Federal workers – who have been fired by unelected South African billionaire Elon Musk – are facing family members who are actually glad they are unemployed and without health insurance, reports The Associated Press:
“I’ve been treated as a public enemy by the government and now it’s bleeding into my own family,” says 24-year-old Luke Tobin, who was fired last month from his job as a technician with the U.S. Forest Service in Idaho’s Nez Perce National Forest.
Tobin’s job loss sent him scurrying to fill prescriptions before he lost his health insurance and filling out dozens of applications to find whatever work he can, even if it’s at a fast-food restaurant. But some relatives reacting to his firing as “what has to happen to make the government great again” has been one of the worst parts of the entire ordeal.
“They can’t separate their ideology and their politics from supporting their own family and their own loved ones,” says Tobin.
Kristin Jenn (pictured above) got a similar response from members of her family after she learned the National Park Service ranger job she was due to start had been put on hold by the billionaire Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency hiring freeze. She thinks it’s likely the job will be eliminated altogether.
“My life is disintegrating because I can’t work in my chosen field,” says Jenn, 47, from Austin, Texas. “Lump on top of that no support from family – it hits you very hard.”
The strife has extended to Jenn’s mother, a former federal employee herself. When she has criticized the administration’s actions, her mother simply says she supports the president.
“She has somehow been convinced that public servants are a parasite and unproductive even though she was a public servant,” says Jenn.
(Source: The Associated Press, Image Credit: Kristin Jenn)