Mass Firings, Viral TikToks: Federal Workers Are Speaking Out and Fighting Back 

“This was my dream job and it’s just being taken away by an administration who doesn’t care about science,” cried a scientist we’ll call Alexis, in a video viewed over 1.2 million times, her voice breaking and tears running down her face. “They don’t care about our species that we’re trying to conserve. We should all be so mad right now. We should all be crying like this.”

The latest wave of mass firings in the federal government has washed over thousands of workers, Including those in the National Institute of Health, the Department of Veterans Affairs, and the U.S. Forest Service. Elon Musk — an unelected official, the richest man in the world, and head of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) — slashed the jobs of 200,000 federal workers as part of his “cost-cutting initiative.” The workers targeted were those in a probationary period, who are generally newer hires who have been in their current positions for less than a year. Fired federal workers have taken to TikTok to share their experiences and explain just what the end of their programs and research means for the American public.

Alexis, a physical scientist in the Department of the Interior, tells Rolling Stone that she loves her job, which contributes to the recovery of species impacted by the building of the Hoover and Davis Dams. “I’m not doing this for the money,” she said. “I’m doing it because I love it. It is so rewarding to be able to help these species with data and technology.” Alexis already lives paycheck to paycheck — when her firing becomes official, she may have to leave the state she lives in to move in with family. “I’m not going to be okay,” she said. “Those tears [in the video] was me coming to the realization that our government is not being controlled by people who care about us and know what we do.” It’s frustrating to Alexis that Elon Musk’s tactic for cutting government spending is not to tax the uber-wealthy but instead to fire federal workers who keep the government and its programs running. “They’re like, ‘Let’s cancel and freeze all the other contracts, but not the ones for Elon Musk’s companies.’” And it’s more than that – Alexis worries about the environmental effects of halting her work. “There are entire species that will go extinct without our continued, informed interventions when developing and monitoring native land cover.”

At the National Institute of Health, Amber, who asked to use a pseudonym to protect her privacy, worked in the Office of AIDS Research. There’s a fundamental misunderstanding about AIDS in the United States, Amber says — the reason that infection rates are so low is because there is federal money going toward treatment and research. “If the funds are not going to the right place, if the right people are not getting the care that they need, HIV is something that could spread so easily,” she says. In a TikTok video, Amber explained her position, the process of termination, and why she thinks Americans should be worried. “These are public workers who are trying to bring healthcare to the American people and protect the American people,” she said. In the comments of her TikTok video, people urge her to hire an attorney to fight the firing. “With what money? I don’t have a job anymore.” Amber and her fiancé were planning on getting married in 2026 but the firing has changed their plans. The couple is going to have a civil ceremony next month so that Amber can get on her future husband’s health insurance. She worries, too, about paying rent without her income. But the thing she worries about the most is the people who were served by the programs she helped run. “I’m worried about the people that my team serves who have HIV and are homeless,” she said. “It’s people like that that I’m more worried about than myself. Truthfully, I know I’ll be fine.”

As a management and program analyst at the Department of Health and Human Services, Victoria, who posted a video viewed 1.1 million times in which she did her makeup and calmly explained her firing, worked within a division which ensured compliance and standards for testing labs. Without their work, labs could experience more testing errors, like telling a patient they’re not sick with a virus when they actually are. The point of making the video was to help people understand the real human impact of these mass firings. “I just want people across the country to know what is going on,” Victoria tells Rolling Stone. “There’s federal workers all over the country, giving services that people don’t even realize are federal services.” 

Though the response to Victoria’s TikTok was largely positive, with commenters wishing her luck and denouncing the firings, there were naysayers. “There have been some negative comments of people saying that federal workers are lazy and don’t do anything and, ‘Good, now you can go get a real job.’ I don’t even really know what that means because these are some of the realest jobs across the country.” Victoria points to the layoffs at the Federal Aviation Administration, which come amidst heightened travel anxiety after recent plane crashes, or the researchers who were looking into bird flu, which is contributing to high egg prices. “People really don’t understand the extent to which federal services are offered in this country and how many people it really takes to operate those services.” Amber puts it even more starkly: “You never hear about these federal employees, because they do their job well.”