15-07-2025
The Collateral Damage of Federal Work Force Cuts: Summer Interns
In December, Ryan Silien found out that he had secured an internship working on a United States Agency for International Development program in the Philippines. Mr. Silien, then a freshman at William & Mary, was elated.
His plans started to unravel once President Trump took office in January. U.S.A.I.D. was among the organizations targeted by Mr. Trump's Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE. By March, Mr. Silien's internship offer had been swept away along with at least 7,000 jobs the department had deemed a waste of taxpayer dollars.
Beyond his panic and disappointment, Mr. Silien said he was a bit baffled that in its push for efficiency, the department championed by Mr. Trump and Elon Musk had done away with his unpaid internship.
The government was passing up 'free labor by, arguably, some of the people who will be most passionate and excited to get involved in this work,' said Mr. Silien, 18.
The Trump administration's sweeping cuts have pushed many lifetime civil servants out of their roles They have also disrupted people at the other end of the career spectrum: summer interns, those energetic new arrivals who count on internships to serve as the on-ramp to their professional lives. (Some, but not all, are paid for their efforts.)
Young people who hustled for competitive internships and research positions said they felt dejected when those offers were taken back. Their optimism gave way to a stressful scramble to find other roles or sources of income on short notice. Several second-guessed whether they really wanted to enter fields that seemed to be crumbling before their eyes.
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