“Immediately, there was just a huge sense of betrayal.”
Arlington County resident John Spykerman was on vacation with his family in Glasgow, Scotland, when he got the email last year that he was being fired from the US State Department.
“It was too early to actually check in, so we took a bus into the downtown area,” Spykerman said in an interview. “While my family was getting ice cream, I checked my phone and there it was.”
Spykerman, a Foreign Service officer with over two decades on the job, had been preparing for the worst after President Donald Trump got elected in 2024. As a candidate, Trump had been critical of foreign aid, and on the day of his inauguration, he moved to pause all foreign aid for 90 days.
But in the lead-up to Spykerman’s firing and as rumors swirled at the State Department over what changes the Trump administration had planned, he said he had been assured he was likely safe.
Then he got the email letting him know he wasn’t.
“Immediately, there was just a huge sense of betrayal,” Spykerman said. “There was a lot of confusion and miscommunication on the State Department’s part about what was going to happen.”
Spykerman was one of over 1,350 State Department employees who were part of a mass firing last July. The mass firing came amidst the Trump administration’s dismantling of the US Agency for International Development (USAID), led in part by billionaire Elon Musk, and its broader effort to cut the federal workforce.
This morning, Spykerman joined other laid-off federal employees from the State Department and USAID at the US Capitol to call for their jobs back and for accountability for their mistreatment.
“We are gonna fight this,” Spykerman said. “What happened made so little sense. I think it was wrong, and I think it was traitorous. It was also stupid and wasteful.”
The impacts of the Trump administration’s gutting of America’s foreign aid programs have been dire.
Hundreds of thousands of lives, including that of many children, are estimated to have been lost because of Trump’s cuts to foreign aid, according to reporting by Nicholas Kristof in The New York Times. A study published by the journal Science found that the abrupt end of USAID led to increased violence in places that had depended on the agency.
Fairfax County resident Brian Himmelsteib had worked at the State Department for over 20 years when he got fired last year. He said his firing was a waste of taxpayer money.
“You spent money and time over the years to train me, for me to have these experiences that I build on,” Himmelsteib said. “It takes time to become a diplomat.”
The laid-off workers were joined by union leaders with the American Federation of Government Employees and the American Foreign Service Association, along with members of Congress, including Virginia Democratic US Reps. Don Beyer and James Walkinshaw.
Beyer and Walkinshaw represent Virginia congressional districts where many federal government workers live. They helped introduce legislation today aimed at making it easier for experienced Foreign Service officers to return to their work by allowing them to avoid retaking the written and oral exams they’ve already passed.
Beyer tied the fight for wrongfully terminated federal workers to the upcoming midterm elections that Democrats hope will give them back control of the US House of Representatives.
“Elections matter,” Beyer said. “The next big election is in 16-and-a-half weeks. It’s incredibly important that we win that.”
