Guest Opinion: Cate York: “It Was My Dream to Work for the U.S. Government”

Years ago, wrecked with climate anxiety, I left my Hollywood job for something much sexier: Midwestern utility consumer advocacy. I drove around Illinois, scraping ice off my windshield and spreading the good word of the clean energy transition. Feeling lost in the indifference of an inequitable energy system, I went back to school to expand my scope and to deepen my capacity to contribute something – anything – to a planet that is dying. Graduating with my master’s in Environmental Management this past May, I couldn’t believe it – I had two (!!) job offers in the federal service, one with the Environmental Protection Agency’s Methane Emissions Reduction Program, and one with the Department of Energy’s Federal Energy Management Program.

Then the election happened. I spent days anxiously gaming out the incoming administration and reading the not-so-subtle tea leaves of Project 2025. The EPA job was in DC, and in the Climate Change Division, while the DOE job was remote, and working to save federal agencies energy and money. Seemed in line with the pretense of government efficiency. And if I got fired, at least I wouldn’t have a DC lease to keep up with. I accepted at DOE.

I moved back to the U.S. (having spent four months in Argentina stretching out my last bit of savings) to complete my fingerprinting. Marking a polite “No” to “Have you EVER knowingly engaged in activities designed to overthrow the U.S. Government by force?” in my background check questionnaire, I marveled that the returning commander-in-chief couldn’t say the same.

Seeing reporting on the Heritage Foundation’s thousands of Freedom of Information Act requests designed to identify and target individual federal workers, I scrubbed my online presence for references to my queer identity and activism. (Last week, LinkedIn notified me that my profile had been viewed by someone working for the Executive Office of the President.)

In December, I started my dream job on the AFFECT Program, a unique initiative dating back to 1992 that provides grants to federal agencies to install energy-, water- and cost-saving equipment. The federal government is the nation’s largest energy consumer – what better way to make an impact? Our office’s (female!) leadership was grounded and judicious, my supervisor astute and kind, and my colleagues exceptionally bright and talented. It felt like working for a nonprofit, but with the scale of the federal government. I was committed to the nonpartisan ideal of the federal workforce upholding its statutory obligations, the steady, diligent antidote to constant political turnover. I had moved in with my mother, wanting to keep my overhead low, but I felt grateful for such purposeful work.

And then came the fires.

On January 7th, flames erupted in Eaton Canyon – the wonderful wilderness in our backyard that I had hiked so many times as a child, that had exposed me to the brilliance and beauty of nature and instilled a deep need to protect it. The fire quickly raced across our Altadena community, gobbling up miles of brittle brush parched by climate-induced drought. In the end, my mother’s house survived. Many, many of our friends were not so lucky.

Working remotely from my evacuated shelter, I watched the Biden administration trickle out, offering final words of feeble inspiration, and the Trump administration burst in, Kool-Aid-Man-like, showering our weary souls with a fruity medley of waste, fraud and abuse. The ensuing weeks of chaos and cruelty rattled everyone around me, working overtime to break the spirit of anyone who cared about human decency and the rule of law. This week, continuing to play with their food, DOE asked offices to recommend 50% of employees hired within the last year for termination, then 80%, then a ranked list according to mission importance. It didn’t matter in the end. Yesterday, they fired nearly all of us.

“I am so sorry to send this letter,” my office director began, “as I am issuing you notice that your employment with the Department of Energy is being terminated effective today. The OPM language in this notice references justification regarding the public interest, not your performance or conduct which FEMP has found to be exemplary.”

To my ex-colleagues in the federal government: thank you for your service. A decades-long extreme wealth consolidation campaign has confused the facts: federal workers are strong, capable, hard-working, determined public servants. They are vital to anyone who believes that money shouldn’t dictate your access to a decent living standard, that democracy means a government of the people, by the people, for the people, and that we are better together than we are alone. I hope you keep your light.

My resolve has never been clearer: the climate crisis is here, and it is only getting worse. Just ask my neighbors. The Eaton Fire is projected to cost over $10 billion, not to mention the unquantifiable trauma my community will bear in the years to come. How many more once-in-a-lifetime tragedies are we going to have to endure?

We are facing so many simultaneous crises, but most dangerous is one of indifference, and inability to see solidarity in shared struggle. Recently, in shock at the revocation of Temporary Protected Status for hundreds of thousands of people who had fled dictatorships to come to the U.S., a Miami-based Venezuelan-American voter told NPR, “They used us. During the campaign, the elected officials from the Republican Party, they actually told us that he was not going to touch the documented people. They said, ‘No, it is with undocumented people.’”

This administration is coming for all of us. But supposedly, we still live in a democracy. It’s time we showed up to protect it.

Cate York is an environmental management and program analyst and a graduate of Yale’s School of the Environment.