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'Chronic stress': Federal workers who quit under Trump tell all · Best of: Features

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  Chronic stress Federal workers who quit under Trump tell all. Written by
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  Sam Hill. This article is being read by an automated voice generated
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  by Everlett. Kevin Heatley had barely settled into his job overseeing Crater
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  Lake National Park when he began to realize he might not be
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  able to stay. Heatley took over as superintendent in january twenty twenty
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  five, stepping into one of the National Park Service's most iconic landscapes.
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  Crater Lake draws about half a million visitors a year, and running
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  the park means monitoring roads through heavy snow, maintaining facilities, and making
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  sure employees have the resources they need to do their jobs safely.
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  But within months Heatley was watching the park's workforce shrink while seasonal
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  hiring was delayed, and existing employees were being asked to take on
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  more work. By June, less than six months into the job, Heatley
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  had accepted a federal buyout and walked away. There was chronic stress
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  on employees because of constant disruption and uncertainty, it was never ending.
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  From the time of Trump's inauguration until I left, one thing after
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  another, Heatley told S. F. Gate. The first several months of twenty
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  twenty five were hectic for Federal employees About a thousand Park Service
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  employees were fired in what became known as the Valentine's Day Massacre,
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  and job offers for seasonal positions were rescinded. Remaining staff were forced
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  to deal with their credit cards being frozen, and they Elon Musk
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  led Dogue initiative that forced employees to relay their weekly accomplishments to
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  the now disbanded department. The were purposefully decimating the workforce and no
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  one knew what was coming next, Heatley said. If those amateurs thought
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  The were running the Park Service like a business, they were terrible
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  businessmen. Heatley's departure from a coveted Park Service position became one of
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  the more striking examples of the upheaval inside the Federal Government in
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  twenty twenty five. Now Heatley's departure is getting a second life in
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  Count Me Out, the best Federal Resignations of 2025, an upcoming anthology
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  from Bicycle Comics that collects resignation letters and stories from Federal employees
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  who left their jobs throughout the first year of Donald Trump's second
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  presidential term. Heatley is an unusual centerpiece for the book. He didn't
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  leave behind a resignation letter, but Artie Maffa, the book's editor, connected
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  with his story and thought it was important enough to include anyway.
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  Rather than force it into the book's letter based format, Moffa decided
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  to tell Heatley’s story visually. The resulting illustration shows Heatley sitting on
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  the old man of the lake, the park's iconic, buoyant, and bobbing
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  tree, contemplating what he was leaving behind. Boxes and remnants of his
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  time with the National Park Service surround him, while a Mazama Newt,
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  an endangered species found at Crater Lake, appears beside him. Heatley's story
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  and many of the book's letters focus not on the person resigning,
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  but the bigger picture, Moffa told S. F. Gate. Heatley's calling attention
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  to them: importance of how his workers get treated, treating the staff
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  with dignity, workplace safety, he said. Maffa and his team considered eighty
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  four letters and ultimately selected twenty five, with some submissions coming from
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  former employees who reached out and others solicited by the editors. The
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  letters cover a wide range of federal jobs and circumstances, but Maffa
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  said a common thread emerged as he read through the Many of
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  the employees didn't want to leave. Some stayed longer than they otherwise
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  would have, because they worried about what would happen to their colleagues
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  or who might replace them. Others felt they could no longer carry
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  out their duties without compromising their principles. Still, the letters aren't uniformly
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  political or written as acts of protest, Maffa said. Some are deeply
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  personal and others are remarkably matter of fact, laying out the reasons
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  an employee could no longer do their job and had to walk
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  away. This is an extremely difficult decision. I have been a federal
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  prosecutor for ten years. I love this job. I love representing my
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  country in federal court. And I love my former colleagues, whose integrity
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  and courage reflects the department's best traditions and gives me hope for
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  our section's future, wrote Ryan Croswell, a trial attorney, with the Department
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  of Justice's public integrity section, in his resignation letter on february seventeenth.
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  I cannot work for someone who invokes leadership after forcing dedicated public
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  servants to choose between termination and a dismissal so plainly at odds
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  with core prosecutorial principles. I am okay with my choice, but I
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  don't think I will ever be okay with how, why it happened.
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  It feels a little like closing a good book mid chapter and
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  having to find a new one in a darkened library, wrote Lauren
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  Weinbrenner, a public affairs specialist with the Internal Revenue Service, in her
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  resignation email on april twenty fourth. She signed off with a wry
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  farewell to the year. WARMEST Regards From the twenty twenty five Burning
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  Dumpster Fire. For Maffa, The collection is ultimately less about the politics
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  surrounding the resignations than about preserving a record of why people who
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  had spent years building careers in public service decided they could no
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  longer stay. I'm very impressed with the clarity and the professionalism and
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  the patriotism of these people. They weren't doing it to resist. The
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  were doing it to call attention to something bigger than themselves. I
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  hope that the book does right by the Moffa said. Count Me
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  Out. The best Federal resignations of two thousand and twenty five inches
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  is scheduled for release in October. For Heatley, the importance of that
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  record goes beyond his own departure. After four decades working in natural
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  resource management, he said he took his responsibility for the health, safety,
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  and welfare of his employees seriously, and that was ultimately what made
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  staying at Crater Lake impossible. The quality of people who left the
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  Federal Government won't be replaced for decades, he said. Creating an anthology
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  of examples of the rationale for leaving their positions is important to
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  the national conversation about how we function as a nation, how we
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  manage public lands, all these entities so central for operating world class
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  government organizations.