Mike Mikes symbolizes a picture outside his home in Ancorag, Alaska, on February 23, 2025. Macanz served in the American army for a period of five years and was working recently as a coordinator to recover from disasters to manage small business. He was officially completed from his job on February 11, 2025.
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More than two weeks have passed since Mike McNanus learned – for the first time – that the small business administration was launching him from his job as a disaster recovery coordinator in Ancorag, Alaska.
However, the government did not send him the documents it needs to demand unemployment. He did not get any official word for the date of cutting the health insurance of his family.
“They took me out of all my systems,” Macanz says. “The only place where you got any help is on the Internet – on Frickin ‘Reddit.”
The Trump Administration has launched tens of thousands of federal workers over the past two weeks as part of an appearance of an integrated cleansing of test staff, usually in their first or second year in the job.
Collective shootings were characterized by a lot of chaos and slope that some agencies have recalled the employees that they had finished days or even hours.
Workers unions I asked a federal court in San Francisco To order the government to stop the shooting and cancel the already finishing. Lawyers in Washington, DC, I submitted a complaint at the class levelAsk for the intervention consultant office.
Meanwhile, the anger between shooting is a height.
“Do not give up the people who served this country, play it in this country and work to provide services to our citizens,” Macanz says.
One piece of a wider strategy
The ends are only one part of the Trump administration’s widespread voltage to reduce the Federal Manpower of 2.3 million people. In late January, the warning to federal employees came: resigned from your jobs with wages and benefits until September, or the risks that are demobilized. Thousands of government have placed on an administrative leave, unable to do their work.
At the end of last week, billionaire Elon Musk – a special adviser to Trump – issued another warning to the remaining employees..
In a post on X, Twitter previously, Musk suggested that workers lose their jobs if they did not respond to an e -mail explosion from the Personnel Management Office asking a list of five things they did last week. With the legitimacy of the question in doubt, some agency leaders told their employees not to respond.
Now the unemployed, the highest concern of McCannas is healthy insurance. His wife, a survivor of cancer, needs expensive medications to maintain autoimmune disorder under control. The couple are five months old and a young child.
Lara Macannas misses the government for its failure to consider the impact of group shooting on the families of federal employees.
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“Just ignore the influence he has achieved, not only on the employee but his entire family, amazing,” says Lara Macanz, his wife.
Ideal suitable for this job
Macans with small business administration was his second work period that serves the country. The first was an atmosphere with the American army, stationed at the Esendorf-Richardson outside Anchorage.
After five years in the army, he held a job on the northern slope in Alaska, followed by an emergency management role with the state government, a job that made him feel that it could make a difference.
He says: “Alaska suffers from every possible threat to the disasters you can think of, from volcanoes to hurricane to tsunami, earthquake, fire, flood – called what you want.”
Macans included helping societies in government and federal grants to repair roads, bridges, buildings, dams, sea walls and other infrastructure. He soon built a network of disaster recovery space, including with people in FEMA and small business administration.
Then last August occupied an opportunity to fill a new position with small business administration. Macans is appointed as a recovery coordinator for area 10, covering Alaska, Washington, Oregon and Idahu.
She describes her as a “friend-friend” of the region. Provide the guidance after the initial shock of the catastrophe, which helps companies build flexibility and address other needs in the long run.
His deep knowledge of the weather and wild terrain in Alaska, as well as its diverse population, made it completely suitable for this position.
“We have talked like – this will be your career. You will retire from this job,” says Lara Macanz. “It was really exciting.”
I fired, unarmed and fired again
Macans was first informed that it was terminated on February 7. An email message arrived at the incoming box late Friday afternoon with the topic line “notice – ending the test period”.
A message attached to him: “The agency finds that [sic] You are not fit for continuous employment because your ability, knowledge and skills are not suitable for the current needs of the agency, and your performance was not enough to justify more employment in the agency. “
It was given the date of the termination of February 21.
Like many federal employees who were separated this month, Macans surprised.
In the six months he spent at work, he had no complaints about his performance. The first evaluation, which he published in the following week, described it as “one of the exceptional assets of the agency”, someone is always for a new challenge, complements the work at a high level, and is proactively generated by opportunities to build and maintain relationships to hand over the SBA disaster loan program. “
Lara and Mike Mcnnas are parents of five -month -old mothers and a young child. The couple mostly relied on his income and benefits to support the family.
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When Lara, a part -time nurse, returned home from her job that afternoon, she knew immediately that something was wrong.
“This is when I drop the bomb,” she says. “I couldn’t even believe it.”
It was a bad weekend. Macans was angry. He couldn’t sleep.
“You can turn off the lights and try to go to sleep, and you leave alone with your thoughts,” he says. “There is nothing to do only the soup.”
Then on Monday came another surprise. One of the colleagues told him that something had ended. More directives came about the termination messages sent on Friday.
“It is certain, after an hour or two at a later time, we received this email, which he said was sent for error, and in this way, it is not currently in effect,” Macanz says. “Well, what does that mean?”
It was not very reassuring. The next afternoon, he received a third notification, then fourth, confirming that, in fact, it was terminated, the effective closure of work on the same day, February 11. The letters were almost identical.
“This is literally the latest official correspondence in relation to the recruitment status I received from SBA,” he says. “There is no follow -up at all.”
Fortunately, Macans started starting to save his recruitment files.
He says, “Because they called me and then emptied me, I immediately started to redirect everything I could to my personal e -mail.”
He appealed to his termination to the Merit Systems Protection Council, where he established the authority to deal with employment conflicts in the federal workforce, although he is not optimistic that he would restore his job.
“You didn’t feel more betrayal”
Meanwhile, Macanz says his confidence in the government is shattered.
“I never felt betrayal in my whole life,” he says.
He is sympathetic to the opinion that there must be changes to how government bureaucracy works and how money is spent.
“I think these are very fair criticism of the government,” he says. “I try to be part of the solution.”
Currently, he is looking for a new job.
“As you know, a four -person family. We need a coming salary, and we need health care,” he says. “When it really comes to, I will do everything I need for them.”
Do you have information that you want to share on the ongoing changes throughout the federal government? NPR’s andrea HSU can be contacted through encrypted communications to the indication in Andreahsu.08.