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After all, King, a Fairfax County resident, worked as assistant to the chief of safety at the FAA. He was a U.S. Army veteran, who has been trained in transportation safety.

But he was considered a probationary employee after transitioning from the military to the federal civilian workforce, so the Department of Government Efficiency, led by Musk, abruptly laid him off.

"Everyone at the FAA is a trained safety professional," he said in a media briefing with Sen. Tim Kaine, D-Va., on Tuesday in advance of Trump's scheduled address to a joint session of Congress.

"I don't think we should be expendable. I don't think we should be cut to save the government money."

King attended the president's address as Kaine's guest, but he wasn't the only federal employee in Virginia who shared concerns about the "state of the union" after either losing their jobs, leaving the government voluntarily because of Trump's attitude toward the workforce or fearing how impending spending cuts could undermine caregivers under the state's Medicaid program.

Virginia Democrats used the speech as a platform to highlight the damage they say Trump is doing to the federal workforce and spending, which underpin the state's economy, especially in Northern Virginia. Rep. Gerry Connolly, D-11th, ranking member on the House Oversight and Reform Committee, and Rep. Don Beyer, D-8th, ranking member on the Joint Economic Committee, declined to attend the president's speech.

Mindful of statewide elections in November, they are trying to put Republicans, including Gov. Glenn Youngkin, on the defensive about the federal job cuts and the effect on the economy. Youngkin announced Tuesday evening that his administration is with 300 Virginia employers to try to match laid-off federal workers with private sector jobs.

"Information is never bad, but it's not a solution," Kaine said in response to the governor's "Virginia Has Jobs" initiative.

Ashley Ranalli of Fredericksburg was one of 1,000 probationary employees of the National Park Service who lost their jobs on Valentine's Day. Among them were employees of the Maggie L. Walker Historic Site in Richmond, which slashed its hours for public tours from five days a week to two, and workers at Shenandoah National Park who take entrance fees, provide visitor services, clean restrooms and maintain the park in the Blue Ridge Mountains.

Ranalli had finally become a full-time park ranger at the Fredericksburg and Spotsylvania Military Park, after working as a seasonal volunteer and a public school teacher for 15 years. She had survived thyroid cancer, but now she doesn't have a job or health insurance.

"I had made it," she said during a televised news conference with Sen. Mark Warner, D-Va., other U.S. Democratic senators and their guests for Trump's address to Congress. "I had made my dream, and it was taken from me."

Ranalli was among a series of Senate guests who recounted their concerns about the president's executive actions since taking office on Jan. 20. She showed her park ranger hat, with the cards from three coworkers tucked into the band, and talked about the importance of the Civil War battlefields to Fredericksburg and its tourism industry.

She thanked Warner for giving her the opportunity to speak publicly about the effects of the job cuts. "Right now, I am somebody because Warner reached out and made me a person," she said, calling her work at the Park Service "a labor of love."

Joyce Connery did not lose her job. She left it on Jan. 31, after 23 years of federal service at the Department of Energy and the National Security Council, including two terms as chair of the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board. The board is a small agency that oversees the National Nuclear Safety Administration and the Office of Environmental Management, which run the nation's nuclear weapons stockpile and deal with the nuclear waste that weapons production creates.

Musk's DOGE operation reportedly laid off an estimated 300 employees of the safety administration without realizing their role with the nuclear weapons stockpile and then scrambled to hire them back.

"Uncertainty is bad for the stock market - it's also bad for nuclear weapons," said Connery, a Woodbridge resident who attended as the guest of Rep. Eugene Vindman, D-7th, who formerly worked for the National Security Council.

Her term as board chair formally expired in October, but she said she stayed in hopes that the new administration would appoint enough members for a quorum. She finally decided to retire because, having served under Trump in his previous presidential term, she didn't want to do it again.

"I didn't see a role for me in the Trump administration," Connery said.

Jeanne Robinson, of Henrico County, is not a career federal civil servant. She's a grandmother and retiree who moved to Henrico County to take care of her 7-year-old grandson, who has Down Syndrome.

She now works as a home caregiver under Virginia's Medicaid program, which supports home care as less costly and more effective than putting people into institutions. The state program relies on federal funding to provide health care to more than 1.8 million residents - children and parents, people with disabilities, elderly people in nursing homes and, after expanding in 2019, more than 600,000 Virginians with incomes too low to afford health insurance.

Robinson attended the president's speech as a guest of Rep. Jennifer McClellan, D-4th, who said Virginia's Medicaid program is under threat after the Republican-controlled House of Representatives adopted a budget resolution last week that would require the House Energy and Commerce Committee to cut $880 billion of federal funding.

"The only way you get that is by cutting Medicaid," McClellan said Tuesday.

For Robinson, the consequence is personal, the congresswoman said. "She's worried about her ability to care for her grandson. And, like most caregivers, she has her own health care issues."

Federal courts have temporarily halted some of the administration's cost-cutting initiatives, including the firing of probationary employees such as King at FAA, but it's not clear whether the agencies will rescind the job cuts.

The firings already have damaged the ability of the remaining FAA employees to do jobs that protect the flying public, King said.

"It's really causing a very poor work environment," he said. "When you have those issues in a safety community, those are the last distractions you'd want."