For Stunned Federal Workers, Sleeplessness, Anger and Tears

[Timber Rattler]

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/02/09/us/politics/federal-workers-trump.html

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.

(snip)

Jake Struebing, a federal prosecutor in the U.S. attorney’s office in Washington, was fired by email on Jan. 31 in a purge of more than a dozen people. The email, Mr. Struebing said, “said explicitly that we were being fired for working on the Jan. 6 cases.”

Mr. Struebing, 33, is one of the few fired prosecutors who have gone public and in recent days has made the rounds on CNN and MSNBC. Formerly in private practice in the Washington office of the powerhouse law firm Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison, Mr. Struebing got his dream job in September 2023 at the Justice Department: He was hired to help handle the Jan. 6 cases, the largest prosecution in the department’s history.

“It was everything that I imagined,” Mr. Struebing said in an interview. “I loved every second.” At his law firm job, he said, he “used to sit in front of the computer all the time,” but at the Justice Department he was in court multiple times a week and ultimately handled four trials. He was especially proud, he said, of getting a Jan. 6 defendant convicted on all counts for an assault on a police officer. That defendant, like all the others, has now been pardoned by Mr. Trump.

Asked whether he still had faith in the criminal justice system, Mr. Struebing paused for a long time — and did not answer.

(snip)

Mieka, who asked that her last name not be used for fear of retribution online, said she had saved enough, so she was not in immediate financial crisis. But she saw prospects of another job in aid work as grim. The end of U.S.A.I.D., which funded nonprofits in Washington and development efforts around the world, has already led to large layoffs downstream.

“Even during the pandemic I didn’t have the experience where every single person I knew didn’t have a job,” she said. “It’s just very bizarre when your entire sector gets tanked overnight.”

(snip)

“I’m just horrified,” said Nicole Cantello, a former lawyer for the Environmental Protection Agency who represents its union in Chicago. Ms. Cantello was reacting to emails that landed on Thursday putting 168 employees in the agency’s office of environmental justice on administrative leave, including a number in Chicago.

(snip)

“These people came into an agency hoping to help Biden, and that turned out to be toxic,” Ms. Cantello said.

EXCERPTED

Seems that these out-of-touch Democrat drones believed that Democrats would be in control of the government forever.

[Kamaji]

A third frantically tried to fill a prescription after she got a 24-hour notice that her health care was ending.

Baloney.  She can pay for COBRA coverage, just like every other American who loses employment.

[Timber Rattler]

Right!  And we're apparently supposed to feel sorry for these government drones, especially those who never had any of their colleagues lose their jobs during the COVID shutdowns.