WASHINGTON (AP) — A young economist who had uprooted her life for civil service. A fierce housing advocate terminated just before buying her first home. A semifinalist whose dreams were dashed before they materialized.
For decades, the Presidential Management Fellows program was seen as a building block for the civil service with the expectation that the few who earned the position would one day become leaders in the federal workforce. Now the road ahead is uncertain. Hundreds of the fellows have been terminated or placed on administrative leave amid a nationwide slashing of the federal workforce.
One of President Donald Trump's executive orders ended the program, which was created in 1978 to entice highly qualified workers with advanced degrees to join the federal government.
Trump's Republican administration had ordered agencies to lay off nearly all probationary employees, potentially affecting hundreds of thousands of workers in one fell swoop. That included recent classes of the fellows program, which has a two-year probationary period.
Fellows had persevered through an intense selection process that included multiple tests and evaluations as well as a blind interview. The agency website said about 10% of applicants are accepted, although that number has been recently as low as just 3%.
Charles Conyers, an Office of Personnel Management retiree who was a fellow in the class of 2003, said he was saddened and puzzled about the administration eliminating a program that brought to the government some of the "brightest minds in America.” He said losing their skills and ending a program that attracted and groomed exceptional future leaders was tragic.
While many fellows affected by the job cuts were reluctant to speak on the record, several did. As a group, they said they loved their jobs and see federal civil service as a way to serve their country. All would welcome, if given a chance, the opportunity to get back to work and use their expertise.
'An incredible brain drain’
Jenn Kauffman, who has a background in public health and labor studies, was a semifinalist for the fellows program this year and had been waiting to hear if she would be accepted. As layoffs were announced, she began to worry if it would continue.
“I worked really hard and wanted that satisfaction to see it through,” she said.
On Feb. 19, during the week finalists would have been named, the Trump administration announced an executive order cutting the program.
Kauffman, 45, said she was crushed by the decision and worries that the mass layoffs and dissolution of the fellows program will forever change public service.
“It’s so easy to decimate something but so much harder to rebuild,” she said. “And I worry that the incredibly talented people who may have been my cohort or colleagues are going to go elsewhere, and there will be an incredible brain drain. It’s such a loss for the American people.”
At the Forest Service, a perfect fit
Sydney Smith, 28, said many of the fellows were shocked at being let go because they came in to the government with ideas on how to make it more efficient.
Smith studied chemistry as an undergraduate student at Willamette University in Oregon before going on to study accounting at George Washington University. She heard about the presidential fellows program but was skeptical she would get in because of the low acceptance rate.
After she made it as a finalist in 2023, she started working for the U.S. Forest Service as an accountant. She’s a backpacker who loves the outdoors and is passionate about making public lands accessible. It was a perfect fit.
Now Smith's goal is to finish the CPA exams, something she was doing to make herself even more qualified for federal service.
“I’m hopeful that in the future that there will be room for me in the government,” she said. “I don’t know what that would look like, but I am hopeful that it still exists.”
A high school dream derailed
McKenzie Hartman, 26, was an economist for the IRS research division in Ogden, Utah, when she received an email Feb. 19 that she should return to the office with all her equipment.
The next day, a manager collected her equipment and walked her out. On the way home, Hartman took a wrong turn because her mind was elsewhere.
“It felt surreal,” she said. “I had planned on working for the federal government since high school.”
Hartman lost access to her office's video conferencing software and couldn't join her colleagues for her own goodbye gathering. She had to call in instead. Her termination letter came the following weekend.
“It’s crazy to get a letter terminating you for performance when everyone around you is saying incredible things about your performance,” Hartman said.
Since then, she has been applying for jobs and embarked on a road trip with her partner through several national parks, where she’s seen protests against the Trump administration’s cuts.
“For a lot of us, there is a question on whether we’ll return to federal service,” she said. “Many of us would like to, and this was what we wanted for our careers, but it’s demoralizing.”
A surprise, ‘gut-wrenching’ termination
Bianca Nelson, 31, had been working for the Department of Housing and Urban Development in the unit she calls the "front door of HUD." She never planned to leave. On Feb. 14, she got an email that she was terminated, effective immediately.
Nelson and her partner were planning to buy their first home that month — their “dream apartment.” Now, they’ve had to lean on savings to keep them afloat. She called it “gut-wrenching.”
She had to forward the termination email to her boss, who had not been told she or others would be fired. Days later, she picked up her belongings, including a bell given to her at a New York City Housing Authority groundbreaking ceremony — a memento representing her love for her work.
Since then, she has spent her days organizing paperwork for unemployment and insurance, taking networking calls, volunteering with her union, organizing a resource fair for other fired federal workers in her area and volunteering with housing advocacy organizations.
Ending the program, she said, is "closing a pipeline to future leaders.”
Worrying about those who need help
Madeleine Parker’s fellowship began in September 2023, one month after she finished her doctorate degree in city and regional planning from the University of California, Berkeley.
Parker, 32, chose to work in housing because of its importance in offering families stability. She said she had hoped to continue working for the federal government.
"It’s been hard to step back from that,” she said.
She is trying to strategize on what comes next while worrying about the people who need the help.
“There’s the personal impact of my own job, but I have this immense concern about the impacts on the people we serve, from the programs I worked on and that my colleagues worked on, from affordable housing development to disaster recovery," she said.
‘We made a difference’
Juliane Alfen, 25, left her workplace at the U.S. Agency for International Development in tears, exiting to cheers from supporters who protested the abrupt way one of the world’s preeminent aid organizations had been decimated.
A 2023 fellow, her goal was to build a life and career around federal service.
Alfen learned of the fellowship through her graduate school program in international affairs at the University of California, San Diego. The day she learned she’d made it to finalist, she said, “I literally screamed and called my mom on the phone.” There had been more than 10,000 initial applicants.
Now, when she looks at her LinkedIn account, everyone is job hunting. She said she would love the opportunity to return to USAID, though the prospects for that are uncertain given the Trump administration’s gutting of the agency through his adviser Elon Musk's Department of Government Efficiency and halting its humanitarian work.
“I feel," Alfen said, “like we made a difference.”
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Fernando reported from Chicago.
