This article follows Dateline’s anonymous sources policy.
Within a month of his presidency, President Donald Trump began terminating hundreds of positions in the federal government through the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE). These firings have since impacted hundreds of thousands of federal workers across the country in different departments. Additionally, many more workers have had their workplaces overtaken by DOGE and have had their jobs threatened by the organization.
Dateline spoke to a federal worker at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) who requested to remain anonymous and will be referred to as ‘R.’ R will share their experience with DOGE and how the layoffs affected their job and life. Answers have been edited for clarity.
International Dateline (ID): How long have you worked and lived in D.C.?
R: I’m a 20-year D.C. resident now, and I’ve worked for the federal government for the last 15 years or so. The majority of that time, I worked at the CFPB.
ID: Could you speak a bit about what the CFPB does?
R: The CFPB is the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. It was a new agency that was created partially in response to the mortgage crisis in 2008, which had a really negative impact on the economy. We enforce consumer protection laws. There are a lot of them across all kinds of different products and markets, like mortgages, student loans, credit cards, credit reporting and debt collection. We’re there to make sure that the consumer perspective gets looked after and consumers aren’t cheated.
ID: Where did you work before the CFPB?
R: Before the CFPB, I worked at another agency called the CPSC, which is the Consumer Product Safety Commission. It’s similar, but with physical products, like toasters and refrigerators, instead of financial products like credit cards. I really liked being a consumer protection lawyer. I thought the law was really interesting, and it felt good to protect consumers.
ID: How long have you worked at the CFPB?
R: I’ve worked for 12 years at CFPB.
ID: Before the recent events with DOGE, had there been any other sort of job instability like that for you?
R: Not really. The CFPB has been a target the whole time I worked there. There have been various attempts to get certain parts of the department declared unconstitutional by the Supreme Court. That was hanging over us, but nothing ever happened. Normal court cases like that aren’t as stressful as what’s happening right now.
ID: How have the events affected you?
R: It still feels surreal, to be honest. One day, we heard that DOGE was in the building on a Friday. Within 48 hours, they had shut down our building. A couple of days later, they started illegally firing people. It just happened so fast.
ID: Did you feel at risk before they came to your building?
R: We read about what DOGE was doing at the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) and other places. But to see it actually happen and how chaotic and crazy it was, it’s just really hard to believe.
ID: Have you gone back to work since?
R: I haven’t been back. Since the pandemic, we have already set up to work from home. So, I can work full-time from home, but we’ve also gotten confusing instructions from new leadership about whether we’re allowed to work and what we’re supposed to do. I currently still have access to all the things I had access to on the computer before.
ID: Do you know what DOGE is planning to do with your job in the future?
R: I’ve learned that, with the help of DOGE, the new administration was planning to fire my entire division, amongst others. It all just happened a couple of weeks ago, I can’t even wrap my head around it. Now, everyone is afraid for their job, including people like me. Once the lawsuit gets past the temporary restraining order stage, we could all be fired. It seems like that’s the plan, which is just crazy. It’s not based on performance or anything that we’ve done wrong. It’s difficult to even process that.
ID: What message do you want people to know?
R: There are always things that can be done better in any organization. But all the civil servants, all the federal employees I’ve met, are in it to serve their country. They want to make things better for people, whether it’s delivering mail, protecting consumers, or space flight controllers. It’s unnecessary, cruel, and very inefficient to do the things that this administration has been doing through DOGE. It’s just careless, and it hurts real people.
By Lucy Randall
