One in eight federal workers, or some 300,000, will have left the government by the end of December. It’s possible even more could be pushed out if the government shuts down next week.
Many chose to resign amid concerns of widespread cuts, and will soon receive their last paycheck. Others were fired because they were new to the job, while a variety of positions were eliminated.
Some of the workers said that the Trump administration’s decisions halted efforts to combat wildfires, stymied public health programs that help lower cancer rates and stopped the creation of free, public tax filing software.
“It’s just a huge drain,” said Cynthia Vinson, who left the National Institutes of Health after 26 years. “All of the work that I have done in my career is being flushed down the toilet.”
The administration has defended its cuts as an effort to reduce spending and boost efficiency.
“These reforms are about making government leaner, more accountable and more effective for taxpayers,” Scott Kupor, the director of the Office of Personnel Management, said in a statement. “Work force changes are always difficult.”
photographed and interviewed two dozen former federal workers from across the country to get a sense of how they are doing.
Jonathan Black
Idaho Falls, Idaho
Department of Energy
Took deferred resignation option
It was a real missed opportunity for the Trump administration and for DOGE.
At first, Mr. Black was cautiously optimistic about the Department of Government Efficiency, a group formed by Elon Musk to detect waste, fraud and abuse in the government. That had been Mr. Black’s job for the last 33 years.
As the chief adviser to the Energy Department’s inspector general, he had designed systems that could verify the accuracy of various federal loans and grants amounting to hundreds of billions of dollars. He expected DOGE to take full advantage of his expertise.
They didn’t. Instead, Mr. Black’s boss, Teri Donaldson, was one of the 17 inspectors general Mr. Trump fired a few days after his inauguration. Mr. Black thought it was a mistake. When he realized it wasn’t, he decided to leave the only workplace he’d ever known. He is now retired.
Von Robertson
Washington, D.C., area
General Services Administration
Laid off
They abolished the entire division. It did not abolish the work. They fired people without getting rid of the work.
Ms. Robertson ensured that federal agencies were not overcharged for transportation services they received from private companies. She spent more than 30 years in the government and now runs her own career coaching business.
Charlotte Colvin
Washington, D.C., area
U.S. Agency for International Development
Contract terminated
It feels almost career-ending, because U.S.A.I.D. was the main donor supporting tuberculosis care around the world. I don’t really know what I’m going to do next.
For 12 years, Dr. Colvin managed all programs that treated tuberculosis in children as a contractor at the agency. Eighteen countries relied on the United States for nearly all of their funding. Dr. Colvin is still without a job.
Joseph Edwards
Los Angeles
AmeriCorps
Laid off
The return on investment of tax dollars to AmeriCorps is literally tenfold. Every $1 invested in AmeriCorps, the community would get $10 in return.
Mr. Edwards kept the agency’s grant-making operation running. The job is essential to the group’s mission of supporting impoverished American communities, as its volunteer programs operate via grants awarded to states, nonprofits and local governments. He is looking for his next job.
Merici Vinton
Washington, D.C., area
U.S. Digital Service
Resigned, no additional compensation
DOGE had no interest in building a modern product team. But that’s what they said they were going to do, right? To have all these private sector start-up people come into government to make it better.
Ms. Vinton’s team created a free, public tax filing software for the Internal Revenue Service, but when DOGE took over, it was sidelined. Ms. Vinton is now a research fellow, sharing lessons from developing this software.
Quay Crowner
Washington, D.C., area
Department of Education
Laid off
There’s nothing political about the job that I do or have done. We all serve an administration and the administration’s priorities, and we do it with integrity.
Ms. Crowner was responsible for helping Native American tribes get access to federal student loans and other aid, as many students from tribal communities often struggle to obtain federal resources.
Across the federal government, the Trump administration has canceled programs focused on addressing systemic inequities, including Ms. Crowner’s. The Supreme Court has also ruled that Mr. Trump’s executive order to dismantle the Education Department can move forward.
After 32 years of working for the federal government, Ms. Crowner isn’t sure what’s next. She is focusing on her health, having suffered a traumatic brain injury last year.
Edgar Munoz
Chicago
Department of Homeland Security
Laid off
We’re not an advocacy group for immigration. We are an advocacy group for having an efficient system.
Mr. Munoz’s job was to fix bottlenecks in the immigration system.
Having moved to the United States from Mexico as a teenager, Mr. Munoz wanted to help those who, like his family, had navigated America’s complex immigration system.
The ombudsman office he worked for was responsible for reviewing immigration petitions that were possibly denied in error. It also worked to streamline the overall process, in particular applicants’ ability to renew paperwork that allowed them to legally work in the United States, as delays in this process sometimes cost people their jobs.
But his oversight office, along with two other watchdog groups at the department, have been shuttered. Mr. Munoz worries that immigrants who are trying to enter the country legally now have very little recourse.
Julianne P. Weis
Washington, D.C., area
U.S.A.I.D.
Laid off
We’re going to see steep increases in maternal, infant and child deaths that are completely preventable.
Dr. Weis oversaw funding for women’s reproductive health care in Niger. Now, she has helped found an advocacy group called Aid on the Hill that pushes for the restoration of U.S. foreign assistance programs. She is looking for her next job.
Stetson Kastengren
Redding, Calif.
Bureau of Indian Affairs
Fired, probationary employee
There’s no way to “privatize or outsource” the work this agency does for tribal nations.
Mr. Kastengren’s office helped Native Americans navigate property rights and federal benefits at the Bureau of Indian Affairs. He had just been promoted in December. He has since moved to Rapid City, S.D., where he is a cardiac technician.
Evan Thaler
Boise, Idaho
U.S. Geological Survey
Fired, probationary employee
I don’t begrudge anyone that went back, but I think taking the job back is kind of like letting the playground bully get away with their behavior.
Mr. Thaler mapped out where streams run dry, critical information for farmers and foresters in the area. He was the only probationary employee in his office who didn’t accept an offer to return to his job. He is now in a one-year research position at Oregon State University.
Brittany Myatt
Washington, D.C., area
Department of Education
Laid off
You didn’t need a lawyer. You didn’t have to pay a bunch of attorneys fees just to be heard.
Ms. Myatt oversaw cases in which students had experienced discrimination because of their disability, race or gender and worked with them to find solutions with the schools. Now she will represent students directly in her own law firm.
Jessica Lawrence
Portland, Ore.
Department of Veterans Affairs
Resigned, no additional compensation
My colleagues are going to have less time to focus on some of our patients’ needs.
Ms. Lawrence was a licensed social worker responsible for helping hospitalized veterans with substance abuse and medical conditions and for creating treatment plans. Her role was deemed “mission critical” and was exempted from layoffs and buyout offers.
But she still decided to leave, concerned for her future job security amid chaotic cuts across the government.
Her last few weeks on the job gave her confidence that she made the right call. Ms. Lawrence said her coworkers lacked the private space required to ensure that sensitive patient information remained secret. She could overhear details on patients’ sexual orientations, gender identities, and substance abuse and housing situations.
After she resigned in May, her hospital did not hire a replacement, she said, and her patients were reassigned to other social workers who were already stretched thin. Ms. Lawrence is now practicing privately as a therapist.
Victor Udoewa
Washington, D.C., area
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
Fired
That idea of ‘move fast and break things,’ maybe you can do that in a video game that doesn’t matter. But when you get to the benefits that people receive, people’s lives are affected. People die.
When Covid first started spreading, the C.D.C. had a tech problem. The agency had trouble compiling numbers for confirmed cases and deaths because of an outdated data system.
Mr. Udoewa was recruited from NASA to fix it. He later helped the C.D.C. adopt artificial intelligence to improve its health outcomes.
Mr. Udoewa spent 11 years at the federal government as a technology designer and said that bringing new tech into the government requires a deep understanding of how it works at every level from hiring to budgeting and procurement policy. But he said that the DOGE team did not try to understand how the government worked before radically disrupting it.
He now works as a consultant for Bloom Works, a digital services firm for state and local governments.
Soledad Ivaldi
Washington, D.C., area
National Institutes of Health
Fired, probationary employee
Pharmacy and biotech companies don’t have the time and the money to invest in research for such a long time.
Ms. Ivaldi worked to make N.I.H.-funded research on Alzheimer’s and dementia more accessible to the wider scientific community. A molecular biologist by training, she now works at an elementary school.
John Andrews
Norfolk, Va.
Department of Defense
Took deferred resignation option
No planning, no consideration, no nothing. It’s not anything that I’ve ever seen in my life before.
Mr. Andrews, who served in the Navy for 30 years as an officer and pilot, spent the last few years of his career training civilian sailors in the Navy. He is now retired.
Bobby Boyd
Kalamazoo, Mich.
Department of Energy
Took deferred resignation option
Low-income Black and brown communities “don’t reach out” to the federal government “because they don’t know” about those opportunities.
Mr. Boyd helped underrepresented communities get federal grants, but his office of community engagement no longer exists. He is now working in local government, supporting investment and business opportunities for Kalamazoo.
Jessica Henry
Washington, D.C., area
N.I.H.
Laid off
We did so much with a very small budget.
Ms. Henry’s job was to distill complex health information, like how diabetes affects oral health, for the general public. She has paused her job search to focus on her small business but plans to look again in the new year.
Melanie Maino-Vieytes
Atlanta
C.D.C.
Fired, probationary employee
It’s a really scary time to navigate as a young public health practitioner, moving away from what I thought was a lifelong career in federal service.
Ms. Maino-Vieytes oversaw federal programs aimed at preventing domestic violence, such as funding paid parental leave for local businesses and bringing more vegetation to urban areas. (Recent research suggests improving the environment in which children are raised is an effective way to reduce violence.)
Ms. Maino-Vieytes said her office was “obliterated.” Only a handful of employees are left.
Many local grant recipients need assistance navigating the maze of paperwork and reporting requirements necessary for data collection, and now they won’t have the support of those like Ms. Maino-Vieytes. She worries data collection on domestic violence will suffer.
Ms. Maino-Vieytes is still job hunting and has applied to more than 120 jobs.
Joaquin Baca
Albuquerque
U.S. Forest Service
Took deferred resignation option
The American people are now going to lose their water.
In the dry Western states around the Colorado River, people fight for water rights. Even the federal government must document its need for water in the West.
As a hydrologist, Mr. Baca measured the water consumption of cattle ranchers who hold grazing permits on federal lands to demonstrate their need to have access to the water — which, by extension, helped the federal government secure its own water rights.
But in April, Mr. Baca resigned, leaving behind 17 years of public service and making it harder for the government to document its right to the water on its land.
Mr. Baca also doesn’t know how the government will find water to put out wildfires. Until April, he helped the government purchase water for firefighting from states and private citizens. Now that team is gone, Mr. Baca said.
He has since started his own consulting business as a hydrologist.
Cynthia Vinson
Washington, D.C., area
N.I.H.
Took early retirement option
We’re spending all of this money funding research, but if the research doesn’t get into practice, what’s the point?
Ms. Vinson worked on programs designed to help doctors and other public health officials adopt the latest medical research. She worked at N.I.H. for 26 years and now has three jobs because she retired from government earlier than planned.
Rebecca Ferguson-Ondrey
Washington, D.C., area
Department of Health and Human Services
Fired, probationary employee
There’s a cost to all of these cuts. Morale is incredibly low.
Ms. Ferguson-Ondrey managed employee training for her office, which oversees Head Start, a federal program that helps some of the nation’s most underserved children and families. She is now running Wellfed, a community group for federal workers affected by the cuts.
David Shapinsky
Washington, D.C., area
Food and Drug Administration
Took early retirement option
It is not wrong to reorganize. But to simply eliminate positions and expertise without planning is insane.
Mr. Shapinsky monitored events that could cause failures in supply chains like those that led to baby formula shortages during the coronavirus pandemic. He worked in the federal government for 15 years and is now retired.
Nadia Ford
Washington, D.C., area
Department of Health and Human Services
Fired, probationary employee
I want to be a leader within the government one day.
Ms. Ford was a Presidential Management Fellow, a program designed to draw young professionals into the federal workforce. But President Trump abruptly ended the program. Ms. Ford is now an internal investigator at a resort company.
Patsy Widakuswara
Washington, D.C., area
Voice of America
Laid off
It’s like you have somebody in your family who’s terminally ill. You keep on trying, but you’re also starting to think, ‘Yeah, I might lose this person.’
Ms. Widakuswara oversaw White House coverage at the federally funded news agency, whose mission is to provide independent reporting to countries with limited press freedom.
It was a mission Ms. Widakuswara, a naturalized U.S. citizen who was raised under Indonesia’s formerly authoritarian government, was especially dedicated to.
But Mr. Trump has dismissed the news organization as “the voice of radical America,” and his administration has either fired or put on paid leave nearly all of its reporters and staff.
Ms. Widakuswara is leading efforts to contest the agency’s closure in the courts, but she’s also applying for other jobs.
