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In The Headlines: When DOGE fires you from your dream job
In this episode of In the Headlines, Jacquelyn Cobb, associate editor of the The Cancer Letter, and Claire Marie Porter, reporter, discuss Claire’s interview with an NCI employee who was fired just days after returning from parental leave.
The story provides a personal perspective from one HHS employee who was fired as part of Department of Government Efficiency’s mass termination of probationary employees.
To protect the employee’s identity, The Cancer Letter uses gender-neutral pronouns, the pseudonym “Taylor,” and distorted audio recordings. The choice was necessary to protect Taylor’s identity, but ultimately became representative of the fact that this is happening to so many people.
“[Taylor was] hoping to go on the record initially and then decided not to, but we kind of realized that making Taylor anonymous worked really well, because their story is kind of exemplary of so many other stories,” Claire said. “They're not the only one with just weeks or months left in their probationary period. So, it kind of ended up working out that they spoke for a lot of people.”
Taylor was weeks away from the end of their probationary period, which would have ensured job security.
Taylor is working with a legal team to try to get their job back. But even if they are successful, the damage done to the HHS work environment by DOGE and the Trump Administration will remain.
“Federal employees already go through this rigorous process to become government employees. So, just this increased oversight is just a bit humiliating,” Claire said. “Also just the fact that there's this new kind of tenor of distrust and mistrust of federal employees. Taylor did say that it just won't be the same. And that's disappointing.”
Read more: Fired NCI employee says Trump’s purge was baseless yet punitive—“I feel like I’ve been erased.”
Other stories mentioned in this podcast include:
Pushing for tax cuts, Trump threatens the federal workforce, Medicaid, and cancer research
Guest editorial by W. Kimryn Rathmell: Telling our stories: Bidirectional benefits of sharing our history
Shearwood McClelland III: “When you stand for something, you’re always going to be attacked.”
Guest editorial by Harpreet Singh: Biomarker-driven innovation: What the FDA’s evolving strategy means for oncology
In an oral history now taken down by FDA, Peter Greenwald discusses controversy over health claims on Kellogg’s All-Bran
A transcript of this podcast is available: https://cancerletter.com/podcastc/20250305-HHS-firings
View all episodes
By The Cancer LetterIn this episode of In the Headlines, Jacquelyn Cobb, associate editor of the The Cancer Letter, and Claire Marie Porter, reporter, discuss Claire’s interview with an NCI employee who was fired just days after returning from parental leave.
The story provides a personal perspective from one HHS employee who was fired as part of Department of Government Efficiency’s mass termination of probationary employees.
To protect the employee’s identity, The Cancer Letter uses gender-neutral pronouns, the pseudonym “Taylor,” and distorted audio recordings. The choice was necessary to protect Taylor’s identity, but ultimately became representative of the fact that this is happening to so many people.
“[Taylor was] hoping to go on the record initially and then decided not to, but we kind of realized that making Taylor anonymous worked really well, because their story is kind of exemplary of so many other stories,” Claire said. “They're not the only one with just weeks or months left in their probationary period. So, it kind of ended up working out that they spoke for a lot of people.”
Taylor was weeks away from the end of their probationary period, which would have ensured job security.
Taylor is working with a legal team to try to get their job back. But even if they are successful, the damage done to the HHS work environment by DOGE and the Trump Administration will remain.
“Federal employees already go through this rigorous process to become government employees. So, just this increased oversight is just a bit humiliating,” Claire said. “Also just the fact that there's this new kind of tenor of distrust and mistrust of federal employees. Taylor did say that it just won't be the same. And that's disappointing.”
Read more: Fired NCI employee says Trump’s purge was baseless yet punitive—“I feel like I’ve been erased.”
Other stories mentioned in this podcast include:
Pushing for tax cuts, Trump threatens the federal workforce, Medicaid, and cancer research
Guest editorial by W. Kimryn Rathmell: Telling our stories: Bidirectional benefits of sharing our history
Shearwood McClelland III: “When you stand for something, you’re always going to be attacked.”
Guest editorial by Harpreet Singh: Biomarker-driven innovation: What the FDA’s evolving strategy means for oncology
In an oral history now taken down by FDA, Peter Greenwald discusses controversy over health claims on Kellogg’s All-Bran
A transcript of this podcast is available: https://cancerletter.com/podcastc/20250305-HHS-firings