FILE PHOTO: U.S. President Donald Trump attends a press conference with UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer

According to the New York Times, up to 300,000 federal workers will have been laid off by the Trump Administration by the end of 2025. The Trump Administration, with the help of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), is targeting a wide range of agencies for mass layoffs — from the U.S. Social Security Administration (SSA) to the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) to National Weather Service (NWS) to the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA).

One of the many federal workers who was caught up in these mass layoffs was 45-year-old Edward Brandon, who worked for the U.S. Bureau of Land Management and voted for Donald Trump in 2024.

Journalist Hannah Natanson details Brandon's struggles in an article published on September 20, stressing that his wife was dying of colon cancer when he became a target of the Trump Administration/DOGE cuts.

"Of America's 2.4 million federal workers, nearly 4 in 10 registered to vote had, like Brandon, cast ballots for Trump, according to a Washington Post-Ipsos poll," Natanson explains. "Brandon liked Trump's vision for the country, which he thought reflected his own conservative values, and believed the president had a good shot at ending the Russia-Ukraine conflict. But as the days passed, Brandon was becoming convinced that the Trump Administration's treatment of government employees — large-scale firings, e-mails he saw as harassing, and strict return-to-office mandates — was wrongheaded and cruel…. Brandon felt like he was witnessing two painful deaths: his wife's, of course, but also, that of his career."

Initially, Natanson notes, Brandon believed that Trump's only goal was to reduce "waste, fraud and abuse" from the federal government. But according to Natalson, Brandon started to change his view when "the Trump Administration fired tens of thousands of probationary employees without justification."

"Maybe, Brandon thought for the first time, he had made a mistake in voting for Trump, Natanson explains. "But he wanted to believe the results would justify some temporary pain."

In a diary, Brandon wrote, "I'm disappointed in this administration, specifically Pres. Trump's failure as a leader…. (Trump is) abandoning his commitment to ensuring that the common person is protected."

Read Hannah Natanson's full article for the Washington Post at this link (subscription required).