内容摘要：A Chinkara gazelle fawn rests in the plumage of a peacock at an animal rescue center on a hot summer day in Bikaner, Rajasthan, India, Thursday, May 23, 2024. (AP Photo/Dinesh Gupta)

A Chinkara gazelle fawn rests in the plumage of a peacock at an animal rescue center on a hot summer day in Bikaner, Rajasthan, India, Thursday, May 23, 2024. (AP Photo/Dinesh Gupta)

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.”Volunteers gather in order to help residents evacuate from an area flooded in Porto Alegre, Brazil, May 7, 2024. (AP Photo/Andre Penner)

Volunteers gather in order to help residents evacuate from an area flooded in Porto Alegre, Brazil, May 7, 2024. (AP Photo/Andre Penner)A dog eyes a blueback, or Quinault sockeye salmon, before Jade Rodriguez brings the fish to Quinault Pride Seafood to sell in Taholah, Wash., May 22, 2024. (AP Photo/Lindsey Wasson)

A dog eyes a blueback, or Quinault sockeye salmon, before Jade Rodriguez brings the fish to Quinault Pride Seafood to sell in Taholah, Wash., May 22, 2024. (AP Photo/Lindsey Wasson)Children line up to enter school on Gardi Sugdub Island, part of the San Blas archipelago off Panama’s Caribbean coast, May 27, 2024. (AP Photo/Matias Delacroix)