内容摘要：Cillian Murphy poses for a portrait during the 96th Academy Awards Oscar nominees luncheon, Feb. 12, 2024, at the Beverly Hilton Hotel in Beverly Hills, Calif. (AP Photo/Chris Pizzello)

Cillian Murphy poses for a portrait during the 96th Academy Awards Oscar nominees luncheon, Feb. 12, 2024, at the Beverly Hilton Hotel in Beverly Hills, Calif. (AP Photo/Chris Pizzello)

On Feb. 19, during the week finalists would have been named, the Trump administration announced an executive order cutting the program.Kauffman, 45, said she was crushed by the decision and worries that the mass layoffs and dissolution of the fellows program will forever change public service.

“It’s so easy to decimate something but so much harder to rebuild,” she said. “And I worry that the incredibly talented people who may have been my cohort or colleagues are going to go elsewhere, and there will be an incredible brain drain. It’s such a loss for the American people.”Sydney Smith, 28, said many of the fellows were shocked at being let go because they came in to the government with ideas on how to make it more efficient.Smith studied chemistry as an undergraduate student at Willamette University in Oregon before going on to study accounting at George Washington University. She heard about the presidential fellows program but was skeptical she would get in because of the low acceptance rate.

After she made it as a finalist in 2023, she started working foras an accountant. She’s a backpacker who loves the outdoors and is passionate about making public lands accessible. It was a perfect fit.

Now Smith’s goal is to finish the CPA exams, something she was doing to make herself even more qualified for federal service.

“I’m hopeful that in the future that there will be room for me in the government,” she said. “I don’t know what that would look like, but I am hopeful that it still exists.”from Social Security’s inspector general states that from fiscal years 2015 through 2022, the agency paid out almost $8.6 trillion in benefits, including $71.8 billion — or less than 1% — in improper payments. Most of the erroneous payments were overpayments to living people.

In addition, in early January, the U.S. Treasury clawed backin a variety of federal payments— not just Social Security payments— that improperly went to dead people, a recovery that former Treasury official David Lebryk said was “just the tip of the iceberg.”

The money was reclaimed as part of a five-month pilot program after Congress gave thetemporary access to the