A fork (still) in the road

You've heard of the "Freshman 15"... how about the "DOGE 15"? This is how some federal employees have referred to the stress associated with the establishment of the Department of Government Efficiency back in January and the "restructurings, realignments, and reductions in force https://www.opm.gov/about-us/fork/original-email-to-employees/" that came with it, as announced in an email sent to nearly all federal employees with the subject line, "Fork in the Road." Federal workers have found community in the FedNews https://www.reddit.com/r/fednews/ subreddit: "A vital, independent hub for U. S. federal employees to navigate the bureaucracy, protect our careers, and support one another." r/FedNews is our hub for this episode. Back in April, Amory and Ben spoke with three of its members: one of whom is still a federal employee, another who participated in the Deferred Resignation Program, and another who was laid off along with thousands of other probationary employees, only to be offered his job back. We hear their stories as the country faces another fork in the road: a government shutdown that the White House has said could result in further reductions in force — specifically of federal jobs that are "not consistent with the president's priorities https://www.wbur.org/npr/nx-s1-5552789/trump-government-shutdown-plan-memo?utm_source=sfmc&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=WBURToday_Editorial_092525&utm_term=https%3a%2f%2fwww.wbur.org%2fnpr%2fnx-s1-5552789%2ftrump-government-shutdown-plan-memo&utm_id=144323&sfmc_id=16802388." Show notes: r/FedNews https://www.reddit.com/r/fednews/ (Reddit) "Fork in the Road https://www.opm.gov/about-us/fork/original-email-to-employees/" email E's post https://www.reddit.com/r/fednews/comments/1jrbxjh/grieving_for_our_country_just_grief/ (Reddit) Jacob's post https://www.reddit.com/r/fednews/comments/1jffwkf/i_declined_my_reinstatement_offer/ (Reddit) This content was originally created for audio. An auto-generated transcript is available on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. Heads up that some elements (i.e. music, sound effects, tone) are harder to translate to text.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

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• 1:12Ben Brock Johnson?

  How are you doing?

• 1:17Ben Brock Johnson?

  How are you sleeping?

• 1:19Speaker 04

  Oh, there's been discussion, I think, relevant to this on r/fednews. There's the Doge 15. Have you heard this?

• 1:29Ben Brock Johnson?

  No, but I'm-

• 1:30Speaker 04

  Like the freshman 15? Everybody's like, why are my pants tight? It's the Doge 15.

• 1:38Amory Sivertson?

  This is Fearful Fed. That's how we'll be referring to him, anyway. He works for the federal government. Doing what?

• 1:46Speaker 04

  I'm gonna try to talk around which agency exactly I work for. I've been on the job for about 10 years, and I served in the military before that.

• 1:56Amory Sivertson?

  So what else can you tell us about your job?

• 2:01Speaker 04

  They have creamer in the refrigerator if you buy it. There's no free coffee in the federal government, for sure.

• 2:09Ben Brock Johnson?

  A decade ago, Fearful Fed was working in the tech sector, where there was a lot of free coffee, he says, and free breakfast.

• 2:17Amory Sivertson?

  And lunch.

• 2:18Ben Brock Johnson?

  And free dinner.

• 2:19Speaker 04

  You know, I took a $30,000 pay cut to join the federal government and also left all the free food behind.

• 2:26Amory Sivertson?

  So why did you want to work for the federal government?

• 2:29Speaker 04

  Service.

• 2:32Speaker 04

  I was making tools for people in the federal government, and that was fun and compelling. But whenever I would sit down with somebody and teach them how to use the tool, I was like, really, I kind of wish I was doing your job, you know? Fighting the bad guys, fighting the good fight.

• 2:47Ben Brock Johnson?

  We are keeping things pretty vague here, clearly. This isn't even Fearful Fed's actual voice because he's fearful, in part because of the nature of his work, which he did tell us much more about and does involve actual fights being fought in some cases.

• 3:05Amory Sivertson?

  But also, more recently, because of things like this.

• 3:09Speaker 04

  One of my very good friends was fired yesterday. Their entire office was closed. These dozens of people are just gone. They just don't have a job.

• 3:28Amory Sivertson?

  We spoke to Fearful Fed back in April, when he and a lot of other federal workers were spending a lot of time in a particular community on Reddit.

• 3:38Ben Brock Johnson?

  How long have you been part of r/fednews?

• 3:41Speaker 04

  I did not discover r/fednews until probably January 20th, somewhere around that.

• 3:48Ben Brock Johnson?

  All right, all right.

• 3:50Amory Sivertson?

  Fed News, a "vital independent hub for US federal employees to navigate the bureaucracy, protect our careers, and support one another." That's what it's become, at least. It's also "our" hub for this episode. But from what Fearful Fed's heard, for most of its dozen years of existence, this subreddit was a pretty boring place.

• 4:15Speaker 04

  You know, what are the cost of living adjustments going to be this year? I don't know, maybe it'll be 0.5% instead of, you know, 0.2%. Very nerdy, not at all political, and not at all known outside of some pretty niche audiences.

• 4:31Ben Brock Johnson?

  But on January 20th, of course, a new administration took office. That same day, an executive order officially established the Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE. Days later, federal employees like Fearful Fed heard from the Office of Personnel Management, or OPM, basically the government's HR department, in the form of a very unofficial-looking, maybe spam, email.

• 4:57Speaker 04

  We all assumed it was fake, and then we had to get another email from our agency saying, "No, no, no, no, actually, that's a real email, but it's just a test. Don't worry about it."

• 5:09Amory Sivertson?

  Then, the so-called "fork in the road" email came. Remember that old chestnut? This was the message that went out to nearly all federal employees about a week into the new administration, announcing that the majority of federal agencies were likely going to be downsized through, quote, "restructurings, realignments, and reductions in force," or RIFs.

• 5:32Speaker 04

  For like, the first couple of weeks of the administration, I was on Fed News every day. And around the time that the fork in the road email came out, everybody was trying to understand it. And I think that that was the platform for trying to understand what was going on.

• 5:47Ben Brock Johnson?

  OPM also updated its FAQ section, encouraging employees to look for work in the private sector.

• 5:54Speaker 04

  It was just so condescending that it was hard to believe it was real.

• 6:00Amory Sivertson?

  Condescending how?

• 6:02Speaker 04

  The phrase that sticks out to me was, "We think you can be more productive outside the federal workforce." And it was just like, you don't have a clue who I am as an individual because you sent this to everyone. And how do you measure productivity? You know, I think I deliver a lot of value for the American people. It's not easily quantifiable, maybe, but it felt naive and insulting at the same time.

• 6:28Ben Brock Johnson?

  It's safe to say there's been a fair amount of uncertainty for federal employees across bureaus and agencies since January. And for tens of thousands of them, Fearful Fed included, the Fed News subreddit has been a lifeline.

• 6:43Speaker 04

  I would say Fed News is now, you know, one part emotional support group, one part, what the hell is going on? Please, you know, confirm if this is true. One part, like, legal aid, you know? There's a lot of people who have already lost their jobs and who kind of don't know where to turn.

• 7:02Speaker 06

  Why does it feel like nobody outside of the government cares what's happening right now?

• 7:07Speaker 07

  I'm going to work tomorrow just to get fired.

• 7:09Speaker 08

  You literally can't make this stuff up.

• 7:12Speaker 07

  Hold the line. Don't resign.

• 7:14Speaker 08

  Supervisor told us to stop posting on Reddit.

• 7:24Ben Brock Johnson?

  Those were our colleagues reading from Fed News, but today, we're hearing from three members of this online community, federal workers, present and former, who have had to rethink what it means to serve their country at a fork in the road. I'm Ben Brock Johnson.

• 7:42Amory Sivertson?

  I'm Amory Sivertson, and this is Endless Thread.

• 7:45Ben Brock Johnson?

  Coming to you from WBUR, Boston's federally defunded NPR.

• 8:00Speaker 09

  The title of my post says, grieving for our country, just grief.

• 8:04Amory Sivertson?

  This is E., a Redditor. Real voice, not real name, just her first initial.

• 8:11Speaker 09

  I am newly resigned federal employee.

• 8:15Ben Brock Johnson?

  Newly resigned as of April, when E. opted into the second round of the Deferred Resignation Program, or DRP. It was a wrenching decision, as she shared in this post on Fed News.

• 8:27Speaker 09

  I want to hold the line, but the reality is getting fired next week, the moment the DRP deadline passes. If there's a government left standing, it will be because good people stayed, and I'm walking away. I feel like I'm abandoning the country I love, but it's like quitting with a gun to my head. I'm just so sad. Solidarity to you all. We don't deserve what has happened.

• 8:50Amory Sivertson?

  What can you tell us about the federal job that you just left?

• 8:55Speaker 09

  I'm proud to say I worked for the United States Department of Agriculture.

• 8:59Ben Brock Johnson?

  Can you give us like a broad strokes piece of this?

• 9:03Speaker 09

  Yeah, I worked in an agency called the Food Nutrition Service, which administers things like SNAP, or you might have heard them called food stamps, WIC, school lunch, Food for Food Banks, programs like that.

• 9:16Ben Brock Johnson?

  So helping people who have some level of food insecurity have more food security.

• 9:22Speaker 09

  Yep, exactly.

• 9:26Amory Sivertson?

  E lives and works not in DC, as you might be imagining for a federal employee, but in the capital of a southern state. Again, keeping it vague here because E is choosing to share her story at a time when she's also back on the job market. She calls her work with the USDA her "dream job." She'd only been doing it for about two years. Before that, she'd been working as a lobbyist on food security issues.

• 9:53Speaker 09

  You're kind of orbiting government. You're not in it. But the hope for me, at least always, was to be serving my country from inside the agency that, you know, that we lobbied all the time. I think also for me, you know, just as long as I can remember, every federal employee I interacted with in life, even as a little kid, whether it's the mailman or the lady at the driver's license place, I always thought to myself, like, what a cool job.

• 10:23Ben Brock Johnson?

  So wait, you like the lady at the driver's license place? You're one of the few people who likes? Those people.

• 10:31Amory Sivertson?

  Those are people too, Ben.

• 10:33Speaker 09

  Those are people too. I think that, you know, I'm probably the person at the driver's license place that's telling her she did a good job and thanking her for her service.

• 10:41Ben Brock Johnson?

  Hmm, that's cool.

• 10:42Speaker 09

  Knowing that the person before me might have yelled at her.

• 10:44Ben Brock Johnson?

  For the record, I have not yelled at the DMV worker, but as you can tell, E., like Fearful Fed, reveres this kind of service.

• 10:53Amory Sivertson?

  Unlike Fearful Fed, she obviously did leave her government job, though she really didn't think she would when she first got the fork in the road email explaining the deferred resignation program.

• 11:04Speaker 09

  I started out very resolute, like many of the fellow posters on the Fed News channel, and they were going to have to pry my oath of office from my cold, dead hands. As time went on and weeks went on and, you know, the, the conversation shifted a bit, it also just became very stressful and fearful, which is the point. They've said that's the point.

• 11:31Ben Brock Johnson?

  After the fork in the road email, OPM started ramping up its employee monitoring, demanding a bullet pointed list of accomplishments each week. They also ramped up the pressure, he says.

• 11:45Speaker 09

  We just got email after email after email about the DRP program, you know, quit, we'll pay you to quit, you should quit, there's going to be rifts, we're going to reorganize. Have you heard about quitting? You should quit, you know?

• 11:57Amory Sivertson?

  There are so many posts in the Fed News community about these emails with titles like, "These OPM emails feel like harassment," and "Responding to OPM: Know Your Rights."

• 12:11Speaker 09

  It was clear that this was a decision that they wanted us to make without all of the information and on a very short timeline.

• 12:19Amory Sivertson?

  And E. wasn't just making the decision for herself. She has three kids.

• 12:24Speaker 09

  I am a single mom. I just bought a house in October. You know, it just became a math problem. This is not a choice between keeping my job or not. It's a choice between getting paid X amount through DRP or getting paid X amount through severance. But the outcome to me was always going to be the same, which is that you don't get to keep your job anymore.

• 12:46Ben Brock Johnson?

  The decision for E was hard to accept, but not necessarily hard to make because the math of it all was easy. If she resigned, she'd get her full salary and benefits through the end of September, about five months of pay. If she got riffed, so to speak, she'd only get a week of pay for each year of service. So two weeks of pay, five months versus two weeks with three kids and a new house.

• 13:14Amory Sivertson?

  And E says a lot of people from her team made that same choice for their own reasons, family math or otherwise. Since January, 14% of the USDA's staff took some sort of buyout, like the DRP. The Trump administration has requested a $7 billion budget cut for the department in 2026. And now the department is in the process of a reorganization that will consolidate its offices and relocate many of its remaining employees.

• 13:44Speaker 09

  They are working under incredibly stressful circumstances with an administration that is quite hostile to them. And now they're doing the work of what used to be a much bigger team. So I wish all of them luck and strength and, you know, fortitude in the days ahead.

• 14:08Ben Brock Johnson?

  We spoke to E back in April when her decision to leave was still really fresh. She told us at the time that she actually had to step away from the Fed News subreddit.

• 14:17Speaker 09

  It's so stressful to log in and just immediately see 17 more executive orders and the unions are falling and like just it's it's so overwhelming.

• 14:28Ben Brock Johnson?

  Yeah.

• 14:29Speaker 09

  It's gotten a lot bigger, a lot more attention. It's gotten much more, you know, the times we're living in are bigger than just questions about how do I change my PTO days or like, should I ask my boss about this, you know? And now there's all these spin offs of what used to just be the Fed News channel. There's all these spin off ones because people felt like it got too big and it got full of bots and stuff like that.

• 14:53Amory Sivertson?

  The moderators of the Fed News subreddit declined to comment on just how much the community has grown since Trump took office in January. But we know it's more than tripled. At the time we're recording this, it has more than half a million members, not all of whom are federal workers necessarily. And there were concerns that people from OPM could be lurking in the community and keeping tabs on the conversations being had there. But mostly, Eze just found words of support.

• 15:25Speaker 09

  You gotta look out for yourself and your family and serve your state, serve your community, go be on a school board or PTA or, you know, federal service is not the only way to serve your country. Like, find, find your next thing.

• 15:37Ben Brock Johnson?

  Its support, Eze says, she hasn't always gotten from her IRL community.

• 15:42Speaker 09

  I mean, some of them are realizing, like, well, I really support you and I wish you hadn't lost your job. You know, but I think for most people, the, you know, people who work in government are the lady at the driver's license office, who maybe they didn't have a great experience with, or they call the IRS and nobody answers the phone. So they have this abstract idea of who government employees are, rather than realizing, we are your next door neighbors. We're the mom at school drop off. We're just regular people trying to pay our bills and raise our kids like anybody else.

• 16:16Amory Sivertson?

  So what's next for you?

• 16:18Speaker 09

  Yeah, I am gonna get back into consulting with nonprofits and, and a lot of nonpartisan organizations that work on voter registration and democracy reform. And I joke, but it's not a joke. Elon Musk is not going to kill my civic spirit. I, I have to keep that alive, so I'm gonna keep doing that.

• 16:42Ben Brock Johnson?

  How old are your kids?

• 16:43Speaker 09

  Six, five and two, so I'm also gonna be busy with that.

• 16:47Ben Brock Johnson?

  Yeah. How, how do you think about talking to them about what's going on in your life? And, and I guess, are you worried about your ability to provide for them?

• 17:02Speaker 09

  Uh, yes and no. You know, I'm, I try really hard to instill patriotism in my kids. That's an important value to me. I have a whole nerdy shelf of books about the Star Spangled Banner and the, you know, it used to be more about crying when I'd see the Capitol and teaching my kids the song "This Land Is Your Land" and stuff like that. Uh, but it's also become a little bit difficult, right? Uh, cause I don't know if that stuff exists anymore. Um, I don't know if I can look at them with a straight face and say the United States of America is the, you know, the best democracy that's ever been. Um, as far as, you know, what's next in my work life, I'm, I'm still educated and experienced and somebody somewhere will want to hire me.

• 17:56Ben Brock Johnson?

  Coming up, one more member of the Fed News community at the beginning of his career, looking forward to the stability of a government job. Until...

• 18:06Speaker 10

  They say ignorance is bliss. I really did not think any of this was gonna happen. I had never even imagined it, really.

• 18:12Amory Sivertson?

  Bliss Disrupted in a minute.

• 18:31Speaker 00

  Support for this podcast comes from Is Business Broken?, a podcast from the Marotra Institute at BU Questrom School of Business. How should employers measure real skills in the age of AI?

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• 20:10Ben Brock Johnson?

  January 13th, 2025.

• 20:13Amory Sivertson?

  Exactly one week before the second inauguration of Donald Trump.

• 20:17Ben Brock Johnson?

  Jacob Saunders, real name, a guy in his mid-20s, who had recently gotten a master's degree in Homeland Security, a real degree that you can get, starts a government job at...

• 20:29Amory Sivertson?

  The Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services.

• 20:34Speaker 10

  A lot of great benefits and was on a good track, you know, to start my career.

• 20:40Ben Brock Johnson?

  Five weeks later...

• 20:41Speaker 10

  On February 15th, I believe, I was let go as a probationary employee. I was a part of the probationary layoffs.

• 20:50Amory Sivertson?

  Probationary as in he'd only been on the job a month.

• 20:54Ben Brock Johnson?

  And February 15th, as in checks calendar, a Saturday, his job was terminated on a frickin' Saturday.

• 21:02Speaker 10

  I knew it wasn't performance-related. As to why I got let go, I knew it was because of, you know, the Donald Trump news, the news that he wanted all the federal agencies to fire the probationary employees. And so...

• 21:15Amory Sivertson?

  And so Jacob and upwards of 200,000 probationary federal workers suddenly were federal workers no longer. But in the email Jacob got from the Office of Personnel Management, that's how people should lose their jobs, right, Ben? An email?

• 21:32Ben Brock Johnson?

  That's how I would prefer to lose mine, yeah. Specifically, a Saturday email.

• 21:38Amory Sivertson?

  Oh, yes.

• 21:38Ben Brock Johnson?

  That's what I want.

• 21:39Amory Sivertson?

  Gotta be a Saturday.

• 21:41Speaker 10

  And it did say like, oh, we've deemed that you're unfit for the position. But I knew that was kind of just a mass email. I knew that didn't really apply to me, so.

• 21:49Amory Sivertson?

  Wow, that's the language that they used. You are unfit for the position?

• 21:53Speaker 10

  Yeah, it's pretty cold hearted, but it's like, wow. I was just hired five weeks ago, so five weeks I was qualified and now I'm not.

• 22:02Ben Brock Johnson?

  We have seen this email, which does include the line, quote, "Your performance has not been adequate to justify further employment at the agency," unquote, to which Jacob says, "What performance?"

• 22:15Speaker 10

  I hadn't even really been given any responsibility in those first five weeks. I was really just learning, doing trainings and then sitting in on meetings, taking notes, trying to learn as much as possible. So it really was like, just a ridiculous statement to me.

• 22:32Amory Sivertson?

  This email also had clearly been autofilled with Jacob's title in all caps throughout, like a Mad Lib or something. Quote, "I am removing you from your position of Management and Program Analyst and Federal Service, consistent with the above references." Oh, except in one spot, they forgot to autofill. Quote, "On blank, the agency appointed you to the position of Management and Program Analyst." It is a joke.

• 23:02Ben Brock Johnson?

  And sadly, not a joke.

• 23:05Speaker 10

  It almost seemed like it was AI generated. Like, it didn't even feel like a person wrote it. And it didn't come from like a person, like it didn't come from their email address. It came from, you know, OPM, Office of Personnel Management.

• 23:18Amory Sivertson?

  Jacob was new to everything at the time when it comes to being a federal employee, including being a member of the Fed News subreddit.

• 23:27Speaker 10

  At first, it was a godsend. I mean, it still is. I love it. I'm still in it, even though I'm not a federal employee anymore. But it was like so nice to know that some other people felt like I did, because they really did feel like it was just me who was panicking about everything that was going on. But no, there was a whole group.

• 23:45Speaker 10

  All the stories start to sound the same, you know? People say, hey, like, I had performance reviews and I had absolutely no problem. Like, they were all satisfactory. And then I got fired for what was stated as a performance-related issue.

• 24:00Amory Sivertson?

  Reading other people's stories in Fed News also started to make Jacob feel pretty lucky in some ways.

• 24:06Speaker 10

  I thank God that, like, I got the news via email. So I know people were saying, hey, like, I started crying at my desk when they fired me. You know, and that's, you really feel for those people. You really feel for the people who, you know, maybe they're sick and they now are losing access to their health insurance. You know, I've heard stories like that. And so those are the stories that really resonate with me, is the emotional feeling behind getting fired, more so than just, you know, the act of getting fired.

• 24:35Ben Brock Johnson?

  We found Jacob because of a particular post he made in the Fed News subreddit after being laid off. But this post is not what you might expect.

• 24:44Speaker 10

  So, yeah, I was unemployed for about a month. And a month later, they offered the job back to me.

• 24:50Amory Sivertson?

  And Jacob got his job back and lived happily ever after. Just kidding. The title of his Fed News post?

• 24:58Speaker 10

  I declined my reinstatement offer.

• 25:04Ben Brock Johnson?

  Here's some more of that post.

• 25:05Speaker 10

  So they gave me less than 24 hours to make a decision, which was not ideal. I'd also have to start immediately. After some thought, I declined my offer, mostly because I had to call in favors to get my old part-time jobs back after I got fired in February. And it wouldn't be right to leave those part-time jobs high and dry without a proper two weeks' notice, especially since they helped me when I was in need. Of course, I want my old job back, but I don't want to go back to work if I'm just going to get fired again. My time and my mental well-being are both more valuable than the money I'd make from my old job.

• 25:43Amory Sivertson?

  One of the part-time jobs Jacob referenced there is coaching high school lacrosse, which doesn't pay a lot, he admits, but he says it's been a healthy distraction.

• 25:53Ben Brock Johnson?

  You must get sick as shit of people saying this to you, but like you, you're at the very beginning of your career. What does it feel like to be in this position of, um, I was headed in this direction. I like had a plan. I had a job.

• 26:10Amory Sivertson?

  I had a master's degree.

• 26:11Ben Brock Johnson?

  I had a master's degree. Like I did the thing that you're supposed to do. Like I went to school. I got a job and like, it's like a, a real sputtering start to something that's supposed to be like the rest of your life.

• 26:26Speaker 10

  Yeah, it's tough. I mean, I, I would be lying if I told you it wasn't tough because, you know, here I am with no job again. But there, there's the story of, um, it's an ancient story. I don't know what the title is, but the, the moral of the story, I won't tell the story, but the moral of the story is.

• 26:43Ben Brock Johnson?

  No, I want the story. I want the story, Jacob. Let's have the story.

• 26:46Speaker 10

  I'll tell the story. I'm, I'm gonna mess it up. So, so forgive me, but.

• 26:50Ben Brock Johnson?

  I'll get.

• 26:51Speaker 10

  So there's a man, right? And he finds a wild horse.

• 26:54Amory Sivertson?

  The man's neighbor comes up to him and says, basically, wow, you found this wild horse that's gonna help you so much. The man says.

• 27:03Speaker 10

  Who knows what's good or bad?

• 27:07Ben Brock Johnson?

  Who knows what's good or bad? A week later, the man's son is riding the wild horse and he falls off, breaks his arm.

• 27:16Speaker 10

  And then the neighbor comes up and says, oh my gosh, your son has a broken arm. Now he's not gonna be able to work. You know, what are you gonna do? And the man's like, who knows what's good or bad?

• 27:25Amory Sivertson?

  The next week, someone from the army comes by the man's house. There's a war going on. They're looking for able-bodied young men, but the son has a broken arm. Can't go.

• 27:37Speaker 10

  And then the neighbor comes up to him and says, oh, well, that's good. Your son didn't get drafted. The man says, who knows what's good or bad? And so the moral of the story is who knows what's good or bad? Like it could be, this is a bad situation to be in, but ultimately like, who knows what's gonna happen next in my life? I'm still young. Like maybe this is, the next opportunity is waiting right around the corner.

• 28:07Ben Brock Johnson?

  It's been six months since we first spoke to all three of these Fed News members. Jacob hasn't found another full-time job yet, but he says he's throwing his resume out there and hoping for the best. He still feels like one of the lucky ones, not having a mortgage to pay or kids to feed.

• 28:23Amory Sivertson?

  E, the former USDA worker who took part in the Deferred Resignation Program, has both a mortgage and kids to feed. Her DRP pay and benefits ended at the end of September. We haven't heard back from her yet about whether she's found another job, but Elon Musk has. He left DOGE at the end of May. By that point, upwards of 100,000 federal employees had taken the DRP buyout. Even more had been fired.

• 28:52Ben Brock Johnson?

  We can't know the full ripple effects of the administration's cuts and executive orders yet, or even which ones will survive legal action. And in some cases, like Jacob's, federal employees are being offered their jobs back. Not that they will necessarily take them.

• 29:08Amory Sivertson?

  Then again, at the time we're wrapping this episode, Thursday, October 2, 2025, federal workers are in a new kind of precarious position. The government shut down this week after the Senate failed to pass a spending bill. The White House has said that this could result in more RIFs, specifically of federal jobs that are, quote, "not consistent with the president's priorities." Those notices are supposedly coming in the next couple of days, to which people in Fed News have asked, "Aren't RIFs explicitly barred during shutdowns?"

• 29:44Ben Brock Johnson?

  Historically, yes. Legally? Unclear, particularly at a time when legal precedent doesn't necessarily mean case closed. In the meantime, millions of federal workers are expected to be furloughed, and the precarity in Fed News is palpable. Comments like, "Damn, my agency leadership has still not told us what to do today," and "The whole RIF thing is kind of killing the snow day vibe."

• 30:16Amory Sivertson?

  Another Redditor urged people to show compassion for their fellow Feds during this time, regardless of their politics. "We don't know what tomorrow brings for any of us," they wrote. "But we do know that kindness costs nothing, and it matters most when people are at their lowest." As for Fearful Fed, he's still a Fed, still has the same job. But as he told us in a follow-up interview, he's also, in some ways, still fearful.

• 30:44Speaker 04

  My loyalty has always been to America, and that's been a very simple equation. Now it's more complex, and it's uncomfortable. I think they're making it uncomfortable, like deliberately. And right now, in this kind of new atmosphere, I fear that many of us are going to get fired, not because we're disloyal to the Constitution, but because we will not sacrifice that loyalty to the Constitution. And that's just a completely fundamental shift from every other administration change. You never had to consider that.

• 31:20Ben Brock Johnson?

  So Fearful Fed says a lot still feels unpredictable. He doesn't know what's good or bad, at least in the long term.

• 31:30Amory Sivertson?

  One thing he does know, as he told us in our initial conversation, he can't control the federal government. He can't control his agency within it. But he hasn't lost sight of the agency he has.

• 31:43Speaker 04

  I only want to serve if I can serve with integrity. And once I can no longer serve with integrity, I'll just leave. And once I came to that realization, it was actually, like, pretty liberating.

• 32:09Amory Sivertson?

  Endless Thread is a production of WBUR in Boston. This episode was written and produced by me, Amory Sivertson, and co-hosted by me and...

• 32:19Ben Brock Johnson?

  Ben Brock Johnson. It was edited by Meg Kramer. Mix and sound design by our production manager, Paul Vikes.

• 32:25Amory Sivertson?

  The rest of our team is Dean Russell, Franny Monahan, Grace Tatter, managing producer Sumit Joshi, and Emily Jankowski, who also lent her voice to this episode, along with Paul Vikes, and some of our other colleagues, Caleb Green, Steph Brown, Ali Jar Manning, and Mike Moskato as Fearful Fed.

• 32:45Ben Brock Johnson?

  Endless Thread is a show about the blurred lines between online communities and patriotism under duress.

• 32:51Amory Sivertson?

  This is probably also a great time to remind you that we have a secure tips line.

• 32:56Ben Brock Johnson?

  It is a great time. You can email us at wburec [email protected] and you can text or call us via Signal at 646-456-9095. Hope to hear from you.

• 33:26Speaker 00

  Support for this podcast comes from Is Business Broken?, a podcast from the Marotra Institute at BU Questram School of Business. Follow Is Business Broken wherever you get your podcasts and listen on for a preview of a recent episode featuring Janet Kang, Executive Director of the Just Horizons Alliance, on who stands to benefit from AI in education.

• 33:49Speaker 13

  I am absolutely in favor of AI in learning in the right context.

• 33:54Speaker 12

  And just to explain why you're excited about it.

• 33:56Speaker 13

  Oh, my gosh, individualized support, right? Personalization and to be able to scale quality education in places where it was historically impossible. So for certain kinds of learners with different kinds of learning styles and disabilities, for example, speakers of different languages, there are amazing ways AI can boost learning. It just has to be with the right context. And age appropriateness is something we do a lot of work in because it is very different depending on where in that maturity cycle you are in terms of how your brain develops.

• 34:27Speaker 00

  Find the full episode by searching for Is Business Broken? wherever you get your podcasts and learn more about the Marotra Institute for Business Markets and Society at ibms.bu.edu.

• 34:45Speaker 02

  LinkedIn is pretty amazing at helping you grow your small business. We cannot stop your new clients from emailing you at 3 a.m.

• 34:54Speaker 02

  We can help you sell, market, and hire in one place. We cannot help you be in three places at once.

• 35:02Speaker 02

  And while we can't help you organize your calendar, LinkedIn can help you land more clients so you have a calendar to organize. Grow your small business on LinkedIn. Learn more at LinkedIn.com/smallbusiness.

• 35:15Speaker 12

  Now streaming on Paramount+. I'm Dexter Morgan. I've been killing killers for half my life. It gets to you. You're having a midlife crisis. I'm not ready for this. He's back. I'm older. I'm wiser. And sharper than ever. Things are gonna get messy. But if I can't believe in myself, I can't believe in anything. Dexter Resurrection. New season now streaming on the Paramount+ Premium Plan.