Excerpted from NY Times by Eli Saslow, March 30, 2025
…A half-dozen bins held the remnants of 22 years spent in service to the U.S. government — first as a sergeant first class in Iraq, then as a disabled veteran and finally as a V.A. support specialist in logistics. She had devoted her career to a system that had always made sense to her, but now nobody seemed to know whether she had officially been laid off, or for how long, or why.
…
In the last few months, more than 30,000 people across the country were fired by President Trump’s new initiative called the Department of Government Efficiency, a historic reduction of the federal work force that has been all the more disruptive because of its chaotic execution. Entire agency divisions have been cut without explanation or mistakenly fired and then rehired, resulting in several lawsuits and mass confusion among civil workers. After a court ruled last week that many of the firings were illegal, the government began reinstating workers, even as the Trump administration appealed the decision and promised more layoffs.
The V.A. alone said it planned to cut about 80,000 more jobs this year — including tens of thousands of veterans — and for [Joy] Marver the shock of losing her job was eclipsed by the disorientation of being repeatedly dismissed and belittled by the government she served. She had watched on TV as Trump’s billionaire adviser Elon Musk took the stage at a political conference wielding a chain saw to the beat of rock music, slicing apart the air with what he called the “chain saw for bureaucracy.” She had listened to Trump’s aides and allies deride federal employees for being “lazy,” “parasitic,” “unaccountable” and “essentially wasting” taxpayer money in their “fake jobs.”
In Marver’s case, that job had meant helping to retrain soldiers for the civilian work force and coordinating veteran burials while earning a salary of $53,000 a year…
She dug through the bins, pulling out military awards for “exceptional achievement” and “tactical proficiency,” and pushing aside a large steel hunk of a rocket. It had exploded on her base in Iraq during an attack in 2020, leaving her with a concussion, damaged eyesight and a traumatic brain injury. She’d come home flattened, depressed and ill-equipped to hold a corporate job, but working alongside other veterans at the V.A. had done more to restore her sense of purpose than any of the five medications she was prescribed for post-traumatic stress disorder, panic attacks and anxiety…
She reached into another bin and pulled out an employee of the month certificate and then her last performance evaluation, from October. ..
“Joy puts the mission first — team player, responsible, continually displays professionalism. She is a great employee.”
She scanned down to her performance rating and saw that her boss had not circled “satisfactory,” or “fully successful,” or even “excellent,” but had instead chosen “outstanding!” — the best possible result…
Her military career spanned three active-duty tours and more than 800 days in war zones, and each year she was graded by her superiors based on a list of Army tenets she understood to be reciprocal: Loyalty. Duty. Respect. Honor. Integrity…
Her final tour had been the most damaging, when she was stationed at Camp Taji outside Baghdad in March 2020 during a series of incoming rocket attacks that killed several soldiers. One day, she heard more than 30 explosions on the base and started running through clouds of black smoke and into a bunker just as a rocket landed nearby. She felt the shock waves rip through her, clouding her vision and rattling her rib cage. She checked her arms, her shoulders, her legs. Her body remained intact. She stumbled into the middle of the bunker and told her soldiers she was fine, but then she started vomiting, blacking out and slurring her words. A few hours later, she was diagnosed with a concussion and a traumatic brain injury, and doctors had been taking measure of her wounds ever since. She was rated 10 percent disabled for eyesight, 10 percent for hearing loss, 20 percent for back pain, 30 percent for persistent migraines and 70 percent for depression, PTSD, insomnia, anxiety and memory loss…
She was still waiting for an email from human resources with an official reason for her firing. She had tried to ask her co-workers, but some said they were afraid to talk to her over the phone. They worried that their calls were being monitored or that they could be disciplined for sharing information or offering their support…
I’m stable, but it’s dark,” Marver said. “I can’t turn off the news. Nothing that’s happening makes sense. They keep getting rid of things without