NEW YORK (AP) — Scrambling to replace their health insurance and to find new work, some laid-off federal workers are running into another unexpected unpleasantry: Relatives cheering their firing.
The country’s bitterly tribal politics are spilling into text chains, social media posts and heated conversations as Americans absorb the reality of the government’s cost-cutting measures. Expecting sympathy, some axed workers are finding family and friends who instead are steadfast in their support of what they see as a bloated government’s waste.
“I’ve been treated as a public enemy by the government and now it’s bleeding into my own family,” says 24-year-old Luke Tobin, who was fired last month from his job as a technician with the U.S. Forest Service in Idaho’s Nez Perce National Forest.
Tobin’s job loss sent him scurrying to fill prescriptions before he lost his health insurance and filling out dozens of applications to find whatever work he can, even if it’s at a fast-food restaurant. But some relatives reacting to his firing as “what has to happen to make the government great again” has been one of the worst parts of the entire ordeal.
“They can’t separate their ideology and their politics from supporting their own family and their own loved ones,” says Tobin.
Kristin Jenn got a similar response from members of her family after she learned the National Park Service ranger job she was due to start had been put on hold by the billionaire Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency hiring freeze. She thinks it’s likely the job will be eliminated altogether.
As she has expressed her disappointment over potentially losing her dream job, some members of her mostly conservative family have unfriended her on social media. Others are giving her the silent treatment. Nearly all favor such cuts even if she’s a victim of them.
“My life is disintegrating because I can’t work in my chosen field,” says Jenn, 47, from Austin, Texas. “Lump on top of that no support from family – it hits you very hard.”
The strife has extended to Jenn’s mother, a former federal employee herself. When she has criticized the administration’s actions, her mother simply says she supports the president.
“She has somehow been convinced that public servants are a parasite and unproductive even though she was a public servant,” says Jenn.
The federal job cuts are the work of DOGE, which has been tearing through agencies looking for suspected waste. No official tally of firings has been released, but the list stretches into the thousands and to nearly every part of the country.
More layoffs are expected as DOGE continues its work.
Eric Anderson, 48, of Chicago, was still absorbing the shock of being fired from his National Parks Service job as a biological science technician when he came across his aunt’s social media post celebrating the DOGE cuts. The gist, Anderson said, was, “Man, it sure is great seeing all this waste being knocked off.”
He grows angry thinking about it.
“Do you think I’m a waste?” he says, his voice rising as he recalls the post. “There are a lot of people out there that are hurting right now that are not a waste.”
Erica Stubbs, who was working as a forestry technician with the U.S. Forest Service in Boulder, Colorado, is avoiding social media after seeing hate for federal workers.
Though most people in her life have been supportive since she was fired, some have made passing comments about the necessity of eliminating jobs like hers.
“What they tell me is it’s just cutting out the waste, the excess spending — that your job’s not that important,” says 27-year-old Stubbs. “I’m not saying it’s the most important job in the world but it’s my job. It’s important to me.”
Social media is teeming with posts reveling the layoffs and urging DOGE: “Fire more!” In a fiercely divided country, many saw the cutbacks through their own political lens.
One man’s devastation, it turns out, can be another man’s delight.
Riley Rackliffe, who was working as an aquatic ecologist at Lake Mead National Recreation Area in Nevada, was buoyed that his firing led so many friends and relatives to reach out, offering to pass his resume along, call their congressman or even help with his mortgage.
Mixed with that, though, has been the vitriol.
When his firing made the local news, a Facebook posting of the story led to a storm of comments deriding him and championing the layoffs. One person called Riley, who is 36 and holds a Ph.D., a “glorified pool boy” whose job nearly anyone could do.
Even some of Rackliffe’s friends paired their expressions of consolation for Rackliffe with support for cutting jobs they contended were unnecessary government bloat.
“Hey, I’m sorry you lost your job but I think we really need to cut out some of this waste in the government,” Rackliffe said one friend texted him, saying he supported DOGE’s aims. “He basically said, ’We’ve got to do this. We’ve got to rip off the Band-Aid.”
What stings most, Rackliffe says, is the contention that people like him were lazy and worthless, collecting big paychecks for meaningless work.
“It’s really hurtful for the president to insinuate that you don’t exist or that your job consisted of sitting at home doing nothing and cashing the paycheck,” he says. “I’d like to see him sifting through spiny naiad in 120-degree weather looking for parasitic snails. He’s the one that goes golfing on the government dime. I don’t even know how to golf.”
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Matt Sedensky can be reached at [email protected] and https://x.com/sedensky.
