By Adam Pagnucco.
As Donald Trump resumes his occupancy of the Oval Office, state and county leaders are scrambling to assess his potential impact. Governor Wes Moore even hired a consultant to study it. The issue is particularly intense for Montgomery County, a jurisdiction which borders D.C. and has close ties to the federal government. So if Trump decides to relocate federal agencies outside blue jurisdictions and punish those who stand against his polices, how exposed is MoCo?
The short answer: VERY. Let’s list three federal vulnerabilities that Trump could use against us.
MoCo has a lot of federal agencies.
The State of Maryland lists fourteen federal departments and other agencies with facilities in MoCo, including many individual affiliates. According to the state’s Commerce Department, six of them have more than 2,000 employees each in the county. They are:
National Institutes of Health, Bethesda: 17,300 employees
U.S. Food and Drug Administration, Silver Spring: 13,130 employees
Naval Support Activity Bethesda: 11,690 employees
National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, Silver Spring: 4,600 employees
National Institute of Standards and Technology, Gaithersburg: 2,730 employees
U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, Rockville: 2,700 employees
MoCo has a lot of federal employees.
According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, federal establishments in MoCo had 48,461 payroll employees in 2023. Those establishments paid a combined $6.8 billion in wages that year.
However, this data underestimates federal presence because many federal workers live in MoCo but work outside the county. According to the Congressional Research Service, which uses U.S. Census data on federal employees based on residency, there were 59,391 federal employees living in Congressional District 8 and 34,386 federal employees living in Congressional District 6 in 2023. And that’s incomplete because it excludes several federal agencies such as the FBI and the ATF.
Then there are federal contracts. According to USASpending.gov, $29.8 billion in federal obligations were awarded in Montgomery County in 2024. That’s more than a quarter of MoCo’s gross domestic product, which the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis estimated at $107 billion in 2022.
Montgomery County agencies get hundreds of millions of dollars from the federal government each year.
According to the county budget and Montgomery College’s budget, county agencies are due to receive a combined $240 million in federal revenues in FY25. MCPS is particularly exposed with $154.8 million in federal grants and food subsidies. The total amount is probably higher as some federal money may not be separately itemized in the budget. As it is, that $240 million is 3.4% of the county’s total budget. That doesn’t sound like a lot but even MoCo would struggle with a loss of hundreds of millions of dollars.
And so it’s clear that Trumpian threats to federal agencies and federal aid carry an outsize impact on MoCo. It’s something that is clearly on the minds of county leaders as they contemplate what the Trump regime will do, and how far it will go to carry out its agenda. We shall see what the next four years have in store.