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She hoped Trump’s victory would change her life, but not like this

Ryleigh Cooper is normally more focused on motherhood than politics. Then came DOGE.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2025/02/27/fired-federal-worker-trump-voter/

 

BALDWIN, Mich. — Ryleigh Cooper exhaled as she slid onto the couch after nine hours of work for the U.S. Forest Service, still covered in the blue paint she used to mark trees for local loggers. Then she got the text.

“I hate to be the bearer of bad news,” her union leader wrote.

It was the second Thursday in February, and a historic White House purge aimed at federal workers like Cooper was sweeping the country. But the headlines felt far away from her life in rural Michigan. She figured her job, with paychecks totaling about $40,000 a year, would be safe from the cost-cutting campaign led by President Donald Trump and billionaire Elon Musk.

Besides, motherhood was her most pressing concern. Cooper, 24, and her husband were trying to get pregnant, but the doctor said that IVF might be their best chance. Trump had promised to make it free. That is what she thought about in the voting booth.

Now she was staring at her phone, learning that probationary workers in the Forest Service were the next to be fired by his administration. Cooper was likely to be one of them, her union head told her.

Her eyes watered. She knew it wasn’t personal. Every day brought new rumors of cuts, and her performance evaluation from last fall found her “fully successful” — the highest possible score.

She reminded herself that she had done everything right: graduated college with a 3.5 GPA, finished her first semester of work toward a master’s degree in forestry with a 4.0, rescued two dogs and two cats from the local shelter, chosen a man who held her on the shower floor when she found out she had endometriosis, a condition that can lead to infertility, and told her, “It’s okay, there is more than one way to be a parent.”

She thought about the Facebook posts she had seen a few days earlier.

“It’s February 3,” her grandmother posted, “and we’re going in the right direction.”

“Any government employee who is afraid of transparency,” wrote the man who taught her AP government class in high school, “is a criminal!”

Cooper knew the people in her life meant well, but she wanted her future to be different from theirs. She had grown up watching her family struggle as her mother lost one job, then another, then another. She was just a few months shy of her graduate degree and close to a promotion that could nearly double her salary. Even $50,000 or $60,000 a year, she thought, could help get her a house a few counties over, with better schools.

For now, she and her husband lived in Baldwin, a village of about 1,000 people where the high school track is made of cracked concrete and weeds. They had purchased their home because it was cheap, less than $150,000, and close to their families, who could help with child care.

It takes three minutes to drive past Baldwin’s one post office, one bar and one bowling alley, which also serves pancakes and omelets for breakfast. The median household income is about $23,000, according to the most recent American Community Survey, putting it among the poorest towns in Michigan.

In the winter, locals ice fish from shanties warmed by propane heaters and drive snowmobiles to bars. In the summer, they drive lawn mowers to gas stations, though Cooper said she would never do that.

Most people in Baldwin like Trump; more than 62 percent in Lake County, which includes the town, voted for him in November and in 2020. But people don’t talk about it. Politics here, at least until recently, felt removed from everyday worries.

Now it was in her living room, as she turned to her husband and burst into tears. “I think I’m getting fired,” she said.

Getting fired meant she would no longer have health insurance, including the 12 weeks of paid maternity leave that was a guaranteed benefit of her federal service. Also gone would be the promotion that would allow her to plan for the kids she so badly wanted to have.

She wondered if Trump was going to break his promise to make IVF free, and if it would even matter if he did.

Her husband sat beside her and squeezed her hand, still processing. Together they had been counting. Sixteen days until they could try again. Twenty-eight until she could take her next test.

After she was sexually assaulted at 16, Cooper had sworn she would never be caught unprepared. But here she was. Betrayed by her body, which would not cooperate. Betrayed by her family, who supported firing federal workers like her. And, perhaps most painfully, betrayed by herself.

Cooper did not want to think about what happened three months prior but her mind went there anyway. To the voting booth in Baldwin’s town hall, where she filled out every part of the ballot before turning to the box that said “Presidential.” She recalled staring at it for 15 minutes.

She did not want to vote for Trump. Cooper hated what he said about women and hated how he treated them. Her family always said the women who accused the president of sexual assault had either made it up or deserved it. Cooper heard them and kept her own experience a secret, thinking that they might feel the same way about her.

She voted for Joe Biden in 2020, her first time casting a ballot in a presidential election. But life felt more complicated these days. Her mortgage was too expensive, groceries were nearly $400 a month, and one single cycle of IVF could cost more than 10 percent of her annual household income.

Trump, at a campaign stop an hour and a half south of her, had promised to make IVF free. She knew that from a video clip she saw on TikTok. And she had believed him.

She also believed him when he said that Project 2025, the conservative blueprint for the next Republican administration that suggested mass cuts to the federal workforce, was not his plan.

So Cooper filled in the bubble next to his name, thinking of the daughter she wanted. She planned to name her Charlotte.

The days after she got the text passed quickly. A call from the district ranger, who is in charge of the Forest Service in Baldwin, telling her to pack up her things. A box of printed performance reviews and tree identification books and a framed picture from her wedding last fall under a willow tree. A text from her co-worker who brought candy to refill the jar at her desk but arrived to find it, and her, gone.

Four days after Trump fired her, Cooper was in bed with her husband. She picked up her phone and saw the news.

There was a new executive order to expand access to IVF. She read the White House fact sheet, which talked about Trump’s request for policy recommendations to reduce costs of the service.

But it still wasn’t free, and she was out of a job and out of a plan.

“Delivering on promises for American families,” read the White House’s announcement.

“That’s bulls---”, she recalled thinking, and put down her phone.

 

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