Fired federal workers speak out—for themselves and for the country.

Sara Rubin here, thinking about the waves of mass layoffs I have watched up close. I was new to the workforce as the 2008 economic crisis hit and the subsequent recession that ensued. Seemingly just after recovery came the Covid-19 pandemic. 

Through it all, government jobs seemed stable. So much for that theory.

The gutting of the federal workforce is very much a national story, but also a local one. As I reported last week, at least six employees of the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration lost their jobs in the National Weather Service and NOAA Fisheries. 

There are more, and their stories are at once deeply personal, and about the work they were doing—and their sincere concern about whether that work will be able to continue. 

I heard from Jeffrey Delsescaux, who was terminated from his job at NOAA's Monterey Office of National Marine Sanctuaries, where he was serving as the only archaeologist supporting sanctuaries from Washington to Southern California, covering some 20,000 square miles of ocean. His task was to ensure sanctuaries’ compliance with provisions of the National Historic Preservation Act. 

He wanted to share his personal devastation, but mostly his concern for the agency’s mission. “I find myself worrying about everyone still there at NOAA,” he writes. “They’re incredibly good people doing critically important work. It’s hard to make sense of downsizing an agency that's already chronically understaffed. Their future feels uncertain right now, and that’s what weighs on me the most.”

In the Los Padres National Forest, biologist Ben Vizzachero shares a similar message. The 30-year-old Pennsylvania native relocated from a job studying birds in Hawaii to move to Solvang and work for the U.S. Forest Service. 

He started the job in 2024, thanks to the Great American Outdoors Act. “It was a great time to join the Forest Service because it was very optimistic,” Vizzachero says. “It felt like they had breathed life into this organization that was stale.” 

His work was focused largely on implementing the Strategic Community Fuelbreak Improvement Project in the Monterey District of Los Padres, which includes cutting and maintaining fuel breaks. “The message I want to communicate to the public is: These cuts are putting us at risk,” he says. 

When U.S. Rep. Jimmy Panetta, D-Carmel Valley, invited him to attend President Donald Trump’s address to a joint session of Congress last week, Vizzachero immediately said yes; the National Federation for Federal Employees sponsored his trip.

He spent the day in Washington meeting with lawmakers, lobbying them to support investment in public lands. Then he was seated in the gallery, right near Elon Musk. 

“I realized I had a rare opportunity. I thought, ‘if I don’t say something, I am going to regret it for the rest of my life,’” Vizzachero says. So at the end of the speech, he says he turned to Musk and got his attention and asked: “Mr. Musk, am I waste?” He says Musk responded with a cynical riff on a quote from Office Space, “What exactly is it that you do here?”

Vizzachero walked away feeling depressed—about Trump’s speech, and about the exchange with Musk, wondering why he had bothered standing up to him. “I don’t think he could see what makes Big Sur or America beautiful, because all he sees are dollars.” 

I’d argue that many federal agencies would benefit from a trim. But these widespread firings fail to see the forest for the trees. Giving up progress on fire safety improvement projects, and the one person tasked with historic preservation compliance for a vast region, just because they are the easiest people to fire—that is a shortsighted way to run a government, gutting the next generation of leaders.