When a 35-year-old federal worker from Baltimore County got an email back from his congressman, he didn’t want to open it.

He’d written to U.S. Rep. Andy Harris because he wanted to remind the Republican and dogged Donald Trump supporter that he represented a panicked federal employee worried about losing his job.

So when Harris wrote back, he braced himself, then asked his wife to read it first.

“‘He pretty much blew you off,’” he recalled her saying.

Harris’ stock email told them President Trump “was elected with a mandate” to “root out corruption and waste within the federal government.“ The resolute message backed Trump’s decision to task Elon Musk with slashing federal agencies, saying it was needed “after decades of senseless spending, waste, and abuse of federal taxpayers’ dollars.”

The new dad is one of the roughly 23,000 federal employees living in Harris’ deep red district covering Maryland’s Eastern Shore, Harford County and part of Baltimore County. And he’s anxiously watching for when a career-ending email will land in his inbox. A Black man, he has been further “demoralized” by the Trump administration’s revocation of diversity, equity and inclusion language and programs, he said.

The career civil servant, like several others living in Harris’ district, have found that asking their elected official to speak up for them has been as effective as screaming underwater.

”It doesn’t seem like he cares about what happens to federal workers,” he said.

Harris’ office did not respond to requests for comment.

The Baltimore Banner spoke with more than a half dozen federal and nonfederal employees, both Democrats and unaffiliated voters, in Harris’ district. They protested Harris’ statement that he’d heard more from “people who say, ‘Please bring down, control the cost and size of government,’” than he had from federal workers wanting to keep their jobs.

Their names have been withheld for fear they’d be targeted for speaking out. All said they’d emailed or called Harris since Trump’s inauguration to tell him they were worried about their jobs, opposed Trump’s in-person work requirement or challenged some other recent federal action.

In return, Harris’ office sent them form responses, a common tool for members of Congress flooded with messages, tailored by subject and dependent on their complaint. But what struck them was the disconnected messaging that seemed to talk past their dire reality. His messages lacked any concern about their families and their livelihoods.

If someone wrote Harris about Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency, which is not an official department, riffling through Americans’ financial data, they got back an email that said Harris “strongly” supports Musk.

“We are in desperate need to slash down our deficit and downsize the federal government,” Harris’ email said.

On Fox News, Harris called a judge’s decision allowing Trump’s voluntary resignation plans for federal employees a “great first step” in decreasing the size of government.

In January and ahead of the presidential inauguration, Harris justified cutting the federal workforce if it meant reducing the deficit. The chair of the House Freedom Caucus, a group of far-right GOP congress members, said it was “immoral” for federal workers “to keep a job knowing the full cost of that job is going to be paid for by our children and grandchildren.”

Other Maryland Republicans have said they view Trump’s changes similarly.

Bel Air resident Lindsay, who asked that her last name be withheld, called Harris’ office frustrated with the emails she described as “pro-Trump propaganda” and left him a voicemail.

“I informed him that I would like to be heard,” she said. “But he can save his time writing propaganda emails.”

Her husband’s mostly remote federal job has so far meant driving to Virginia once a week. The couple’s flexible work schedules have allowed them to put their family first, do their jobs and homeschool their two children. But now he could face a five-hour round-trip commute that would drastically change their lifestyle.

“He has to go back into the office five days a week, or he has to quit,” she said.

Harris asserted that forcing federal workers back to the office would improve worker productivity, according to one of his letters: “The President’s concerns with general productivity issues are absolutely valid.”

An attorney with the Social Security Administration said her team has been plenty productive from their remote workstations. The attorney said she and her team have recently cleared a sizable backlog of disability cases.

Working for the government, she said, “makes me feel like I’m doing something for my country,” but Harris’ stock email “made it just seem like I was whining.”

”I wish that he would have some courage to actually represent the concerns of his constituents,” she said.

A Cecil County single mother of one teenager finds herself in a similar spot. She was hired by the Department of Health and Human Services to work remotely and has never been assigned to an office. To reach her agency’s nearest location she would have to drive 3-4 hours round trip.

”It would just cause a lot of strain on my family,” she said.

She’s written Harris and left voicemails several times over the random firings of thousands of federal workers. Meanwhile, she’s incessantly checking her own email to see if she still has a job.

The widespread and rapid firings have been as seemingly indiscriminate as they have been imprecise.

Workers responding to the country’s emergent bird flu outbreak were accidentally fired, then unfired last week, according to multiple news reports. The administration scrambled to reverse the release of specially trained technicians at the National Nuclear Security Administration but couldn’t, because their government email accounts had been closed.

Thousands of federal employees who had yet to earn civil services protections — either because they were recently hired, changed jobs or were promoted — have been fired. In some cases, like the firings of dozens of food safety professionals, their release seems to undercut the administration’s plans to clean up the food supply.

A Kent Island military family said they’ve reached out to Harris multiple times with a variety of concerns, such as the federal funding freeze and Musk’s interference in Americans’ personal financial data.

Harris’ response backed Trump and Musk and blamed “liberal politicians and pundits” for ginning up the couple’s concerns.

The messages have been “insulting,” said the woman, a primary caregiver for the couple’s young child. They asked to remain anonymous because they feared speaking out would target her husband, a retired military vet who is still a federal employee.

”He doesn’t care about the Democrats,” she said. “He only cares about people who actually vote for him, when that’s not his role as a representative of the 1st District.”