对许多人来说，联邦政府的工作是稳定的标志或为国家服务的方式，在某些情况下，这是一份“梦想”的工作。

　　但在特朗普政府开始入侵政府机构一周后，许多被裁员工对自己的未来感到担忧，对自己的下一步也一无所知。

　　伊丽莎白·安尼斯克维奇(Elizabeth Aniskevich)说，在被解雇几天后，消费者金融保护局的员工没有收到他们申请失业所需的文件，她在被告知工作被解雇前是该机构的诉讼律师。

　　“这真的是情绪的过山车，”她说。“我要说，我们这些被解雇的人之间的团结令人惊叹，但我们几乎无法获得信息。”

　　Aniskevich和其他70名仍在试用期的员工一起被解雇。他们中的许多人通过群聊保持联系。

　　“我们还没有收到申请失业的表格，”她说。“我们并不真正了解我们的健康保险何时终止，”她说。“我们只是没有信息。我们基本上被扔在了街上，所以这一直令人愤怒和心碎，我们的工资在我们收到解雇信的那天就停了，所以截至周二我们都没有薪水。”

　　“我们只是没有信息。我们基本上被扔在了街上。”

　　“我认为主要问题是，‘我们要做什么?’”她说。

　　“我一个人在家。我要为我的保险和抵押贷款负责，在我读完法学院后，我真的很努力地靠自己买下了这所房子，我不知道在未来很长一段时间里，我将如何继续支付抵押贷款，”她说。

　　Aniskevich说她选择为CFPB工作是因为她生长在一个崇尚服务的军人家庭。

　　“我的父亲在军队里呆了27年，他给我灌输了对这个国家和公共服务的承诺，”她说。

　　教育部律师凯蒂·巴特勒知道她在该机构的日子屈指可数了。

　　“自从特朗普政府开始执政以来，我们就知道联邦雇员将会减少，”她说。

　　她和她的同事也知道，第一批离开的人将是保护较少的试用员工。

　　虽然她预计会被解雇，但确定性来自“岔路口”通知，这是一封来自人事管理办公室(OPM)的电子邮件，介绍了一个名为“延期辞职”的新项目，允许他们继续工作到9月30日。据白宫称，大约75，000名联邦雇员接受了买断。

　　Butler还是宾夕法尼亚州Duquesne大学Thomas R. Kline法学院的兼职教授，她在该校获得了法律学位。

　　她说，当她收到岔路口的通知时，她正在上课，没有立即看到它。第二天，她收到了解雇信。

　　她的主管问，“你收到解雇通知了吗，因为我们不知道谁收到了。”

　　巴特勒并不因为她的突然终止而反对他们。

　　“我不认为这是来自他们，他们正在尽最大努力，但这不是你运行联邦政府系统的方式。”

　　"我去了法学院，因为我打算长期做一名公务员。"

　　巴特勒和她的同事被告知他们可以通过绩效系统保护委员会上诉，但她说她知道这个决定很难上诉。

　　失业也给她带来了经济上的打击——她6月份刚买了一栋房子，正在装修，还欠了大约14万美元的学生贷款。

　　巴特勒“大学一毕业”就开始为联邦政府工作。

　　在进入法学院之前，她曾在国家公园管理局和劳工统计局工作。2024年9月，她加入了教育部，尽管之前已经建立了职业地位，但她必须完成新的试用期。

　　她说她丢掉的工作是“我去法学院的确切工作之一。”

　　“就职业生涯而言，这与我的预期大相径庭，”她说。"我去了法学院，因为我打算长期做一名公务员。"

　　考虑到她所说的“处理这件事的方式有些不尊重人和欠考虑”，巴特勒说她会避开联邦政府。

　　“老实说，从个人角度来看，这真的很令人失望。”

　　她的计划是在一家中大型律师事务所或律师事务所从事普通诉讼。鉴于她的经验，她也考虑过当地政府的工作。

　　她可能去一个城市工作。即使现在，她“仍然致力于做好一名公务员，但不是在目前的情况下。”

　　维多利亚·德拉诺(Victoria DeLano)是位于阿拉巴马州伯明翰的教育部民权办公室的平等机会专家，她说当她上周收到失业通知时，她非常愤怒。

　　“我认为民权办公室所做的工作对我所在州的儿童绝对有帮助，”她说。

　　“当你从等式中去掉一个人员配备齐全的民权办公室时，你就去掉了一个解决问题的途径和一个执法的途径，一个真正重要的执法途径。”

　　“这些学生没有其他人了，”她说。他们仍然可以向OCR投诉。请理解OCR人员配备不足，并且OCR现在不能与你们所有人进行外部交流。所以我不知道他们会转向哪里，”她补充道。

　　德拉诺还称她的职位是“梦想的工作”。

　　“现在这种对我们政府的拆除只是在用一把大锤进行，而没有考虑到这些机构所服务的个人会受到什么影响。

　　“这是我非常热衷的事情，因为我相信我和残疾学生一起工作的历史，”她说。"所以我欣然接受了这份工作，并且非常喜欢它。"

　　她担心特朗普政府没有缩小联邦政府的明确计划，也没有考虑残疾学生。

　　她说:“我们的政府现在正在被一把大锤拆除，而没有考虑这些机构所服务的个人会受到什么影响。”。

　　巴特勒也赞同这种观点。

　　“建立一个政府系统需要一段时间，但当(你)这么快就摧毁它时，它可能会造成很大的破坏，”她说。“进展感觉很慢。我们可能需要100年的时间来重建。”

　　Fired federal workers see their dreams shattered and an uncertain future

　　For many, a federal government job was a marker of stability or a way to serve the country, in some cases a “dream” job.

　　But a week after the Trump administration started to hack away at government agencies, many employees who were cut are left fearing for their future and in the dark about their next steps.

　　Days after they'd been let go, employees at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau's hadn't received the paperwork they needed to file for unemployment, said Elizabeth Aniskevich, who was a litigation counsel for the agency before she was told her job was eliminated.

　　"It's really been a total roller coaster of emotions," she said. "I will say the solidarity among those of us who have been terminated has been amazing, but we can barely get information."

　　Aniskevich was fired with 70 other employees who were still in their probationary period. Many of them are keeping in touch through a group chat.

　　"We have not received forms that are requested to file for unemployment," she said. "We have no real understanding of when our health insurance terminates," she said. "We just have no information. We were just basically tossed out on the streets, and so that has been angering and heartbreaking, and our pay stopped the day we got the termination letter, so we're all without a paycheck as of Tuesday.”

　　"We just have no information. We were just basically tossed out on the streets."

　　"I think the main question is, ‘What are we going to do?’" she said.

　　"I'm a single person in my house. I'm responsible for my insurance and for my mortgage, and I worked really hard to buy this house on my own after putting myself through law school, and I don't know how I'm going to continue to make mortgage payments very far into the future," she said.

　　Aniskevich said she chose to work for the CFPB because she was raised in a military family that believed in service.

　　"My dad was in the military for 27 years, and he really instilled in me a commitment to this country and to public service," she said.

　　Katie Butler, a Department of Education lawyer, knew her days with the agency were numbered.

　　“Ever since the start of the Trump administration, we knew there would be a cut in federal employees,” she said.

　　She and her colleagues also knew that the first people to go would be probationary employees with less protection.

　　And while she expected to be terminated, certainty came with the “Fork in the Road” notice, an email from the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) that introduced a new program called “deferred resignation, that allowed them to continue to work until Sept. 30. Around 75,000 federal employees took the buyout, according to the White House.

　　Butler is also an adjunct professor at the Thomas R. Kline School of Law at Duquesne University in Pennsylvania, where she earned her law degree.

　　She says she was teaching a class when she got the Fork in the Road notice and didn't see it immediately. The next day, she got a termination letter.

　　Her supervisors asked, "Did you get a termination notice, because we don’t know who got one."

　　Butler doesn’t hold her abrupt termination against them.

　　“I don’t think this is coming from them, they are doing their best, but this is not the way you run the federal government system.”

　　“I went to law school because I planned to work long-term as a public servant.”

　　Butler and her colleagues were told they could appeal through the Merit Systems Protection Board but she says she knows the decision would be hard to appeal.

　　The loss of her job has also hit her financially -- she had just bought a house in June that she's been remodeling and also has student debt of around $140,000.

　　Butler began working for the federal government “right out of college.”

　　She worked for the National Park Service and at the Bureau of Labor Statistics before getting into law school. In September 2024, she joined the Department of Education, where she had to complete a new probationary period despite having previously established career status.

　　She says the job she lost was “one of the exact jobs I went to law school for.”

　　“Career-wise, this is a big detour from what I expected,” she said. “I went to law school because I planned to work long-term as a public servant.”

　　Given what she calls "the somewhat disrespectful and unthoughtful way this is being handled," Butler says she will take a detour away from the federal government.

　　“It’s honestly just really disappointing, from like a personal standpoint.”

　　Her plan is to go into general litigation at a mid-size to large law firm or a solicitor’s office. She has also considered local government work, given her experience.

　　She may go to work for a city. Even now, she is “still dedicated to doing good as a civil servant but not under the present circumstances.”

　　Victoria DeLano, who was an equal opportunity specialist in the education department’s Office for Civil Rights based in Birmingham, Alabama, said she was outraged when she received notice that she had lost her job last week.

　　“I think that the work that the Office for Civil Rights does is absolutely instrumental to children in my state,” she said.

　　“When you take out of the equation a fully staffed Office for Civil Rights, you're taking away an avenue to resolution and an avenue to law enforcement, a really important avenue to law enforcement.”

　　“These students have no one else," she said. They can still file complaints with OCR. Please understand OCR is understaffed at best, and OCR right now does not have external communication with you all. So I don't know where they turn,” she added.

　　DeLano also called her position a “dream job.”

　　“This dismantling of our government right now is just being done with a sledgehammer without thought of what are the implications be to the individuals who are serviced by these agencies.

　　“It's something that I'm extraordinarily passionate about because I believe with my history working with students with disabilities,” she said. “So I jumped at the chance to take this job, and absolutely loved it.”

　　She is concerned that the Trump administration has no clear plan to shrink the federal government, nor is it considering students with disabilities.

　　“This dismantling of our government right now is just being done with a sledgehammer without thought of what are the implications be to the individuals who are serviced by these agencies,” she said.

　　That sentiment is echoed by Butler.

　　“It takes a while to build a government system, but when [you] tear it down this quickly, it can cause a lot of damage,” she said. “The progress feels slow. This could take 100 years for us to rebuild.”