Utah loves Trump. It didn't stop him from taking a chainsaw to one of its largest employers.

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.”

https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2025/10/utah-loves-trump-it-didnt-stop-him-from-taking-a-chainsaw-to-one-of-its-largest-employers/