For Stunned Federal Workers, Sleeplessness, Anger and Tears For Stunned Federal Workers, Sleeplessness, Anger and Tears
The New York Times
One thing lost in the Trump administration’s war on the federal bureaucracy is the collective voice of the employees. But some have begun to speak out.
One was fired by email at 12:47 a.m. Another wept with colleagues as security escorted her from the office. A third frantically tried to fill a prescription after she got a 24-hour notice that her health care was ending.
Then there is Jacqueline Devine, a contractor in the office of H.I.V.-AIDS at the United States Agency for International Development. Ms. Devine, a behavioral scientist who worked largely in sub-Saharan Africa on H.I.V. treatment, was among those affected by an abrupt mass firing in her Washington office on Jan. 28. She received no severance pay.
“I’ve been going through the stages of grief, and it’s not a linear process, I’m finding out,” Ms. Devine said in an interview last week. “You kind of go back and move forward and go through anger and sadness.” Nights are difficult. “I either am not sleeping, or I’m sleeping to escape,” she said. “Or it’s waking up at 1 or 2 a.m. and not being able to fall asleep again.”
One thing lost in the Trump administration’s war on the federal bureaucracy is the collective voice of the workers. Many of those fired or in limbo say they feel silenced by Elon Musk, whose gleeful, vengeful posts describing U.S.A.I.D. as a “criminal organization” that he fed “into the wood chipper” make them fear retribution. Others don’t want to speak publicly because of pending lawsuits or orders from their agencies.
But a few from U.S.A.I.D., the Environmental Protection Agency and the Justice Department spoke in interviews last week. Some gave their full names, and others asked that only their first names be used. U.S.A.I.D. workers worried about colleagues overseas abruptly ordered home, and said that gutting a $40 billion foreign assistance agency, though a judge has paused some of those plans for now, would mean lives lost to famine, disease and war.
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