One was fired by email at 12:47 am and cried with colleagues when security took him from the office. After taking a 24 -hour notice, a third tried to fill the prescription that his health care was ending.
Subsequently, Jacqueline Divine is a contractor at the HIV AIDS office in the United States Agency for International Development. Ms Devine, a conduct scientist, who worked extensively about the treatment of HIV in the Sahara Africa, was also among the victims of a sudden widespread firing at the Washington office on January 28. They did not get any separate salary.
“I am going through the phase of grief, and this is not a regional process, I know,” Devine said in an interview last week. “You go back and move forward and suffer from anger and grief.” The nights are difficult. “I’m either not sleeping, or I’m sleeping to escape,” he said. “Or it’s waking up at 1 or 2 in the morning and can’t sleep again.”
One thing that lost one thing in the Trump administration’s war against the Federal Bureaucracy is the collective voice of the workers. Many people have been fired or in Lumbo they say they feel silent by Elon Musk, whose cheerful, revenge posts that describe USAID as a “criminal organization” Which he fed in “sticking to wood”. Other people do not want to speak publicly because of pending cases or orders by their agencies.
But some USAID’s, the Environmental Protection Agency and the Justice Department spoke in an interview last week. Some gave their full names, and others asked that only their first names would be used. USAID workers were bothered about anxious about an abroad, and said that ending a $ 40 billion foreign aid agency, though a judge just stopped some of these plans That is, it will mean famine, sickness and war lost.
Experts and workers themselves acknowledge that the Federal Work Force needs reform, which, except for the uniformed army and postal service, counts about 2.4 million people. These numbers have not increased significantly in the past decade, though by 2020, the total total of five million balloons of federal contractors has risen. Brookings Institution Scholar. But experts said that Mr Musk’s tactics, including two million workers, offer blankets of delayed resignations, are equivalent to the end of the government without any thinking.
“If the people who resign are the ones who take action on social security payments?” Terry Chloore, a region economist at George Mason University, said.
The pain is especially severe in Washington, where an estimated 40 % of the region’s economy – including federal workers, contractors, non -profit and business – is linked to the federal government. And yet more than 80 % of federal workers live in other parts of the country.
“I have heard from a forest worker in Adho who feared his job,” he said, “he said,” he said. ” There are news. “The human story is being ignored,” he said.
Cleaned prosecutor
Federal Prosecutor Jack Sterubing at the US Attorney’s Office in Washington was fired January 31 by email by email to clean up more than a dozen people. “We are being fired to work on January 6,” said Mr Stribing, “Email clearly said.
Mr. Streubing, 33, is one of the few dismissed prosecutors who have gone publicly and have been around CNN and MSNBC in recent times. Earlier, in private practice at the Washington office of Power House Law Firm Paul, Weiss, Rifkand, Warten and Garrison, Mr Streubing received his dream job in the Department of Justice in September 2023: He handled the cases on January 6. I was kept to help, the biggest legal action in the history of the department.
“This was everything I thought,” said Mr Streubing in an interview. “I loved every second.” He said that at his legal firm, he used to “sit in front of the computer all the time”, but in the Justice Department, he was staying in court several times a week and eventually handled after four cases. He was proud of the January 6 charges of attacking a police officer on January 6, he said. Like this defendant, all other people, now Mr Trump has forgiven.
Asked if he still trusts the criminal justice system, Mr Streubing has stopped for a long time – and did not respond.
But he said: “I signed up to do this legalism because I think it’s about defending the peaceful transfer of power and defending democracy. But for a while these matters After doing, it really became about defending the officers who were in violation for that day.
Relief worker in lamb
On Friday, a federal judge temporarily recovered President Trump’s USAID’s plans to release – “Stop it!” The president posted on social media – but it did not help the three agency contractors living out of work.
Mika, who worked on gender -based violence, received a stop work order around 6pm on January 27. Four days later, he fell without pay, and shortly afterwards his health insurance would be disconnected 24. Hours after
He had only two weeks left that he needed daily, so he ran to fill it in his Virginia pharmacy. When it did not arrive the next day, her first hope was that she could go to medicid before the end of two weeks. He also started applying for unemployment insurance.
“I have four children. I have a child in college. I have twins graduating from high school, and my husband is retired. “Personally, human costs are difficult for me to wrap my head.” Still, she was trying to be positive. “We work in places where medicid and unemployment are not insured.” “So I am grateful to these systems and I hope I don’t bow down too hard.”
Mika, who asked her last name would not be used for fear of online punishment, said she had saved enough, so she was not in the financial crisis immediately. But he looked as serious as the possibility of another work in relief work. The end of USAID, which financed non -profit people in Washington and development efforts around the world, has already led to a huge holiday in the flow.
“Even during pandemic diseases, I didn’t have the experience where I knew not everyone had a job,” he said. “When your entire department tank overnight, it is very strange.”
One of the bright places is that its prescription finally arrived last week.
Sarah, a contractor, who worked in the agency’s Bureau of Humanitarian aid, received a stop work order on January 28 like a hundred other people in his office at 11am and 40 minutes. He was asked to approach his laptop and seeds. And leave with others immediately, take through security. He said, “We cried.”
By 12:30 pm, the city was on the sidewalk outside the USAID Anx Building in Washington, was stunned. No one wanted to be alone, so a group went to a nearby restaurant, Smith, who was filled with other workers under a stop work order. Sarah, who said she did not want to use her last name for fear of threats against her family, after that night an email received that she was outraged without pay, her health insurance in three days. Eliminated
He has tried to encourage. “This is a very flexible group of people who work in a destruction,” he said. “I think the skills to compete for a high tension environment end.” But this time, he said, “The stress we are feeling is for ourselves.”
Cristina, a maternity and children’s health contractor on January 28, panicked her email every five minutes, when the word spread about Mr Trump’s planning deductions. He lost at midnight and went to bed, just to learn the first thing in the morning to learn the first thing he fired at 12:47 am. He asked that his last name was revenge against her husband. Fear will not be used, which works. Another federal agency.
“The most regrettable thing about this is that it took decades to gain the confidence of our global ages,” said Christina. “This is completely damaged by what we have taken.”
“I’m just scared,” said Nicole Kentlo, a former lawyer for the Environmental Protection Agency, representing its alliance in Chicago. Ms Kentlo was responding to emails, which landed on Thursday, which included 168 employees at the Agency’s Office for Environmental Justice, including a number of Chicago.
This office, which aims to help poor and minority groups, who often faces controversial contamination, was formed in 2022 under the Biden administration. Emails was a major step in the plan to close Mr Trump’s office.
“These people came to an agency in hopes of helping Biden, and it turned out to be poisonous,” said Ms Cantlo.
He is not sure of his future. Project 2025, a new Trump administration’s Blue Print, which has been compatible with many of the president’s preliminary steps, suggested that government workers unions completely abolish.
Meanwhile, Ms Devine, a dismissed contractor from the US AID Office of HIV AIDS, said she was overwhelmed by all the chaos. When she is not a job, she said, she is wondering where she can make a more difference. “Is it posting, writing, marching?” He said. “This is, ‘where do I put my energy?’
When she was asked why she was speaking, the answer was sharp.
“I have nothing to lose,” he said.
