KATE SCAIFE: USAID saves lives.
CAITLIN HUEY-BURNS: That's how you would have described your work?
SCAIFE: That's right. We make America safer.
HUEY-BURNS: For the last two years, Kate Scaife's job was to make thousands of humanitarian programs around the world run efficiently, a role she optimistically believed would match the priorities of the new administration.
SCAIFE: One of our senior leaders came up to me at one point, passed me in the hall and said, “be prepared to be the most popular girl in the room in a couple of weeks.”
HUEY-BURNS: Her illusions faded last month, when Musk tweeted about feeding USAID into the wood chipper. The next day, Scaife couldn't log onto her work devices.
SCAIFE: I felt disappeared, right? All of our work was made invisible, too.
HUEY-BURNS: We rode with Scaife as she drove to the office.
SCAIFE: I've got my kids' pictures…
HUEY-BURNS: You leave it there thinking you'll get it back.
SCAIFE: That it’ll be there on Monday. Hahaha, right.
HUEY-BURNS: She was allowed 15 minutes to clean out her desk.
SCAIFE: It just felt really demeaning to be treated like that.
HUEY-BURNS: Scaife had been the breadwinner in her family. How do you talk to your kids about this?
SCAIFE: It was so hard to tell them things like, “you know, we've made summer plans for these camps. And you know, I can't afford that.”
HUEY-BURNS: It feels like work was a big part of your identity.
SCAIFE: I feel like I am my best mom when I have this other part of me that helps me to feel engaged with the world. I don't know how I'll find something new that gives me that same joy.
HUEY-BURNS: A feeling now looming for hundreds of thousands of federal workers. For Eye on America I’m Caitlin Huey-Burns, in Silver Spring, Maryland.