If you’ve ever lived west of the Mississippi, you’ve probably mailed a tax return to the IRS service center in Ogden, Utah. Inside a sprawling campus near the city’s historic downtown, workers process millions of tax returns a year, plus nonprofit paperwork and enforcement actions. Before President Donald Trump took office in January, the IRS offices in Ogden collectively employed about 7,500 people, making the city economy more reliant on the federal bureaucracy than on its famous powder skiing.

Everyone who lives in Ogden knows someone who works for the taxman. Husbands and wives, parents and children—IRS employment is often a family affair. But this Western outpost of the federal government lies deep within MAGA territory. Ogden City, home to 88,000 residents, about 30 percent of whom are Hispanic, makes up a small purple dot in the sprawling Northern Utah metro area that’s home to some 700,000 people. But about 60 percent of residents who reside in the greater Ogden area voted with the rest of the state last year, solidly for Trump.

That support, however, did not spare the city’s largest employer. In February, Trump and Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency took a chainsaw to the civil service, immediately firing thousands of probationary workers, who had fewer job protections. Then Musk ­issued his “fork in the road” email, pushing other federal workers to quit as part of a “deferred resignation program,” lest they get fired later with no benefits. Those who took the “fork” were put on administrative leave and paid for not working through the end of September.

That attack on federal workers landed heavily on the IRS. By June 4, the agency had hemorrhaged more than a quarter of its national workforce—about 26,000 people. Union officials expected that about 20 percent of the IRS employees in Ogden—about 1,500—would no longer be there by the end of September. “What makes this so tough is the fact that most of these people have just a huge knowledge base,” said ­Robert Lawrence, president of the local chapter of the National Treasury Employees Union. “They’re gone now.”

I was born and raised in Ogden, and I wondered how a region so supportive of Trump would respond to the massive job losses he instigated for no good reason. So I went back to find out. I spoke with many current and now-former IRS employees, local activists and union reps, and politicians and residents to see how the cuts were affecting the local economy and the very fabric of the community. Had they shaken voters’ faith in their president? Have elected officials stepped up to protect their constituents? And what did it all mean for collecting the nation’s taxes?

Americans may hate the IRS, but in Ogden, it’s long been recognized as a great place to work. “It was like a little community,” said Kathie Darby, a local activist who retired from the IRS in 2014. The service center held fashion shows and had its own choir. It has a day care center and, Darby added, “a little store and a bank.” She still golfs in an IRS league created long before she got her first job in the mail room in 1983.

IRS jobs were flexible, too, allowing people to work remotely years before Covid. Tax season created temporary employment that dovetailed nicely with the school year. That’s why the Ogden office “was like 5,000 women,” Darby said, who worked her way into management when her kids were older.

Many IRS workers I met also appreciated the diverse workforce and LGBTQ-friendly environment. Immigrants on staff introduced new dishes to office potlucks, and their presence meant that taxpayers could often reach someone who spoke their language when they needed help. The agency offered upward mobility for people without college degrees and provided accommodations often not found in the private sector—everything from ASL translators to “fragrance-free” areas—making the Ogden facility a desirable workplace for veterans and people with disabilities.

Charles Garn, 25, who started working in the mail room last December, told me that when he went through orientation, “one of the slides they had for introducing us all was like, ‘Trans people exist. Don’t bother them about the bathroom they’re using.’” He appreciated the sensitivity, as well as working on a team with four deaf people. And unlike many other employers in Utah, the IRS had a union supporting local workers. “That was amazing,” said a former employee, whom I’ll call Pat.

(Most of the workers I interviewed for this story requested to remain anonymous, in many cases because they had taken the “fork” and feared losing the paychecks they were still receiving. Many also feared backlash in the conservative community, so when I use only first names, they are pseudonyms.)

The Ogden employees’ view of the IRS bears no resemblance to the portrait painted by congressional Republicans, who have demonized the agency for decades and left it badly underfunded even before DOGE. In 2022, President Joe Biden tried to remedy the problem in his Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), which gave the IRS about $80 billion to modernize and bolster its ability to pursue wealthy, ­sophisticated tax cheats.

But Republicans turned the new funding into a conspiracy theory, insisting Biden wanted to hire an army of armed agents to terrorize hardworking small-business owners and middle-class taxpayers. ­Former Republican National Committee Chair Ronna McDaniel even suggested Democrats would “send the IRS ‘SWAT team’ after your kids’ lemonade stand.” Every member of the Utah delegation voted against the IRA, and the following year, Republicans in Congress clawed back $21 billion of the new IRS funding.

What remained did allow the IRS to start filling empty jobs and bring fresh blood into the agency. Lots of these new hires had just started work when Trump was elected and were the first ones fired. A union representative said that in February of this year, at least 100 probationary workers at the Ogden IRS lost their jobs. That was only the beginning of the chaos. In March, the administration put the service center building up for sale; two weeks later, it backpedaled, and a federal judge ordered the IRS to bring back the probationary employees. In April, the Supreme Court stopped the order. Meanwhile, the Treasury Department began ­issuing mass reduction-in-force (RIF) notices as it moved to slash the entire IRS workforce by 40 percent.

In Ogden, the RIF notices went out every Friday, so workers spent the week stressing over whether they’d be next. “The tension’s so thick in there you don’t know who to look at,” one employee told me in April. “I feel like there will be people going off the rails.”

A federal judge halted the RIFs in May, after a coalition of labor unions filed a suit alleging the mass firings were illegal. In July, the Supreme Court said the Trump administration could continue dismantling the federal workforce. Meanwhile, the attrition at the Ogden IRS was well underway.

Dan Martinez, legislative director for the Treasury workers union there, said the administration also found other ways to push people out. The Ogden service center operated 24/7. In the past, people could work, say, four 10-hour days or a swing shift that ended at midnight. That all screeched to a halt. “They are taking away shifts, taking away people’s laptops so they can’t work from home,” a 20-year IRS veteran said. The administration also imposed a government-­wide return-to-­office ­mandate. With so many employees now in the office at the same time, they said, “There’s nowhere to sit.”

Many longtime employees started taking early retirement because they couldn’t manage the rigid 9-to-5 office schedule. One woman who cares for a disabled sibling took early retirement. “I’m just really mad,” she said. She’d worked for the IRS for more than 30 years and wanted to retire on her own terms.

Younger workers also started heading for the door. “Everybody’s burning through their leave now that they don’t feel like it’s a secure job,” Garn said. He’d hoped to pursue a career at the agency, but after the first round of firings, he took the deferred resignation deal—and was then required to keep working through tax season. “We were already understaffed,” he told me in April. But now, “people are disappearing.”

He worked through June 30, by which point his team of about 30 was down to seven or eight because so many people had quit. At one point, he said, a manager was handling eight teams of workers.

Union president Lawrence said DOGE may have been too successful in reducing workforce numbers. “We are probably going to be hiring,” he told me over the summer. “They need people to process taxes.” In its fiscal year 2026 budget request, the IRS told Congress that it would need to hire 11,159 full-time call center workers just to maintain the current level of service, but some former employees have heard rumors that the agency can’t hire back the people it fired. “This was clearly the case of putting the cart before the horse,” Lawrence said.

I hadn’t fully appreciated just how much the Ogden area I grew up in had thrown in for Trump until I was visiting in the summer of 2020. At the time, the president’s approval numbers were tumbling, thanks to his mishandling of the pandemic, but you wouldn’t have known it there.

I drove by my old house and discovered a truck flying a giant Trump flag in the driveway. Downtown, Brixton’s, famous for its baked potatoes, had draped its storefront with a big sign that read, ­­“We ­[heart emoji] and support our President,” and called him “the Top-tater.” One of the restaurant’s then-owners had even created a “Trump-tater” mascot that showed up at local college basketball games.

Members of my own family have not resisted the MAGA siren song. My late 83-year-old aunt in Ogden, who spent eight years working at the IRS, loved Trump so much that she stuck it out in hospice care just long enough to see him reelected in November 2024. She died the day after the election. But as Trump’s second term began, Ogden’s MAGA mania smashed into reality when the administration targeted the city’s largest employer. “I saw several co-workers who were walked out, crying, saying, ‘How could he do this? I voted for him!’” Pat told me as we sat in a hipster cafe that was once a Greyhound bus terminal. She had started at the IRS when she was 26 and progressed to helping with audits in the small-business and self-employment division. She’d only been in her current position for 18 months when DOGE came in.

“We were already struggling to keep up with cases,” she explained, but when the mass firings started, “it just compounded.” Taxpayers would no longer be able to reach anyone for help with the business tax returns she handled. As a result, they risked owing a lot more money in interest and landing in tax court.

She had wanted to stay. “I loved it,” she recalled. “We’re going to try to help the community.” But she found that what she’d most enjoyed about working at the IRS was disappearing. People who needed accommodations for things like carpal tunnel syndrome couldn’t get them. Immigrants feared ICE would raid the building. Some managers were quitting, she says, because they couldn’t bear to lay everyone off. Others, like her own manager, were steadfast in their support of the president and would say, “I think he’s doing great. Go Trump!”

In March, Pat became one of three on a nine-person team who took the deferred resignation—three of the others, she said, wished they had. At least six of her family members still work at the IRS, and when I spoke with her in July, she said they were worried about the staffing shortages: “They don’t have enough people to get through all the work that there is. So many programs have been cut.”

Another IRS worker I met, whom I’ll call Peggy, was only about six months into her job when she got sacked. She’d worked there previously, left to get a master’s degree, and then, years later, was recruited to come back as a specialized auditor. When she was walked out of the building in February, the 10 audits she’d been working on “were all put in a box,” she told me in April. “Nobody has contacted those businesses, and they forbade me from contacting them.”

Peggy worked for a national division with no on-site supervisor. All her communications with the IRS came through video calls or mass emails, like the one informing her she’d been reinstated after a judge ordered the probationary workers rehired. But before she could retrieve her security badge or computer, an email appeared, putting her on administrative leave. And then, on short notice, another one informed her that everybody had to return to the office in person by April 14.

She called her supervisor, hoping to find out how to retrieve her access card and computer. “Her management position was dissolved because there weren’t enough employees to manage,” Peggy said. “And then I called the last manager I had before her; he had taken early retirement. I contacted his boss, same story.” Before she could reach anyone helpful, she received another email with the message: “Never mind. Don’t come back to work. You’re on administrative leave until we decide.”

She found little sympathy for her plight in Ogden. Local Facebook groups and news stories were full of comments about how taxation is theft and cheering the demise of the IRS. “I don’t talk about what I do publicly, because it’s dangerous,” Peggy told me. “I can’t even stand up and defend myself.” Many of her family members are Trump supporters. “They’re always shocked to talk to me,” she said, because they had believed DOGE cuts were focused on waste and fraud, not workers like her.

Peggy loved her job, but “after all this chaos,” she said, she’d decided to opt for the voluntary resignation program. But she missed the deadline to take the buyout offer because she never officially received it amid the mass cuts. When Musk and DOGE first issued the deferred resignation offer, it came with a not-so-veiled threat: Take this or we’ll just fire you later without severance. But instead of getting fired, Peggy was called back to work in May, and when I spoke with her in August, she was still there. But nothing was the same. “The system that was in place is in shambles,” she said, “and there are not enough people to do the necessary steps anymore. There are not enough IT staff to keep our computers running. It’s crazy. We’re all just pretending like things are fine.”

“What makes this so tough is the fact that most of these people have just a huge knowledge base.”

There’s no evidence that all this cost-­cutting is serving the greater good. In March, the Budget Lab at Yale estimated that a 50 percent cut to the IRS workforce could result in a net revenue loss of $350 billion over the next decade, and possibly more. “If the lack of IRS resources leads to a substantial increase in noncompliance,” it concluded, “net forgone revenue could rise by $2.4 trillion over 10 years.”

“If you take money away from the IRS, you lose multiples of whatever it is you think you’re saving,” former IRS chief John Koskinen previously told one of my colleagues­. Take the probationary workers hired under Biden. DOGE fired thousands of them en masse: “‘Probationary’ sounds like they’re just out of college. But a lot of them came with very sophisticated backgrounds and experience in technology and tax law management,” Koskinen said. Eliminating those jobs means fewer audits of ultrawealthy individuals and sophisticated tax avoidance systems. “It’s a tax cut for tax cheats,” Koskinen said. “I mean, you encourage people not to file, because they’re not going to get caught.”

Ogden hasn’t seen major labor protests since the early 20th century, when the ­Industrial Workers of the World tried to organize the railroad laborers. Nonetheless, when the Treasury union organized a rally in February to support federal workers, several dozen people assembled downtown, in front of the James V. Hansen federal building, chanting, “Stand up! Fight back!”

“We’re here because we know what is happening is wrong,” Stacy Bernal, a prominent and vocal Democrat on the Ogden school board, told the crowd. With a handful of local activists, Bernal has tried to generate support for federal workers in their community—an uphill battle in Trump country. “When I spoke at one of the rallies,” she told me, repeating a familiar refrain, one IRS worker got up and declared, “I voted for Trump, but this is not what I voted for.”

Even so, the mere fact of the rally seemed notable. “There were so many people who said to me, ‘I have never marched in my life,’” said former Utah House Rep. ­Rosemary Lesser, a Democrat, who lost her seat by 309 votes last November and spoke at the rally. “It was a surprisingly large turnout for our population.”

Conspicuously absent was Republican Blake Moore, who represents much of the Ogden area in Congress. The union invited him, but he “respectfully declined,” said Martinez, the union’s legislative director. He noted that there were 30,000 federal employees in Moore’s district, all at risk of losing their jobs under Trump. “Thirty thousand people! If Moore cared about representing the people, his hair would be on fire,” he said. “He would be on all the Fox News shows, all the CNN shows. And we just don’t see it.”

“You don’t want to put a target on our back? Or you don’t want to put a target on your back? Because, Blake, there’s already a target on our back.”

Not only has Moore avoided speaking out on behalf of his constituents, he’s the co-chair of a congressional DOGE committee trying to ensure that Musk’s layoffs are permanent. In March, Martinez said he and a group of union members had gone to Washington, DC, to meet with Moore. They asked him to sign a letter acknowledging the IRS’s importance to the Ogden community. Moore declined, telling them he didn’t want to “put a target on your back.” An angry Martinez fired back. “You don’t want to put a target on our back?” he asked. “Or you don’t want to put a target on your back? Because, Blake, there’s already a target on our back.” Since then, the congressman has “kind of gone radio silent,” he said.

In late March, Moore attended a GOP Lincoln Day luncheon at a restaurant near the mouth of Ogden Canyon, and hundreds turned out to protest. Moore reportedly continued ignoring them, but he did tell reporters that while he supported shrinking the government, he was working with the Trump administration behind the scenes to “find reductions in the workforce that are productive.” (Moore’s office did not respond to a request for comment.)

The rest of the Utah delegation has been similarly quiet. In mid-February, local TV news outlet KSL aired a story on the federal job losses in Utah. Only Republican Sen. John Curtis, who replaced Sen. Mitt Romney in January, appeared on camera. He defended the firings of his constituents.

“I think last November, the American people said, ‘Stop the car.’ We are uncomfortable with the direction of this country,” he said—though he conceded, “I think we could be more empathetic.”

Republican Sen. Mike Lee has long disparaged the IRS, and back in 2015 said, “Love the idea of abolishing the IRS,” arguing that the complexity of the tax code gave it too much power over individual lives. He was apparently unavailable to be interviewed, but he sent a statement saying, “President Trump ran on a promise to reduce the size and scope of government, and he is keeping it.”

Contrast this response to the Utah delegation’s fierce pushback beginning in 1995, when the Clinton administration attempted to shrink Hill Air Force Base, which also is deeply enmeshed in Ogden’s community. My grandfather, who served in the Air Force during World War II, went to work at Hill after the war ended and stayed there until he retired. In the late ’80s, as the Cold War wound down, Congress created a commission to downsize the military and close bases, like Hill, that were no longer needed. Utah leaders pulled together to save it, led by the late Rep. Jim Hansen, a Republican whose seat Moore now holds. “I remember hearing Hansen say that he would lose the next election if Hill were to be closed,” said Tim Chambless, a University of Utah political science professor.

Hill was spared, and today, more than 22,000 people work there. Trump has reportedly considered using it as a detention center for undocumented immigrants.

Kevin Lundell is an Ogden activist, podcaster, and chiropractor who treats many IRS employees. (“They are so stressed out,” he told me.) The difference between the ’90s and now, he said, is that the state’s all-Republican congressional delegation is “terrified of Donald Trump,” fearing the fate of Romney, whom many Utahans think had to retire because his opposition to Trump made him unelectable. “They are just trying to protect themselves rather than do the job of representing our community.”

In April, I sat down with the only politician in Utah who would agree to talk with me, Ogden Mayor Ben Nadolski. We met at his modest office in the city’s municipal building. The mayor’s job is nonpartisan, but Nadolski makes no secret of the fact that he’s a Republican. He hasn’t appeared at any of the “Save the Civil Service” protests, though he has been invited, preferring to work with the police department on “protecting [residents’] constitutional right to protest.”

What’s the worst that could happen, I asked, if he did show up? His response surprised me. “There are people in this city, in this community, that want to hurt me,” he said. “I’ve had people come to my home. They’ve scared my family and my children, and it’s because I’m the mayor.” He believes speaking at a protest would only create “more of a flash point for opposition.”

I was skeptical that supporting local workers would bring out a violent ­MAGA-driven counterprotest, especially when an estimated 1 out of every 6 workers in the area were employed by the US government. “I think we’re being naive if we don’t think that there is a toxic cocktail of opinions out there on this matter,” he replied. “Me taking a position absolutely throws fuel on that fire.”

Still, he said, “I’m not afraid to admit that my hope is that there are zero layoffs. It’s just that the reality is that those decisions are not mine to make.”

Later that week, Nadolski did speak before a group of federal workers—not for a protest, but for a city-sponsored job fair. About 400 people—many from the IRS—showed up at the Ogden-Weber Technical College Event Center to see what other opportunities might await them locally. Some had been fired, others had taken the deferred resignation offer or early retirement, and quite a few were still working but feared they would be next to go.

Attendees could get a free headshot or help in updating a résumé. When I walked in, Darren Rogers, a state workforce development staffer, was explaining how to apply for unemployment and food stamps. Several employers, such as FedEx, local banks, the Utah Transit Authority, the tech school itself, and a few defense contractors, showcased job openings and training opportunities. Pens and other swag were distributed.

The response was lukewarm. One IRS employee burst out laughing when I asked if she considered taking up welding, a profession getting pushed hard in the room. “I do accounting!” she said.

Martinez explained that the job fair was aimed at entry-level workers, even though many of the fired IRS staffers are experienced professionals. Afterward, someone from the IRS who’d attended messaged him: “Oh, great, come drive a fucking forklift. Do they realize what I do?”

Many people hadn’t seen all this coming. Government employment was supposed to be so stable, but here they were, contemplating whether they could learn to drive a semi in middle age. The community’s response, which ranged from indifferent to hostile, only compounded their distress.

I ran into a group of women outside the event center who still work at the IRS but had come in search of an escape hatch. They declined to give me their names, fearing blowback in a place where many were rooting for their employer’s demise.

One of them, who had been at the IRS nearly 20 years, told me she’d had a dentist appointment recently and the hygienist started going off about how great it was that Trump was firing all the federal workers. “You’re talking about me, you know,” she told the hygienist. They had words, and now, “I need a new dentist.”

I spot a big guy with a long beard wearing a Second Amendment–themed T-shirt. Shaun Moyes has worked for the federal government for more than 20 years, and his civilian software job at Hill Air Force Base is relatively secure. He was there because of his wife, Bonnie Moyes. She’d started working at the IRS last November and, after 22 years at Walmart, had really appreciated the predictable scheduling of the government work. She had been hoping the job would sustain her for a decade, until she was ready to retire.

Then came DOGE. She was presented with the deferred resignation offer and given just a few days to decide whether to take it. She felt coerced into accepting, given the suggestions that anyone who’d worked at the IRS for less than a year would get fired if they didn’t take the buyout. She signed and now wishes she hadn’t.

She, too, has found little support from the community. “People seem to think that’s your own fault or your own problem,” she told me. “They are kind of nasty,” Shaun concurred. “The IRS is a double-edged sword. Everybody hates it.”

Both are Trump supporters. Shaun initially supported DOGE because he knew firsthand that the bureaucracy had some deadwood that needed clearing. He’d suspected Trump would initiate some cuts. “Every Republican president hates government employees,” Shaun told me as his wife scanned tables full of bus driver and bank teller job listings. “But I didn’t think it would be this bad.”

Local officials have been largely optimistic that the booming state economy can absorb the job losses. “Utah has had super-low unemployment,” said Jared Mendenhall, a spokesperson for the Utah Department of Workforce Services. “We’re continuing to see that there are more job openings than unemployed people in Utah.” Still, job growth in the Ogden metro area has been sluggish, slowing to 1.7 percent in July. Preliminary numbers for August showed it slipping even further, to 1.4 percent. And in Ogden City proper, unemployment ticked up to 4.1 percent in June, compared with 3.6 percent a year earlier.

Mendenhall said his office hasn’t seen a big spike in unemployment claims from federal workers, and overall so far, “we’re not seeing huge impact…We certainly don’t want to downplay the impact that a layoff has on a microlevel. All the good job numbers that Utah is posting do not take away the fact that losing a job is really demoralizing.”

There are signs that the IRS downsizing is having spillover effects that aren’t reflected in the data. A small but revealing example: One IRS manager used to hold a monthly team-building event at Skinny Dogz, a bowling alley and gaming center near the office. That’s now over. I asked Skinny Dogz event manager Dani Catrow how the space was faring in the wake of the IRS job losses.

“My neighbor works there,” she volunteered, as do her former mother-in-law, her son’s aunt and great-aunt, and an acquaintance she recently ran into at the Dollar Store. How much revenue has Skinny Dogz lost on account of the changes? That’s not yet clear, but in 2024, it had hosted four IRS-related events for more than 20 people. In the first half of 2025: zero.

Because many of the people who left the IRS were still getting paid not to work through the end of September, it’s probably too soon to measure the full impact of the job losses on the local economy. Moreover, the ones who were forced to retire aren’t included in unemployment stats. “October 1 will definitely be a test of where the economy goes,” the Treasury union’s Martinez said.

For all the rosy talk from state officials about the abundance of available jobs, none of the former IRS workers I spoke with had found one when we spoke.

By early August, Bonnie Moyes had applied for 50 different jobs, without success. The local market is swamped with job seekers, and not just from the IRS. Her husband, Shaun, said he’s heard that thousands have left Hill Air Force Base since Trump took office, through early retirement or the deferred resignation program. “In my building, there were 12 people,” he said, many of them from critical jobs that the Defense Department is not allowed to fill because of a hiring freeze. Indeed, DefenseScoop reported in early August that, nationally, 55,000 civilian Defense Department employees had been approved for deferred resignation.

Shaun, who previously had voted for Barack Obama, thinks the way DOGE handled things “was wrong” and he’s glad to see Musk’s government project sputter out. But it hasn’t affected his view of the president. Even though he doesn’t like everything he’s doing, “I still support Trump,” he insisted, pointing to his foreign policy and the immigration crackdown, and even the tariffs. “I think he was the lesser of the two evils,” he said. He’s got no regrets.

A July Morning Consult poll found that Trump’s approval rating in Utah was at 55 percent, though his unfavorable ratings had ticked up a little. But Republicans, who make up more than half of the state’s registered voters, were mostly unwavering. Nearly 85 percent of them approved of his job performance.

Still, there are a few signs that the Ogden area may be having some buyer’s remorse. The Trump-tater banner is gone from ­Brixton’s. One former IRS employee told me that many of her neighbors who had flown pro-Trump flags throughout the Biden years had “mysteriously” taken them down in the past couple of months. “I think he’s hitting a wall here,” Martinez said. “You don’t see the big trucks anymore with the flags in the back.”

Do the federal job losses explain the change? The off-election year? Or is it the Jeffrey Epstein stuff, which he says is definitely in the air? “There’s a lot to be upset about,” he acknowledged. Whatever the reason, Martinez continued, “it feels like kind of walking on eggshells” in Ogden, as if people wonder if it’s “still okay to support him.”

After all the turmoil of the previous seven months that did little to root out waste and fraud, the Trump administration has discovered that perhaps slashing a quarter of the IRS workforce wasn’t such a good idea after all. In its 2026 budget request, the administration is now asking Congress for a 31 percent funding increase to bring on 11,000 people in the DOGE-depleted Taxpayer Services division.

And in late September, the IRS held a mass hiring event in Ogden, where it was recruiting at least 300 people to work in the same service center it had just decimated. Among those who attended was Charles Garn, whose deferred resignation payments ended September 30, making him eligible to apply. “Maybe I’ll end up working there again,” he said. “It would be so funny if they took us all back.”