LEILA FADEL, HOST:
Now we have one story - one story of thousands of federal workers who've lost their jobs. She's going by Rose. She's 26, and she was hired by the Department of Energy in December.
GEOFF BRUMFIEL, BYLINE: We're letting Rose use her middle name because she still holds out hope she could work for the federal government again someday and worries she'll be retaliated against for talking about her experience. It all started late last Thursday.
ROSE: I was winding down for the day. And then all of a sudden, I get a notification ping that I hear on my desk.
BRUMFIEL: A co-worker said she needed to check her email right away. She opened it up and found a letter from the Department of Energy telling her she'd been terminated.
ROSE: DOE finds that your further employment would not be in the public interest.
BRUMFIEL: Rose was shocked, and she had plenty of company. Even longtime workers seemed confused.
ROSE: People who have been in the federal government 30, 40 year - like, we have never seen this before. This is unprecedented.
BRUMFIEL: And she didn't have much time. Her email was about to be shut off.
ROSE: I am now scrambling, trying to forward these attachments to myself. I'm also trying to reach out to folks and say my goodbyes and just say thank you for everything. I've had such a lovely experience here.
BRUMFIEL: By 11:30 that night, she'd been locked out of her work email. Rose had to let her family know she'd been fired - including her dad, a military veteran living in Florida.
ROSE: He's a very big Trump supporter.
BRUMFIEL: In fact, when she'd been hired, she'd had a conversation with him about her new federal job. She joked with him...
ROSE: If I lose this job, I'm going to pack a toothbrush and put all of my things in a little hobo satchel, and I'm knocking on your door. Little did I know that door would be destroyed later in the Florida hurricanes (laughter).
BRUMFIEL: That's right, her dad's house was destroyed in hurricanes Helene and Milton, which struck Florida in the fall. For Rose, it's a particularly bitter irony because her job was to try and help develop alternative energy sources.
ROSE: The work I was doing and supporting was directly relating to climate change, which is why, like, these natural disasters are on the rise - because of climate change.
BRUMFIEL: But Rose doesn't seem angry at her dad. In fact, if anything, she feels closer to him.
ROSE: I remember I was sitting at a dinner with my dad recently, and he was talking about, like, it feels like we are forgotten 'cause as soon as the hurricane in Florida happened, then it was North Carolina. Then it was the California wildfires. And there's a relationship between all of this. Federal employees feel forgotten. My dad, who voted for Trump, feels forgotten. Across the board, everybody just feels this sense of loss and just feels like, I'm not being heard.
BRUMFIEL: This moment in America feels so much bigger than her and her father, but she doesn't have a lot of time to reflect. She's got to find work.
ROSE: Those aren't going to stop because I lost my job. Car payments aren't going to stop because I lost my job. Student loans aren't going to stop because I lost my job.
BRUMFIEL: While searching for a new one, she's thought about parking herself on the sidewalk outside the Energy Department on the off chance they might take her back.
Geoff Brumfiel, NPR News.
(SOUNDBITE OF THE BARE BONES' "HOMESTEAD") Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by an NPR contractor. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record.
