Once again, the CBS Evening News has decided to shine a victim spotlight on fired federal workers. This time, the focus is cast on the plight of a fired USAID worker.
Watch as CBS correspondent Caitlin Huey-Burns does her level best to elicit sympathy for the dismissed worker (click “expand” to view transcript:
KATE SCAIFE: USAID saves lives.
CAITLIN HUEY-BURNS: That's how you would have described your work?
SCAIFE: That's right. We make America safer.
HUEY-BURNS: For the last two years, Kate Scaife's job was to make thousands of humanitarian programs around the world run efficiently, a role she optimistically believed would match the priorities of the new administration.
SCAIFE: One of our senior leaders came up to me at one point, passed me in the hall and said, “be prepared to be the most popular girl in the room in a couple of weeks.”
HUEY-BURNS: Her illusions faded last month, when Musk tweeted about feeding USAID into the wood chipper. The next day, Scaife couldn't log onto her work devices.
SCAIFE: I felt disappeared, right? All of our work was made invisible, too.
HUEY-BURNS: We rode with Scaife as she drove to the office.
SCAIFE: I've got my kids' pictures…
HUEY-BURNS: You leave it there thinking you'll get it back.
SCAIFE: That it’ll be there on Monday. Hahaha, right.
HUEY-BURNS: She was allowed 15 minutes to clean out her desk.
SCAIFE: It just felt really demeaning to be treated like that.
HUEY-BURNS: Scaife had been the breadwinner in her family. How do you talk to your kids about this?
SCAIFE: It was so hard to tell them things like, “you know, we've made summer plans for these camps. And you know, I can't afford that.”
HUEY-BURNS: It feels like work was a big part of your identity.
SCAIFE: I feel like I am my best mom when I have this other part of me that helps me to feel engaged with the world. I don't know how I'll find something new that gives me that same joy.
HUEY-BURNS: A feeling now looming for hundreds of thousands of federal workers. For Eye on America I’m Caitlin Huey-Burns, in Silver Spring, Maryland.
In order to make the former USAID employee more sympathetic, there is some obscuring of her job role, which Huey-Burns describes as “to make thousands of humanitarian programs around the world run efficiently.” A ten-second search describes Kate Scaife’s position as “Senior Advisor for Localization”. Per a Grok search:
The Senior Advisor would serve as a high-level expert on strengthening local capacity, working to empower local organizations, governments, and communities to take the lead in development initiatives. This could include overseeing efforts to increase direct funding to local partners—such as nonprofits, businesses, or government entities—while reducing reliance on international intermediaries.
This is more involved than making programs run efficiently, but there is no probing, no delving into the position that was eliminated- no digging into what this USAID position supplied overseas- whether food and medicine or gender transitions. Huey Burns takes Scaife’s “we made America safer” at face value.
This is because the purpose of this news report is not to inform, but to elicit viewer sympathy for the thousands of government workers whose positions are eliminated in furtherance of greater government efficiency. Hence the following of Scaife as she walks into the (former) USAID building and gathers her belongings, and the sympathetic telling of this story, which CBS has repeatedly told and re-told over these past few weeks.
Click “expand” to view the full transcript of the aforementioned report as aired on the CBS Evening News on Monday, March 3rd, 2025:
MAURICE DuBOIS: President Trump is giving the heads of federal agencies until next week to submit plans for eliminating more government jobs. The thousands being cut in the mass firings are much more than numbers on a payroll list, and every one of them has a story. Caitlin Huey-Burns has tonight’s Eye on America.
KATE SCAIFE: What do you want for lunch today?
CAITLIN HUEY-BURNS: We joined Kate Scaife Friday morning as she made her kids lunch, dropped them off at the bus stop, and headed to her office at USAID where she was a program analyst. Scaife was one of thousands of federal employees who received an email saying they’re being affected by a reduction in force, governmentspeak for "You're fired."
SCAIFE: It has been one of the hardest months of my life. To feel that I did something wrong when all we were ever trying to do was the right thing.
RUSSELL VOUGHT: They are increasingly viewed as the villains.
HUEY-BURNS: That’s top Trump official Russell Vought, talking to his right wing think tank in 2023. Vought has helped billionaire Elon Musk carry out the mass firings across the federal government. Last week, Vought sent this memo directing agencies to plan for a significant reduction in the number of full-time workers, an effort to shrink the government that could ultimately leave 700,000 federal employees across the country out of a job.
VOUGHT: We want to put them in trauma.
HUEY-BURNS: That trauma was on display Friday, as USAID workers left the building for the last time.
SCAIFE: USAID saves lives.
HUEY-BURNS: That's how you would have described your work?
SCAIFE: That's right. We make America safer.
HUEY-BURNS: For the last two years, Kate Scaife's job was to make thousands of humanitarian programs around the world run efficiently, a role she optimistically believed would match the priorities of the new administration.
SCAIFE: One of our senior leaders came up to me at one point, passed me in the hall and said, “be prepared to be the most popular girl in the room in a couple of weeks.”
HUEY-BURNS: Her illusions faded last month, when Musk tweeted about feeding USAID into the wood chipper. The next day, Scaife couldn't log onto her work devices.
SCAIFE: I felt disappeared, right? All of our work was made invisible, too.
HUEY-BURNS: We rode with Scaife as she drove to the office.
SCAIFE: I've got my kids' pictures…
HUEY-BURNS: You leave it there thinking you'll get it back.
SCAIFE: That it’ll be there on Monday. Hahaha, right.
HUEY-BURNS: She was allowed 15 minutes to clean out her desk.
SCAIFE: It just felt really demeaning to be treated like that.
HUEY-BURNS: Scaife had been the breadwinner in her family. How do you talk to your kids about this?
SCAIFE: It was so hard to tell them things like, “you know, we've made summer plans for these camps. And you know, I can't afford that.”
HUEY-BURNS: It feels like work was a big part of your identity.
SCAIFE: I feel like I am my best mom when I have this other part of me that helps me to feel engaged with the world. I don't know how I'll find something new that gives me that same joy.
HUEY-BURNS: A feeling now looming for hundreds of thousands of federal workers. For Eye on America I’m Caitlin Huey-Burns, in Silver Spring, Maryland.
