal Employees Join Enormous Day of Protest

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On Saturday, millions of people in every state attended thousands of No Kings events in what is likely the largest single day of protest since at least 1970. Among them were plenty of the federal employees that have spent the last nine months being derided, fired, traumatized, RIF'd, and finally furloughed without pay when the government shut down on October 1.

"I felt mild concern at going, but also – at this point, if they are going to fire or RIF me, I feel like they should just rip off the bandaid instead of leaving me in this liminal space," said a furloughed Department of Defense employee. "This isn't my first protest nor will it be my last."

I heard from a number of employees across several federal agencies, all of whom attended various No Kings events. They all agreed that no guidance or warnings about attending protests had been issued, largely because while the shutdown is in effect communication between leadership and furloughed employees is not allowed. Of course, it is notable that employees deprived of paychecks still say things like "legally I cannot correspond with leadership" while the actual leadership does wildly illegal shit, from blatant Hatch Act violations to Vought-driven attempts to further decimate the federal workforce.

Most employees I talked to who attended the protests were a combination of defiant, proud, and occasionally fearful. Some said they wore masks from the moment they got on public transit through to getting almost all the way home, and kept phones turned off and even left credit cards at home.

"I felt a significant degree of apprehension about it," one Treasury Department employee said, though they added: "I'm glad I showed up!" They went on to quote a friend, who offered a solid argument for protest even while furloughed and at risk of worse employment outcomes: "The shutdown is the least fucked-up thing that's happening right now."

The defiance came through in some who specifically avoided masking or other privacy or security measures. "I felt it was important to go and not hide my face, because if they're going to fire me or put me on admin leave for doing something that's completely within my rights, bring it on," said an Interior Department staffer. "I'll fight it along with many of my colleagues."

The importance of simply adding to the crowd was a repeated theme among the feds. "At this moment, it's more important than ever to show up, and I want to show my girls that protest and standing up for what you believe in is an American right," one DoD employee said. "My mental health has been in the gutter for a while in large part due to everything that's going on in the federal government, both as an employee and just generally, and going to the protests is very life-affirming and makes me feel less alone. So all in all, small risk of negative employment consequences, but outweighed by all the positives. And it was terrific! So I'm very glad we went."

The Treasury Department employee had similar thoughts: "I wanted my body to be counted among all the people who came out today. I can't just sit back and watch things fall apart."

Meanwhile, some of the country's largest media outlets continued to wrap themselves in glory. As of Sunday morning, the New York Times had the protests as a secondary story below the latest image of Speaker of the House Mike Johnson strongly resembling a Muppet; the print issue put it — again, the largest single day of protest in more than half a century — below the fold. The Washington Post featured it as the sixth main story on the homepage, behind things like "The most dangerous woman in classical music" and one about thieves stealing jewels from the Louvre (granted: extremely cool).

You might notice another headline in that image, about Vice President JD Vance "flexing the Marines' might" — a story placed just ahead of the actual protests, and which, sure, "thousands" is accurate if you mean "thousands of thousands," which might be shortened to "millions" if space is tight. In it we learn, without attribution or sourcing, that the VP "watched with pride" as marines fired artillery shells across a highway. Inspiring stuff.

The president, for his part, celebrated the mass mobilization of the public against him by posting an AI-generated video of himself flying a "King Trump"-labeled fighter jet to drop actual shit onto Americans below. It is a fundamental and extremely modern challenge, to fight against people who don't just lack the ability to feel shame or embarrassment but who locked that ability in a bank vault and dropped it to the bottom of Challenger Deep sometime around 1994.

There isn't necessarily a straight line between the millions of people — including those who work in the administration of the literal shitposter — taking to the streets and that aspiring dictator's downfall. But that many people, with some of those most at risk of professional consequences, at worst demonstrates to the nihilists, fanatics, and striving demons in charge that far more people hate what they're up to than love it.