Hey, I'm Tracy Mumford. You can join me every weekday morning for the headlines from the New York Times. Now, we're about to see a spectacle that we've never seen before. It's a show that catches you up on the biggest news stories of the day. I'm here in West Square. We'll put you on the ground where news is unfolding. I just got back from a trip out to the front line, and every soldier- And bring you the analysis and expertise you can only get from the Times newsroom. I just can't emphasize enough how extraordinary this moment is. Look for the headlines wherever you get your podcasts. 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. Yeah. I no longer have access. Okay. Yeah, I don't even know. I'm looking in my office. I have, again, pictures of me and my buddies Iraq and Afghanistan. I have a Marine Corps flag behind me. There's a pit in my stomach. I'm a little combat vet going to work at the VA. I was like, no one's really coming after us.

And then I thought the VA would be fine. No. I'm totally fired now. If I'm getting fired, who's next? I thought I'd be the safest, and I was one of the first to go. From the New York Times, I'm Michael Barbaro. 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 return 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 effective distracted. When they woke 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, buy layouts 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, yeah. Why do you want to be anonymous? I'm afraid that I will be targeting 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 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 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 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 are 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. We all were baffled that they thought, first 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. The thought is 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. It was like, Oh, gosh, should we not even be saying that? That afternoon, in fact, several colleagues that had been working on DEI 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 all said, What's coming next? Fast forward, I don't know, a couple of days, and I got the fork in the road email. Down 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. I It came on January 28. It came a different time, so we all got it in the evening. Mine came about 10: 00 PM. Everybody first thought it was like a fishing email. I read it on my work cell phone, and I called out to my fiancé just being like, fork in the road? Are you kidding me? Are you kidding me? The email 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 the horror film, the call is coming from inside the house.

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 of years ago, I was working for the federal government about 15 hours a day. I did that because I believed in the work. 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 Actually coming from a government email address. 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 brow beaten into quitting.

If anything, it 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 US Agency for International Development, is uncertain. Over the weekend, Elon Musk threatened to, quote, unquote, eliminate the main US agency handling foreign assistance. I was in an off-site 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 2: 00, Marco Rubio had sent out the stop work order. My colleague said, I'm really sorry, but we have to end this meeting immediately. 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. Then on Tuesday, around 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.

We met around 11: 00, and then we walked over to the USA 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. We 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, photographs of 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 a hallway empty frames, which was very bizarre. After we said goodbye to our colleagues, we all went downstairs, and the security guards who were 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, 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. Then we all said goodbye. Watching the dominoes fall with USA ID, what happens when Elon Musk and his buddies turn their attention to us? Once my friends of friends started saying, Yeah, I'm at USAID, we have no idea how we're going to 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. Especially in the wake of USAID being dismantled, it feels like we're next on the chopping block. We'll be right back. I'm Valerie Hopkins. I cover Russia for the New York Times.. It's pretty difficult to report from Russia. Often, I'm the only New York Times reporter in the country. When I'm talking to Russians, people sometimes ignore me or worse. Okay, he didn't want to talk. It's not always easy approaching Russians as an American. Sometimes these discussions are uncomfortable, but they're important because Times readers really benefit from hearing what ordinary Russians think. Very often, it's different from the expectations people might have.

I keep working in Russia because what happens here matters, and our audience deserves to get a broad perspective of the world that they live in. If you want to make sure we can keep doing this work, subscribe to the New York Times. I have been concerned about my job because I was a probationary employee, which just means that I was a newer hire. Being a probationary employee, I was like, I know that 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. They had one hour where she and all the other, they called them 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 this decision. Do you want to retain this person or no? Then you have to write a justification for why you want to keep them. They had 200 characters to write this justification up.

Then on our team, it became really apparent that Doge 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 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. All that's going through my mind is, Here I am, I'm going to be judged by somebody that's not quite half my age in a 15-minute call. Fifteen minutes. The hiring process took almost six months for me. 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. I know I'm not a low performer, 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 not be able to eat or sleep. It 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. I'm a combat vet going to work at the VA. I was like, no one's really coming after us. And then 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 for the inauguration. Are you okay with me using your name? Yeah, I There's no turning back now. I really don't care. My name Andrew Lennix, 35 years old. What I work for is the Veterans Health Administration. Our job is to provide medical service to either veterans or family members of veterans. I love it. I love everything about it. I knew I belonged here my first day when I walked through the doors and there was a Vietnam vet that saw Marine Corps keychain, slapped my bag, called me a jarhead.

It's a place where you fit. Once you leave the military, you do feel like you're alone. But then once you're here, everybody's your family. Then I was at home 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 the 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. 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 because I knew it died, and I plug in and I was like, Well, let's see if I got fired. I was joking. Then when it turned on, I opened my email and I said, I got fired. I was working for the Department of Energy. The 13th, the 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 distressed. So I heard my workstation alarm. I had forgotten to turn off my speakers, which sounds 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 tried to sign into my laptop. It did not work. And so I tried again. It did not work. I shut down and restarted. It would not work. I I was like, had an extremely tight chest. I was so shocked at the way it was playing out. I worked 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 07: 06 PM, 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. Then I got an email saying all of those terminations were rescinded. 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. Ten 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 to my poor performance. And then I immediately texted my direct supervisor. I 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. She comes back and says, I'm so sorry. And then she's like, I got the same one.

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. It I feel punitive and inhumane, if I may. It's just you feel guttied. Our president, our administration right now does not care. They could care less. I feel 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 send 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 it's Yeah, they're cowards. My sense when terms of draining the swamp were being thrown around before was that it was more directed at politicians and lobbyists and not 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, 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. 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've had people have already been asking me, send me your resume. 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 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 management that holds us together. They can work without me. We wouldn't be an efficient organization if you didn't have those backup plans. But it's one of those things where 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 have 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. 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 US policy toward Russia, which has sought over the past few years to isolate regulate 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, US Secretary of State, Marco Rubio, said that Russia had demonstrated what he saw as a genuine interest in ending its war on Ukraine. He praised President Trump for pursuing normal generalized 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 Tennisketter, Stella Tan, Anna Foley, and Jessica Cheung, with help from Sydney Harbor. It was edited by Devon Taylor, contains original music by Dan Powell, Pat McCusker, and Sophia Landman, and was engineered by Chris Wood. Our theme music is by Jim Brunberg and Ben Lanfolk of Wunderland. Ansford of WNDYRLE. That's it for The Daily. I'm Michael Babara. See you tomorrow.