The Daily - Inside the Trump Purge: Federal Workers Tell Their Stories

Episode Date: February 19, 2025

On the campaign trail, Donald J. Trump and his allies left little doubt that, if they returned to power, federal workers would face layoffs, buyouts and agency closures.Now that President Trump’s plan has become a reality, dozens of federal workers explain what it’s been like to live through it.Background reading: Here’s where Mr. Trump, Elon Musk and DOGE have cut federal workers so far.Stunned government workers are facing sleeplessness, anger and tears.For more information on today’s episode, visit nytimes.com/thedaily. Transcripts of each episode will be made available by the next workday. Photo: Mandel Ngan/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesUnlock full access to New York Times podcasts and explore everything from politics to pop culture. Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. Unlock full access to New York Times podcasts and explore everything from politics to pop culture. Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.

I think I just got deactivated on my government computer. I can try one more time. It just kicked me out of teams. Let's see if I can open my outlook. Yep, I no longer have access. Okay. Yeah, I don't even I don't even know. Yeah, like I'm looking at my office.

I have pictures of me and my buddies in Iraq and Afghanistan. I have like a Marine Corps flag behind me. There's like a pit in my stomach. I'm a combat vet going to work at the VA. Like I was like, you know, no one's really coming after us. And then like, I thought the VA would be fine. No, like I'm totally fired now. So I'm like, I just, if I'm getting fired, like who's next, you know?

Like I thought I'd be the safest and I was one of the first to go. From the New York Times, I'm Michael Bobarro. This is The Daily. Either the deep state destroys America or we destroy the deep state. That's the way it's got to be. On the campaign trail, Donald Trump and his allies left little doubt that if they returned to power, they would try to make working for the federal

government as miserable an experience as possible. We want the bureaucrats to be traumatically affected. When they wake up in the morning, we want them to not want to go to work because they are increasingly viewed as the villains. By treating career bureaucrats as the enemy and by driving them out through layoffs, buyouts, and agency closures. The departments and agencies that have been weaponized will be completely overhauled so that faceless bureaucrats will never again be able to target and persecute conservatives today.

President Trump today doubling down on his move to dramatically and rapidly shrink the federal workforce. Thousands of employees were fired yesterday across numerous agencies. And this is just the start with other workers being warned that large workplace cuts are coming. Now that Trump's plan has become a reality, we asked dozens of federal workers to explain, in their own words, what it's been like to actually live through it. It's Wednesday, February 19th. First off, can you tell me how you'd like to be identified?

Yeah, if I could just be anonymous, that would be best, I think. I would prefer to be anonymous, yes. And why do you want to be anonymous? I'm afraid that I will be targeted. I'm concerned that I would just be putting a target on my back. Fear of retaliation by the top of my chain of command by the White House. I work at the Environmental Protection Agency. I work within the Department of Interior. I work for USAID.

For the Department of Veterans Affairs, Health and Human Services. For the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. Affairs, Health and Human Services. For the US Army Corps of Engineers, I work to keep our ports and waterways safe and delivering for the public. A lot of the work that I did was focused on improving diagnosis and treatment services for children. I love my job.

Public service is important to me. I get to see every day the positive impacts that my job and my agency have on my community. My mom worked for the county and my dad worked for the state. You progress to working for the government because you're a citizen and that's the best thing that you can do. And so that's why I went there. It was probably my dream job.

I've been with my department for 15 years. So that's why I went there. It was probably my dream job. I've been with my department for 15 years. 17 years. Two and a half years. I have worked as a federal employee for over 23 years. This is the first administration transition that I've ever been so uncertain about what I'm being asked to do. Having worked for the last Trump administration, I didn't really anticipate

anything this severe and we all were a little caught off guard. Today, I will sign a series of historic executive orders. With these actions, we will begin the complete restoration of America and the revolution of common sense. It's all about common sense. In light of the damage done by the Biden administration's DEI and woke policies, what this presidential memorandum orders is elevating competence instead of the DEI policies that were pursued by the Biden administration.

The day after the inauguration, our director came on and started going through some of these executive orders. The first one mentioned was the cease and desist of all DEIA activities, diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility. We started getting emails. First, there was the one asking us to report any employees who were disguising the fact that they're doing DEI work. The email that we got basically said, if you did report, you would not face any adverse consequences, but if you didn't report, you could face adverse consequences.

And we all were baffled that they thought, first of all, that we even had anyone hiding, but second, that we were just going to go report people and snitch on people, really. To receive an email in the federal government, essentially advocating for turning in your colleagues seems so Orwellian and McCarthyism like. It was shocking. We were told to take our pronouns down.

People are afraid to give a shout out about Black History Month or Women's History Month. And the thought is kind of like, we should avoid saying things like disadvantaged communities or environmental justice. Things like gender-based violence or women's empowerment. Even Happy Lunar New Year, you know, it was like, oh, gosh, should we not even be saying that? That afternoon, in fact, several colleagues that had been working on DEIA initiatives

were fired, sent home. One of them I had only been talking to about two hours before he was sent home. That was very chilling. A sense of paranoia arose. I remember we kind of all said, what's coming next? Fast forward, I don't know, a couple of, and I got the Fork in the Road email. Now to another big move by President Trump's administration. In an effort to shrink the government, millions of federal workers are being offered buyouts.

With a warning that the jobs could be cut if the buyouts aren't taken. In an email with the subject line, Fork in the Road, those interested in the buyout told to reply with one word, resign. It came on January 28th. It came at different times. We all got it in the evening. Mine came at about 10 p.m. Everybody first thought it was like a phishing email.

I read it on my work cell phone and I called out to my fiance just being like fork in the road. Are you kidding me? Are you kidding me? The Evo makes it basically sound like if you don't take this opt out, you could potentially lose your job in the future. When this email came, it felt like, you know, the horror film, the call is coming from inside the house, like it's my own leadership that is gunning for me. Then a few days later,

we received a frequently asked questions email regarding the Fork in the Road email. That email saying you have this great opportunity, you should take it. You work in a low productivity federal job and you should go to a high productivity private sector job. I keep thinking, and I'll try and say this without crying, a couple years ago I was working for the federal government about 15 hours a day.

I did that because I believed in the work. And so I can't describe how hurtful it is to receive an email saying that you should go from a less productive public space to go to a more productive private space and work there. It was so hurtful to receive that email, especially coming from a government email address. And just the presumption that I'm going to put this in front of you, and you're going to jump at it. It insults the fact that we are there because we want to be there.

We feel strongly about the mission of the agency. I definitely would find it to be quite an injury to my pride to let myself be a browbeaten into quitting. If anything, it's cemented my sense of resolve to stay in the job that I love, that provides for my family, that improves my community. The future of USAID, that's the U.S. Agency for International Development is uncertain. Over the weekend, Elon Musk threatened to quote unquote eliminate the main U.S. agency handling foreign assistance. I was in an offsite meeting about a new project that we had starting up.

Those of us who work for USAID who were in that meeting were very distracted because we were getting emails about the executive orders and the rumor mill was starting. At two o'clock, Marco Rubio had sent out the stop work order. My colleague said, I'm really sorry, but we have to end this meeting immediately. And then I and the other contractor on our team were sent home. I had just a sense of dread. I was like, this is not going to end well. And then on Tuesday,

around noon, about 400 of us just one by one were laid off. A group of us that were all on the same team that live in the DC area decided we would all turn in our laptops and badges and everything at the same time so that we could see each other. And so we met around 11 o'clock and then we walked over to the USAID building. The remaining people on our team came down to get us checked in because since we didn't have badges anymore, we couldn't enter the building. And so we all got guest badges and we all went up to the floor. When I got there on Wednesday morning, all of the beautiful photographs from USAID's work all over the world, you know, photographs of like colleagues that we worked with or clinics

that we had been working in, all of it was gone. It's like they had pulled down the frames, pulled out the photographs and put the frames back up on the wall. So you were walking down and seeing just like a hallway of empty frames, which was very bizarre. After we said goodbye to our colleagues, we all went downstairs. And the security guards, who are the first people we see when we get there in the morning, and the last people we see when we leave, were so kind to us and said, you know, we just we can't believe this is happening and

We hope we get to see you again. Just really really kindness and honestly, that's when I just really broke down crying I mean I had been upset before But just to see that they were so concerned about us was really touching And then we all said goodbye. Watching the dominoes fall with USAID, what happens when Elon Musk and his buddies turned their attention to us? Once my friends of friends started saying, yeah, I'm at USAID, we have no idea, like,

how are we gonna get our medicine next week? Because our health insurance is being cut off maybe. That was when it started to sink in like, oh, this could be coming for me. You know, especially in the wake of USAID being dismantled, it sort of feels like we're next on the chopping block. We'll be right back. I have been concerned about my job because I was a probationary employee, which just means that I was a newer hire. And being a probation employee, I was like, I know that it's, you know, I'm at a higher

risk of losing my job, but there's nothing I can do about it. I'm going to keep coming to work every single day. Essentially, a request came to put together a list of employees in their probationary period. My supervisor was called in on a very quick turn, like they had like one hour, where she and all the other, they call them the team directors, all of them come in together and now they have a list of everybody who is a probation employee and they have to write a justification to make the decision do you want to retain this person or no and then you have to write a justification for why you want to keep them and they had 200 characters to

write this justification of it. And then on our team it became really apparent that Doge was was on the scene. We learned about people having interviews with folks that were not government employees, regardless of whether they were probation or not. I was nervous because I didn't know exactly what to expect, but I knew I was being evaluated for fit by this person who likely knows very little about how government functions. I entered the meeting video on and I saw, you know, this young man, one of the Doge lads, and it felt like I was going to a job interview with somebody I didn't like and I would never work there.

It just made me sick to my stomach. And all that's going through my mind is like, here I am, I'm going to be judged by somebody that's not quite half my age in a 15-minute call. Like, 15 minutes. And the hiring process took almost six months for me. So, you know, I went through a lot to get the job, but it seemed like I didn't have to go through much to lose it. Probationary employees do have rights.

They cannot be fired without cause. And I know I'm not a low performer, so I started tracking every bit of work I did. The stress is starting to build. Job's really not secure at this point. It's like contraction in my stomach and chest. I started to like not be able to eat or sleep. It kind of raised that anxiety for me because I knew what my career is about to be screwed

over basically. I'm going to be completely honest, like I'm a combat vet going to work at the VA. I was like, you know, no one's really coming after us. And then like, my wife is a federal employee too at one of the agencies that he does not like. But I thought I would be safe so long as I just got in before there was any, before the inauguration. Are you okay with me using your name? Yeah, I am.

There's no turning back now. I really don't care. My name is Andrew Lennox, 35 years old. What I work for is the Veterans Health Administration. Our job is to provide medical service to either veterans or like family members of veterans. And I love it. I love everything about it. Like I knew I belonged here my first day when I walked through the doors and like there

was a Vietnam vet that like saw a Marine Corps keychain, slapped my back, called me a jarhead. It's a place where you fit, you know, once you leave the military, you do kind of feel like you're alone, but then once you're here, everybody's your family. And then I was at home, and this new nerdy thing I've gotten into is I make scale model replicas of military figures from Little Club War on Terrorism. I don't know, a buddy at my old job told me it was fun. And he gave me a little marine mortar

set for a six pack of beer. And so I started making those in my evenings for fun since it's cold out in Michigan. But I was painting a tiny Afghan carpet store. and my wife said her agency is getting a bunch of weird emails. I go to grab my work phone and I, cause it's, I knew it died and I plug it in. I was like, well, let's see if I got fired. And I was joking. And then when it turned on, I opened my email and I said, I got fired. I was working for the department of Energy and the 13th day before Valentine's Day, I had been following the news all day and reading that agencies were planning to let folks go and I

was very nervous. So I had my work phone on me after I signed off for the day and I had been checking my email probably every 10 minutes and I ended up falling asleep on the couch because I just couldn't, I wasn't ready for bed. I wasn't ready. I was stressed. So I heard my workstation sort of alarm. I had forgotten to turn off my speakers, which sounds kind of funny, but if I don't turn off my speakers, I can hear my laptop make an alarm in the other room.

So I hear a message come in, it wakes me up. And I try to open up my email and it's not loading. So then I try to sign into my laptop. It did not work. And so I tried again, did not work. I shut down and restarted. It would not work. I was like, had an extremely tight chest.

I was so shocked at an extremely tight chest. I was so shocked at the way it was playing out. I work as a probationary employee within the Forest Service. At 3.55, I got the call from my boss that he got a call at 3.45 that he has to let me go. I texted my mom. I was like, I'm being fired. She

immediately called me and I was bawling my eyes out. I was an enforcement attorney at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and I think it was 7 06 p.m. is when I got the email saying that I had been fired. I received an email telling me that I was terminated and then I received another one telling me I was terminated again and then I got an email saying all of those terminations were rescinded and then I got two more emails telling me that I was terminated again and so I was fired. I just got home, got in my apartment.

10 minutes later, I got a notification that was just a copy and paste email that it looked like where my name and position was filled in. Citing my performance as the reason for firing. They said, due, am I poor performance? And then I immediately texted, you know, my direct supervisor, had no idea this was happening. I reached out to my supervisor, just let her know, I said, hey, I just got an email from the director saying that I was terminated.

And she comes back and says, I'm so sorry. And then she's like, I got the same one. And so she had been terminated as well. But then this morning she got up and is looking at her own email. And there's an email from our director saying, I got some new information. Your name should not have been on that list. So you can ignore the termination email.

You are not fired. People need to know what's actually happening. It's just chaos. It was just the fact that we think you're easier to fire. So we're going to go ahead and do it. You know, it felt like punitive and inhumane, if I may. It's just, you know, you feel gutted. Our president, our administration, you feel gutted. Like it, it...

Our president, our administration right now does not care. They could care less. I feel kind of betrayed by the whole thing because there are processes and procedures for doing everything. And they're not being followed anymore. They're cowards. That's literally it, they're cowards. They sent it in an email and nobody in this building, nobody in this building, nobody in our headquarters throughout

the entire region will say that to me. They're going to send it through an email and like it's yeah they're like they're cowards. And like, it's, yeah, they're like, they're cowards. My sense, in terms like draining the swamp we're being thrown around before, was that it was more directed at politicians and lobbyists and not like the actual work of the federal government. I think I'd like to be really clear here and say that I would agree with the statement that there can sometimes be inefficiency in federal government processes.

I don't think that that means that the way this administration is going about making changes is the way to do it. I don't think mass reductions in force. I don't think fear and chaos and many other things that have been done by this administration is the way to improve inefficiency. I don't want to reveal my name or even my department,

but I've been a federal employee for a decent amount of years. And I voted for Trump in 2016 and 2020 and 2024 and happy to do it. I don't regret any of my votes. That being said, you know, while I think the overall policy and objective of shrinking the federal government is good, I certainly am critical of the process in which some of it has been happening. Frankly, I think the dismissals have been taking place really cruel. You know, I think it could be handled better, but I think that's more Elon than Trump. But Trump's the president and maybe he needs to slow Elon down. I don't know.

I mean, like I've had people have already like been asking me, send me your resume. You know, I don't care. I don't care. I don't want another job. I want people to know about what's happening here. If, you know, a week from now you've been kicked out of the systems and things are still running, someone might say, well, that just proves like this was bloat. We don't need your job. There are too many people. What do you say to that argument that someone who agrees with Elon Musk agrees

with president Donald Trump and says a job like yours truly isn't needed? 100% this place can run without me. I'm not the lynchpin that holds us together. You know, they can work without me. We wouldn't be an efficient organization if we didn't have those like backup plans. But it's one of those things where like, it's going to get harder for everybody else here. You're going to squeeze every little last ounce of energy and experience out of them and they're going to leave. They're going to make life so miserable that they will

drive everybody out of these institutions. They're going to break something they can't fix and it's going to ripple effects for generations. ripple effects for generations. So far, of the 2 million federal workers offered a buyout by the Trump administration, an estimated 75,000 have accepted the offer. In addition, the White House has ordered federal agencies to terminate another 200,000 probationary workers. Of those, about 11,000 have already been fired. Finally, the President has identified about 9,000 more workers that he wants to eliminate as he dismantles their agencies. The firings, which are still in their early stages, are expected to continue and to accelerate

in the coming weeks. We'll be right back. Here's what else you need to know today. We'll be right back. Here's what else you need to know today. Less than a week after President Trump spoke by phone with Russian President Vladimir Putin, diplomats from both countries met in Saudi Arabia to begin a remarkable reset in the two countries' relationship. It was the latest chapter in a stunning about-face

in U.S. policy toward Russia, which has sought, over the past few years, to isolate the country for invading Ukraine and killing thousands of its civilians. I came away today convinced that they are willing to begin to engage in a serious process to determine how and how quickly and through what mechanism can an end be brought to this war. After the meeting, U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio

said that Russia had demonstrated what he saw as a genuine interest in ending its war on Ukraine, and he praised President Trump for pursuing normalized relations between the two countries. For three and a half years while this conflict has raged, or three years while it's raged, no one else has been able to bring something together like what we saw today

because Donald Trump is the only leader in the world that can. Today's episode was reported and produced by Claire Tenesketter, Stella Tan, Anna Foley, and Jessica Chung with help from Sydney Harbor. It was edited by Devon Taylor, contains original music by Dan Powell, Marian Lozano, Pat McCusker, and Sophia Landman, and was engineered by Chris Wood. Our theme music is by Jim Brunberg and Ben Lansford of Wonderland. and Van Land's work of wonderland. That's it for the daily. I'm Michael Bobarro. See you tomorrow.