The Forest Service Through the Trees

“She voted for Joe Biden in 2020, her first time casting a ballot in a presidential election. But life felt more complicated these days. Her mortgage was too expensive, groceries were nearly $400 a month, and one single cycle of IVF could cost more than 10 percent of her annual household income. Trump, at a campaign stop an hour and a half south of her, had promised to make IVF free. She knew that from a video clip she saw on TikTok. And she had believed him. She also believed him when he said that Project 2025, the conservative blueprint for the next Republican administration that suggested mass cuts to the federal workforce, was not his plan. So Cooper filled in the bubble next to his name, thinking of the daughter she wanted.” Ryleigh Cooper is probably not the person you envision when you think of a Trump voter. And she definitely wasn’t the person she envisioned when she recently got fired from the U.S. Forest Service after receiving an extremely high performance evaluation. WaPo (Gift Article): She hoped Trump’s victory would change her life, but not like this.

+ “The administration notified most USAID staffers in recent days that they were on leave or terminated, then gave thousands of those who worked in the Washington headquarters 15-minute time slots to clear out their desks.”