Trump Purge Hits Bay Area Federal Workers
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From KQED in San Francisco, I'm Arati Shahani in for Alexis Madrigal. Thousands of federal workers in the Bay Area are on edge, unsure if they will have a job tomorrow. They are getting a barrage of conflicting emails from senders who are not their supervisors, ordering these workers to justify why their job exists and what they have accomplished.

Supervisors are completely in the dark. This chaos is part of the Trump administration's purge of the federal workforce, led by Elon Musk's Department of Government Efficiency. We'll speak with directly affected workers and to experts on what the mass layoffs could mean for government services. That's coming up next after this news.

Alexis Madrigal here. We're doing a fundraiser right now here at the station. So you get a little bonus on the pledge free stream podcast or on our replay at night. I'm writing these mini essays and we're calling this series One Good Thing. It's a doom loop antidote, little tributes to bits of Bay Area culture and geography. So each day during this pledge drive, I'll have one for you in this little slot.

So not everyone is going to agree with my one good thing this morning. I know it. But let me make my case for the bike shared networks of the Bay Area. To me, there are few things as nice as hopping on a shared bike in the Mission, powering up the hill to Noe Valley or the Castro, and then magically sliding it into a dock and stepping into whatever awaits.

I do love my actual bike too. I call it the whip and it is fun and fast. But when you have a bike to take care of, there isn't the absolute devil-may-care that comes with the bike share bike. You have to lock your own bike carefully and possibly pray. You have to wrestle it onto the BART train or the bus. You must sweat your way across town. These ride share bikes are another thing.

They're a capacity of the city, not your own possession. And I've ridden them all over the country from Portland to New Orleans to New York, and I have the same feeling every time. These bikes open up cities in new ways for different kinds of adventures.

Perhaps the particulars can be annoying, the actual bikes themselves or people's poor behavior on them, or maybe the corporate structure underlying this piece of the common wheel is not ideal. But for me, the freedom of the bike share is unbeatable. And of the available futuristic options, this is the one to me that seems to point towards a beautiful and shared future where we all inhabit the city together.

That's your one good thing this morning. The shared bikes of our cities.

Welcome to Forum. I'm Arati Shahani, in for Alexis Madrigal. More than 2 million civilians work for the U.S. government. The Office of Personnel Management, the federal government's HR division, has not disclosed exactly how many workers have been fired. According to an analysis by Bloomberg Law, nearly 30,000 federal employees were laid off by Monday. We've got a panel today to help us sort through what's happening and who's affected. We're

Joining us first is a Bay Area enforcement attorney with the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. She's been put on administrative leave and asked us not to use her name for fear of harassment. Good morning. Good morning. Thanks for joining us. Can you tell us how long you've been working in your job and how you were let go? I haven't been let go yet. Temporarily, excuse me. I've been in my job for about a little more than eight years.

And we were all told to stop doing our work about two and a half weeks ago via an email by the acting director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, who is Russell Vogt. And how did you respond to that? Were you expecting it? You know, it's been eight years, so I...

have been through the first round of President Trump. And what's happened this time around is completely unprecedented. You know, we were expected that priorities would change.

and that things might be a little different. We would have new management. But nobody expected this complete work stoppage and everything that has happened since, not just the work stoppage, but basically all the actions that have led us all to believe that there's actually the administration's trying to dismantle the agency, not just, you know, trying to change priorities. What do you mean by that?

That happened last time. That's a very big sort of, you know, sense or claim that he's trying to dismantle it altogether. What do you mean by that? Why would you say that? Well, I think we think everything that's happened in the last two and a half weeks have been about preventing us from performing the core missions of the agency and

erasing our past work. So first it was the work stoppage. So directing us all to seize all of our work, including my work as an enforcement attorney, which is to investigate bad actors and then trying to get them to pay back the money that they might owe consumers. So I can't do any of that work. Then the closure of our DC headquarters with no warning at all. My coworkers still can't get their personal items from their offices.

Then the firings of 70 workers, then another couple of days, another firing of about 70 to 100 workers, canceling about $100 million in contracts that those contracts really help us do our work. Then removal of all of the YouTube videos that the CFPB puts up, which really are just about like guiding consumers through different financial situations, like how do I fix my credit reports?

Those were removed. The Facebook and X accounts. There's a 404 error message on our homepage. Then there's a notice that our regional office where I work out of remain closed, even though we were not notified that they were closed in the first place. And then more recently, the sign on the building in D.C. came down. The logo was scraped off. So all of that. And it just seems to be too.

I can't imagine us going back to work with all of that. And we're put on administrative leave. The assumption is, I hope we can go back to work, but not the way that things are going now. How does cutting the agency's workforce affect everyday people?

We are I would say, you know, the basic description of us is we are the cup on the beach in the financial sector. You know, the CFPB was created after the financial crisis to really make sure that everyday people are protected from big Wall Street banks, from big tech companies and work. It's

What we do is to make sure that they play by the rules. And if we're not around, I think these companies are just going to run rampant. I think everyday people are the most have the most to lose if we are gutted because there's nobody there to really protect their rights. So right now, if someone files a complaint, the CFPB can make those companies

fix the problem, pay back what they owe the consumers. And if they don't, enforcement attorneys like me could try to step in and open in investigations and see what's happening and maybe bring them to court and then getting money back for people, maybe trying to see if there's a penalty. And you get half a million consumer complaints per month, is it?

Yeah, I think we receive about 500,000 complaints a month. And I'm not sure what's happening with those complaints now. Thank you for sharing your story with us. That was Bay Area Enforcement Attorney with the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. She asked us not to use her name for fear of harassment.

I would like to introduce now Courtney Rosen, a federal workforce reporter with Bloomberg Law. Hi, Courtney. Hi, good morning. Good morning. Thank you for your reporting, which is encyclopedic. Can you tell us, Courtney, who's getting hit? Where are the biggest layoffs coming from?

These layoffs are happening across the country. People tend to think about federal workers, federal agencies as being concentrated here in D.C., where I am. And we're seeing layoffs happen all over in different states, in different territories. Most of these layoffs are targeting what the government calls probationary workers. And that doesn't mean anyone did anything wrong. What that term means is that they're the newest workers to the federal government or the newest in their roles.

And the reason for that is they don't have the same job protections as people who have been in their roles for longer. And so the Trump administration is starting with targeting those employees, and we're expecting that it's only going to expand in the coming weeks. Hmm.

You know, we just heard from a CFPB attorney. I spoke yesterday with a doctor at the Palo Alto VA who treats veterans with PTSD, military sexual trauma, cancer survivors with conditions. She shared with me a barrage of more than 30 emails she got from OPM as well as various management inside her agency with demands like justify your job, choose to resign in two days, go to a random building to provide telehealth services to patients who are not coming to that building for the service.

And she called it very intentional psychological warfare. Is the chaos accidental or intentional, do you think?

Her experience and what you're describing, we've seen across the board, across agencies, and how the Trump administration is handling different roles and terminating different employees. I talked to a VA, also the VA, the Department of Veterans Affairs Hospital Safety Manager in Philadelphia, who was talking to me about how he was locked out of his computer after he was fired before he could tell his direct reports about it. He had a team of people reporting to him. Another attorney who had just started

in his job, put his diploma up on the wall in his office, and then lost his job in an email and hasn't been able to go pick it up yet. So we're just seeing a lot of chaotic

activity happening in these agencies as a result of President Trump's order to cut back on jobs. We're talking about the mass layoffs of federal workers with Courtney Rosen, federal workforce prosecutor, reporter at Bloomberg Law. And we want to hear from you listeners. What questions do you have about the mass federal employee layoffs? Are you a federal employee? What's going on in your job or agency? What's your reaction to the Trump administration's actions so far? What are you most concerned about?

Also, for current and former federal employees, what changes would you want to see in your agency? Give us a call now at 866-733-6786. That's 866-733-6786. Or email your comments and questions to forum at kqed.org. Find us on social media at bluesky.org.

Instagram, we're at kqedforum, or join our Discord community. We would really like to hear from people who are affected by this. Just very quickly, Courtney, is your sense that this is going to continue or abate? Yes.

It is going to continue. Now, there's been some pushback we're seeing from federal employees and their unions in court. But so far, we haven't had a judge, a federal judge intervene to stop these mass firings. There are what we call administrative pathways. There are boards that are set up to mediate disputes between federal agencies and their employees.

And we're beginning to see employees that have been fired file complaints with those administrative agencies. And we're waiting to see the outcome of that. I realize it sounds like a lot of bureaucracy and that's intentional. The way the civil service system is set up is having to go through those administrative options. You're listening to Forum. I'm Arati Shahani in for Alexis Madrigal. We'll be right back after the short break. ♪

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Welcome back to Forum. I'm Arati Shahani, in for Alexis Madrigal. We're talking about the mass layoffs of federal workers with Courtney Rosen, federal workforce reporter with Bloomberg Law. And also joining our conversation is Max Steer, CEO and president of Partnership for Public Service, a nonprofit group that promotes best practices in government. Good morning, Max. Hey, hello. Hi.

President Trump's February 11th executive order states, I'm going to quote it, each agency head shall develop a data-driven plan in consultation with its Doge team lead to ensure new career appointment hires are in highest need areas, end quote. Sounds sensible, right?

Sounds sensible and obviously not reflective of the reality of what's happened. It has been complete and total arson of our federal government, and the costs are just huge. But I will stop there. It is truly incomprehensible the damage that is being done to the people who are trying to help Americans solve lots of different problems, and we are wasting incredible resources in this process.

You think there's a strategy behind these layoffs? I think there are several different strains of purpose that are in play right now. One directly from the president himself, who has been very clear that he wants to remove any possibility that anybody or any institution can prevent him from doing what he wants to do. In essence, return us to the spoil system of the 19th century, where the jobs in our government were basically

benefits that could be given out by the elected president to artisans and loyalists, which led us to both corruption, incompetence, and ultimately a president who was assassinated by a disgruntled job seeker. So that is sort of stream number one. Stream two, there's certainly an ideological effort to simply eradicate the federal government and

And that's part of what we're seeing. And then the third piece, I think, coming from Doge specifically, is very not super clear to me, but it is, you know, sort of a an attitude that the way to do this is to break it, to make it better later, potentially with enormous hubris that they don't need to understand the context or actually learn anything about the systems that they're trying to change.

We're getting many comments, and Robin writes, I'm hearing a lot about the plight of federal workers who are suffering unnecessarily and to the detriment of the nation. The number of federal contract employees who will be affected by the Doge cuts is many times the number of federal workers. The education industry, research industry has been decimated, which will make it next to impossible for those whom contractors lay off to find other work. I would love for the press to look into the downstream effects of these cuts. Any thoughts, Courtney?

We are beginning to see the ripple effects of the cuts. President Trump put a freeze on federal grant funding at one point. It's been back and forth in the courts. And a lot of that funding goes to organizations like what this listener is talking about that does federal contracts that do work out in the community. So, yes, we're going to see this expand. We don't have totally a sense yet of just how broad the effect is going to be.

One thought about this, the counterpoint is that plenty of people would say the government is too fat. There's pork barrel politics. Let's cut the pork. This image of Elon Musk with a chainsaw literally, it's hitting a chord. Do either of you have a thought about that?

Go ahead, Matt. You go ahead, please. Okay. The Trump administration and President Trump is known for really leaning into visuals. I'll remember during the first administration, he physically was cutting red tape in an image to talk about cutting government regulations. So seeing Elon Musk show up at a convention with a big chainsaw, I'm not sure what it was, but

to visualize the idea of cutting down on the government is very in the same vein as what the president does to try and get a point across. And then apart from the theatrics, though, the point of, hey, the government's fat, which plenty of people believe.

So there's no question that we need to modernize our government. The reality is that it is a legacy institution that has not kept up with the world around it. But what we're not seeing is modernization. We're seeing just arson. And if you look at the federal workforce itself, it is by headcount the same size as it was in 1969.

The reality is government has grown, but it's not been the federal workforce that has been the source of that growth. We heard a little earlier, and I think it's so important, there are 130,000 federal employees in the state of California. 13,000 of those are probationary. It is fundamentally an organization that spreads out across the entire country, 80% of the workforce outside of D.C.,

A third of the workforce are veterans because these are people who are highly committed to serving and to purpose. 70% are involved in national security, keeping us safe. I think the biggest challenge right now is the public needs to be reintroduced to their own workforce, to their own government. And the issues here are not just the slashing and burning. It's the way these people are being treated in the most dehumanizing and wasteful way possible.

We have a caller who's joined us, Catherine, who is a federal worker who's feeling demoralized. Catherine? Hi. Thanks for my call. Yeah, I really – I'm glad you guys are talking about this. I work for the federal government on the peninsula for an agency that monitors natural hazards. That's what I can say. And

I have two comments. The first is like just my experience of, you know, we get these demoralizing and like dehumanizing emails demanding things like our five bullet points describe what we do last week when, you know, from from people. And we're supposed to send it to people who have no idea what we do.

And they're going to evaluate that. And at the same time, you know, so we get these emails and at the same time, they're like business as usual, continue doing your job. So this really bipolar, this, you know, bifurcated way of thinking, it's very hard to focus and it's very hard to get stuff done. And I think it's by design, but the one thing, another comment I wanted to make and reiterate to the audience is that, um,

Many people have said the federal government is not a business, and it absolutely isn't. And it provides services that are not ever found in the private sector. So, yeah.

You know, we live in California and earthquakes happen. There is no private sector entity that's going to monitor earthquakes because you cannot make money from that. And so who has to do that? It's the government. And if we don't have these agencies that monitor earthquakes and volcanoes and hurricanes and floods and those kinds of things, then.

People are going to get hurt and infrastructure will get damaged. And it's a real shame. It's a tragedy. And I,

It's not a private sector thing because you cannot make money from it. If it was, then many people would do that job. They don't. So that's my comment. Thank you for having this show. It's very important. And I'll take any. Yep. Thank you. And this point that not every not every form of work can be for profit. Some things have to be subsidized by tax money, presumably. We also have Cindy from Sacramento on the line. Cindy.

Hi, I just wanted to say that I wanted to know why these employees are leaving if they're being fired improperly because I know there's steps to fire somebody or let them go or force them to resign. Why they're just not staying and letting the labor unions or whoever represents them tell them to stay and to the government. I don't.

They're doing this illegally. What can be done about that? Cindy, that is perfect entree to the next guest we wanted to bring into the conversation. And I'll ask him to answer that question for you. Mark Smith, president of the National Federation of Federal Employees, Local 1. Hi, Mark. How are you? Not too bad. How are you doing? Good. I'm not sure. Were you able to hear Cindy's question about, well, if you're told to leave, why not just stay and resist?

The question is, if a federal worker is told to leave, to not come in, can they just stay? Can they resist? What does resistance look like? She wants to know. Well, I'm not sure what she's referring to. Is she referring to occupying the building or what? What is the question here? Maybe I can reframe it. If I am a federal worker who is scared out of my mind, what should I be doing right now?

Well, I would advise folks to join their unions to, you know, start talking to their coworkers and getting involved. We are, you know, I'm part of a nationwide network of union activists and federal workers who are, you know, getting together to kind of fight back and really try to prevent this hatchet job that's, you know, attacking public services and public servants. And so one of the things we're looking to do is, you know, obviously, you know,

These firings, these mass firings, which have been deemed to be for performance reasons, which are clearly not, are illegal. And so we are organizing responses to these legal mass firings.

Thank you. And I'm wondering if, Courtney, perhaps you or Max have a thought about this question of what are the levers that a laid-off worker could pull? Yeah, so there are a lot of different levers that...

We're seeing federal unions pull federal workers. One of them is called the Merit Systems Protection Board. That's a group of people that is in charge of mediating disputes between federal workers and their agencies. And people can file a complaint with them to dispute their firing. We saw late last night that the Merit Systems Protection Board ordered six employees that had been terminated fired.

said they can return to work temporarily while a separate office investigates why they were fired. The other pathway that we're seeing unions take is the courts, and they're not having a lot of success there. I was sitting in a courtroom here in Washington recently with the National Treasury Employees Union, the union that represents employees across 36-plus agencies, not just Treasury. And they're having a hard time getting a judge to

find a magic bullet, right, to stop these firings at mass as opposed to going through individual people. And so the courts haven't intervened yet. That's a pathway for sure, but they haven't intervened in a meaningful way.

It is worth just underscoring, though, that President Trump is actually trying to destroy the internal administrative functions that are supposed to help federal employees address these kinds of complaints by firing not just the inspector generals, but also the head of the Office of Special Counsel, the leadership of the Merit Substance Protection Board. So,

This is really a deconstruction of the entire system that is taking place right now. And just today there was an announcement of a set of plans to

do a reduction in force, meaning taking to scale the firings in a much, much larger way and a timetable to do that. So we are still at the front edge of the attacks on the federal workforce. It's really important for people to, in my view, tell their story as some of the callers are doing because the public needs to understand what is happening and what they're losing.

And it's going to be important for them to understand the rules. So they are required in most instances to try to go through these administrative processes before being able to go to court. But I have no doubt, you know, the folks that are in the Trump administration are not following appropriate procedure in many, many instances. And therefore, there are going to be legal violations. The courts are just slow to catch up in terms of the harm that is being done.

And legally, I'm wondering, you know, Mark or Courtney, if you can weigh in on has there been traction in a lawsuit? I understand recently an Obama appointed judge actually declined to proceed with a lawsuit by federal workers. So can you give me a bit of granularity on the legal landscape? Yeah, I was actually when I was talking earlier about how I was sitting in a courtroom, that was the case.

Or at least I think that's what you're referring to. Yes. So what these judges are saying is that federal employees who have been fired and want to dispute that, they need to go through these administrative pathways to be able to dispute their firing as opposed to going straight to court. And they don't want the unions going straight to court either. We've seen that in a judge in Massachusetts said that and a judge here in Washington, D.C.,

So the legal pathways here that these judges are pushing people toward are not necessarily built for massive numbers of people. They're not necessarily built. They're more built to deal with a case by case basis, right? Person by person. So we're going to see how that turns out in the next couple of weeks.

And Mark Smith, let me ask you, some of the rage that people are feeling is getting directed at Tesla. I've read reports in auto blogs and chat rooms about Tesla cars and cyber trucks. They're getting keyed and even knifed. People are posting videos of their vehicles being attacked. You've organized federal worker protests in front of Tesla's showroom here in San Francisco. Why there?

Well, I would say that the reason why there is because, you know, this is a lot of these reckless attacks on federal workers and the work that we do, the public services that Elon Musk and Doge are trying to take a hatchet to. That is where Elon Musk's a lot of his profits come from is from, you know, Tesla. And so it's sort of a visible symbol, I think, of, you know,

of Elon Musk. And so, you know, one of the things that we're trying to do is to, you know, bring public attention to this reckless and unlawful attack on public services that is being led by, you know, an unelected billionaire. And so those are one of the reasons why we're, we have been organizing this,

Rallies at Tesla's. Brooke writes in, what is going to happen, if anything, to the pensions of all the people being fired and or laid off? Courtney? This is not going to be satisfying, but we're still trying to figure that out. Okay. And can you explain a little bit more about what hangs in the balance? What is unknown?

A lot of these employees are getting very similar termination letters via email that will say something like their performance wasn't strong enough to justify further employment at the agency. And it doesn't really have more details about what happens after they're terminated, right? What happens to their benefits? What happens to their pension if they have one?

So we're not getting that information out of the Trump administration yet. And so that's going to take us talking to federal employees and understanding what's happening on the ground to them. And Mark Smith, are you hearing anything about that or have thoughts on the pension question?

Obviously, we're getting a lot of questions about, you know, what might happen to federal workers' pensions or their benefits or things like that. But I think the really important thing to focus on here is what's going to happen to the public. You know, I represent health care workers at Veterans Health Administration. And if there is a massive reduction in force at the Veterans Health Administration, veterans are going to suffer. Their care is going to suffer. You know,

We don't want to have health care workers who take care of veterans, you know, spending their time thinking about, are my retirement benefits going to be protected? Right. We want them to be laser focused on providing veteran care. And what this reckless and chaotic and unlawful attack on federal workers has done is, you know, it's these are the kinds of things that federal workers who provide critical services to Americans every day, you know, including veterans.

thousands and millions of veterans, these are the things they're having to think about instead of just being able to focus on their jobs and continue to kind of take care of the American public. So I think that the public and folks who care about the services that the federal government provides, whether that's Social Security or Medicaid or veterans benefits and health care, they need to be reaching out to their elected officials and

whether they're Democrats or Republicans, and letting them know that this is not acceptable, this is not a proper way to treat federal workers who are taking care of the American public and demanding that their services that are provided be protected.

Is your sense that workers within federal agencies like Veterans Affairs, for example, are becoming more active now in the union? I listened in on a call, actually, of union workers yesterday while I was making dinner and on Zoom and hearing the energy in that call. Are you seeing that?

among the ranks? Absolutely. Absolutely. We've had more folks join the union in the last month than in the past, probably year. Folks are learning what unions are for, which are to protect you from abusive and exploitative bosses, which Elon Musk is. And so folks are joining. They're trying to figure out ways to fight back, to protect the services that we provide to the American public, because, you know, folks don't join

federal service to get rich. They join to serve. And that's what we want to do. And folks are joining us to do that. Thanks for joining, Mark. Mark Smith is president of the National Federation of Federal Employees, Local 1. We're talking about mass layoffs with federal workers.

Turing with Tia is the quirky YouTube talk show where Tia Creighton is the host and all her guests are talking AI chatbots. Whether it's health and beauty, science and technology, pop culture, or current events, Turing with Tia delivers answers about everything. That's T-U-R-I-N-G, Turing with Tia, a funny and fascinating way to experience artificial intelligence. Only on YouTube at Turing with Tia.

Welcome back to Forum. I'm Arati Shahani in for Alexis Madrigal. We're talking about the mass layoff of federal workers with Courtney Rosen, federal workplace reporter, Bloomberg Law, Max Thier, CEO and president of Partnership for Public Service. And listeners, we would love to hear from you. What questions do you have about the mass federal employee layoffs? Do you have thoughts about what changes you'd like to see in an agency or department in which you work?

Give us a call now at 866-733-6786. That's 866-733-6786. Or email your comments and questions to forum at kqed.org. Find us on social media, Blue Sky, Instagram, or at KQED Forum, or join our Discord community.

I want to talk for a moment now about who's exempt from the order. Notably, military, immigration enforcement, ISCs, agencies are excluded from being, quote, data-driven, from eliminating, quote, waste, bloat, and celerity. If these missions are so critical to public safety, why wouldn't they be included in the new higher standards?

Courtney or Max? When you're talking about new higher standards, what do you mean? Presumably, I'm sorry, the data-driven standards, getting rid of waste, bloat, and celerity, what's presumed as the added value of the directives coming out of the Trump administration.

I think this is another example of how chaotic this has been, right? You have people coming in who are working at what the Trump administration calls the Department of Government Efficiency. It's not a real federal department. That's just the name they chose. And Elon Musk leading it. And it's been a very haphazard operation, them going into federal agencies, making decisions to cut people, to cut programs, to cut contracts.

And we're going to see how that continues to expand. But what you're saying about, you know, who should be exempt from the new hire, they have a hiring freeze, excuse me, where agencies can't fill jobs unless they get some kind of exception. They have to apply for that exception. It's just all been very chaotic.

Just to underscore, the choices they've made already, they fired the folks at the USDA that were responsible for managing the avian flu outbreak and had to rehire them or try to do so. Same thing at the Nuclear National Security Administration that actually oversees our nuclear stockpile. They fired a bunch of people, had to rehire them. They don't ultimately understand how the government works, and they're making choices

blindly, and therefore chaos is, I think, exactly the right word to use to describe what's happening. According to Bloomberg Law, the agency that's thus far been hit hardest with layoffs is USAID, with more than 10,000 employees recently axed. We're joined now by a man in California who was fired just yesterday from USAID. We're not going to use his name for fear of retaliation. Hello, are you there?

Hi, I'm here. Thanks for having me. Thanks for joining us. How are you doing? I'm okay. As you can imagine, it's been a really disheartening month for me and my colleagues. I work specifically for USAID's Humanitarian Assistance Bureau, and it's been really cruel to see how the government has decided that

group of people that have devoted their lives to trying to make sure that people survive conflict and disaster overseas Should now be called criminals But yeah, I'm okay. What were you doing overseas? You were in Yemen? So it wasn't in Yemen, but my Most recent rotation was on USAID's high-level Yemen elevated response so essentially my and my co-workers job was to

ensure that emergency food assistance was getting to millions of people in Yemen as well as life-saving nutrition treatment for hundreds of thousands of children at risk of starvation there are now no longer um staff to to do those jobs and to ensure that those um programs are ongoing as I'm sure most of us are aware our funding for our partners is still frozen even if

Some of the stop work orders have been rescinded, but with the mass layoffs at USAID over the course of the last month, there's just no one left to administer these programs and really carry out our humanitarian mission at its core. USAID is very unique work, as you're describing, with this humanitarian relief. What does transitioning in the job market look like for you?

I think it looks really tough for me and my coworkers right now. The administration's taken a wrecking ball to the entire humanitarian sector in the U.S. So my, you know, coworkers who have spent decades on the front lines of every major disaster, if you think of the Indian Ocean tsunami in 2004, the 2010 Haiti earthquake, and more recently the full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022,

All of these people have devoted their lives to building skill sets specifically to help people survive these really terrible situations. And not only is USAID being dismantled, but our partners who are kind of other options for employment for humanitarian aid workers

are also going out of business as well, given the administration has cut off all funding to them, contrary to a recent court order. So it's quite difficult. And, you know, I have one of my best friends at work is six months pregnant and is very excited to start her family and now is not going to get the paid parental leave that she thought she'd have. I have other co-workers who are

have kids and a mortgage and, you know, both parents work at USAID and are now out of a job and don't know how they're going to pay their bills. So I think, you know, rightfully so, the focus has been on the deadly impact of USAID's dismantling abroad for vulnerable people caught in conflict and crisis. But it's obviously having devastating impacts for the agency's employees as well.

I'm sorry for what you're going through, and I want to thank you for speaking with us. We're now going to turn to callers. Paula from Pinole is on the line.

Yes, hello. Thanks for this program. I just wanted to note and call attention to the enormous waste that this Doge experiment is costing the taxpayer. In addition to all the wasted time, I'm a federal employee at a federal agency where we are in chaos right now.

People don't know, you know, should they respond to these five, you know, things you did today? We're told, yes, you should. No, you shouldn't. All of that collective, you know, government attention toward all of these Doge requests are wasting time. In addition, people have been fired unlawfully. They're going to likely appeal to the Merit Systems Protection Board. And because...

these employees were not given a proposal to remove them from federal service.

noting they were either removed for performance or misconduct, which they were not. So because they didn't have any of those protections, they're going to get back pay. All these people are going to get back pay and other monetary damages at the expense of the taxpayer. So that's just another thing to think about when we think about what a mess the firings are.

Thank you, Paula. We also have on the line Brandon from San Francisco.

Hey, thanks for taking my call. I was just wondering, where are the Democrats in all this? Like, where are Democratic leaders at the national and local level? I just, I can't help but notice, like, they fought this year-long campaign against what they were calling fascism, and now it just seems like these individual federal workers are kind of being left for dead. And I think Democrats are uniquely responsible for normalizing this kind of austerity, you

for the last 15 years since the rise of the Tea Party without really mounting a proper case for why we need these kinds of government jobs and rather have allowed the government to be chipped away little by little until inevitably we've been led to this moment. So I'm just wondering where are Democrats and what are they doing to help support workers and these essential functions that they perform? Max Steyer, do you have a sense of that or Courtney from your reporting?

The only thing I would point out is that I think this isn't actually a partisan issue at all. And you've heard this in such a strong, powerful way from your callers and the folks you've had on. These are services that are going to the American people in all kinds of different ways, veterans,

international aid, and the list is quite long. The truth here is that we're all getting hurt, and the caller who's talking about the waste and the way this is being done, we should see Republicans and Democrats standing up, and in particular, Congress. I mean, the way our system was designed was to ensure that there was a separation of powers

We're seeing that line be obliterated, and it's very damaging to the outcomes that we're getting here. So I would argue that Republicans should say it doesn't matter if the president is the same party as us. We have a responsibility as members of Congress to stand up for our prerogatives to ensure that spending that we decide has to happen should happen, that the purpose of these agencies should occur. And I would think that we will see a better result if we don't make this a partisan question.

And I'll say from my vantage point from as a reporter, where we're seeing the most pushback from the Democratic Party on President Trump's policies in general is the state attorneys general. We're seeing them be the vehicle to push back in court on some of these policies, not just on federal workers, but across the board on different topics that they disagree with. That's really where we're seeing the action and the pushback coming from the other political party here.

You know, one thing that really strikes me about how this operation is unfolding is I recall in Walter Isaacson's biography of Elon Musk, he describes Musk's first principles approach to building cars and spaceships, which is there's regulation, but let's ask why the regulation exists. And if we don't agree with it, just ignore it. That's literally what he said in his commercial operations.

Do you see a version of that happening here? I mean, do you anticipate a next step being sort of the wholesale closing down of wings you may disagree with? Prognosticate a little bit. We're already seeing that happen.

For example, the Department of Transportation has an arm that regulates cars and has been thinking about how to set rules for self-driving cars or automated vehicles for years. That's a sector that Tesla is in and Elon Musk is in, and we're seeing cuts to that particular sector, or excuse me, that particular agency. You were also talking about earlier there was a woman from the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. That's an agency that deals with...

consumers that was established after the financial crisis in 2008. Elon Musk also has X, his social media platform, and is looking to expand it and make it more of a payments platform. You'd have to talk to a tech person to really dig into that. But the CFPB would have been a regulator of what he's trying to build. So we're seeing it already happen where he's coming in to cut agencies that

have a conflict with his business. This is a fundraising period for KQED Public Radio. For more information about how to support KQED, go to kqed.org. I'm Arati Shahani, in for Alexis Madrigal.

We've been talking about the mass layoffs of federal workers with Courtney Rosen, federal workforce reporter, Bloomberg Law, Max Steyer, CEO and President Partnership for Public Service, a nonprofit group that promotes best practices in government. And we have callers who've been waiting patiently for us. I want to turn now to Don in Portola Valley.

If Congress lets the Trump tax cuts expire, that will generate $400 billion over 10 years. That's what I think they should do. Thank you, Don, for that call. I also want to turn to another employee for a county union, Lori in San Mateo.

Hi, thanks for taking my call. So I work for San Mateo County Elections Office, and I'm an SEIU union member. And I often wonder if I were one of the federal employees that was being fired for no cause, I would invoke my wine garden rights. And I was wondering if that would apply in these situations. Thanks.

Thanks a lot. Courtney, any thought about that? I am not, I've not heard of that brought up in this context.

What I will say is, is that federal regulations spell out very specific rules about how to lay off or cut. They call it a reduction in force. Federal workers talking about how you have to notify people in advance. You have to set up a very strategic group of people. There has to be this ranking system of, you know, who gets priority to stay and who goes. I could spend hours reading it and still not completely understand how to structure a reduction in force is what they call it.

And clearly, they're not following those steps here. So when we're thinking about how federal workers might push back, I'd look to that pathway. Thank you. A listener on Blue Sky writes in, one feels deeply for those who have lost jobs. When is it possible, however, to reduce any government spending on anything without causing harm? So, you know, back to this question of there's pork. How do you cut it then humanely? Any thoughts on that, Max Dyer?

Yes, and thank you. So the answer is you actually, it should be ready, aim, fire, rather than fire, fire, fire, which is what we're seeing right now. There is definitely waste. And there's also opportunities simply to modernize technology, refocus government, being more customer-oriented.

The way to do that is to engage and not enrage your workforce. Anyone who is a seasoned manager understands that you actually can't get anything done if you've alienated the people who need to do the work. And that is what has happened right now. So I come back to just that fundamental statistic I mentioned earlier on. The federal headcount today is the same size as it was in 1969. It is wrong to measure the size of our government by the headcount in our government.

Our government has grown. There are legitimate mechanisms for disputing what it should do and what it shouldn't do. That is generally done by law and by Congress, not by the executive, which is supposed to execute on those laws that Congress passes. There's this whole issue around major questions where there's been a pushback against the executive and taking on too many things.

So where we ought to see focus right now is engaging the workforce, engaging the people like the inspector generals who have identified tons and tons of opportunities to improve our government. None of that work is being used. And in fact, all that infrastructure that is there to find problems and to address them is being wiped away. So this is in fact not an exercise to reduce costs or to make our government more efficient. It's an exercise to make it more pliant,

to the personal agenda of the president. And it's an exercise to, you know, frankly, take away the power of Congress to make these choices. And neither of those things should stand.

Kevin writes in, a caller mentions government provides services you cannot get from companies. Also, governments often provide services much cheaper than companies. The administrative overhead for Medicare is about 2%. The overhead of private insurance companies is about 25%. It seems one goal of the GOP MAGA chaos is to force us to pay more and get less from private companies, making them richer and us poorer. That's Kevin's comment. And Courtney says,

Do you see what's happening and the various parts of it as forcing a shift towards privatization? It's still too early to answer that question, in my view, or from me talking to federal workers, talking to attorneys in this space. It's too early to really understand privatization.

where the jobs are going to go, right? You had a caller earlier that was talking about working at the Department of Veterans Affairs and working in a healthcare facility. It's too, the cuts are happening there. It's too early to tell where those patients that maybe would have gone to VA are going to end up getting their services. That's something that we're going to be tracking definitely in the next couple months. A listener wants to know if people who've been fired are able to collect unemployment. Are they?

Courtney? Yes. Go ahead. There's Max. He's got it. Please, please. You know, it's quickly, yes, they can. You know, obviously, they have to understand the rules in their specific state and jurisdiction. But the answer is yes, if they are fired. Okay. And one other question that was asked is if a fired employee is locked out of the building and or locked out of computer access, can that employee actually just show up at their desk and keep working if they want to?

I have interviewed employees who have talked about not having access to the building to show up and work at their desk, even just to get their stuff that they left. So at this point, we're not seeing examples of that, of people being locked out of their digital work environment, still being able to do their job. We've been talking about the mass layoffs of federal workers with Courtney Rosen, reporter with Bloomberg Law, Max Steyer, CEO and president, Partnership for Public Service. I'm Arthi Shahani, in for Alexis Madrigal. Stay tuned for another hour of Forum with Mina Kim.

Funds for the production of Forum are provided by the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, the Generosity Foundation, and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.