Fired Federal Workers Were Told to Contact Dead Woman to Complain
Yet another example of the Trump administration’s incompetence and cruelty.

Got a problem with the Trump administration? Good luck.
Recently laid-off employees from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services were told to contact Anita Pinder, the former director at the agency’s Office of Equal Opportunity and Civil Rights, with any complaints. A notice informed severed workers that they had 45 calendar days to contact Pinder following their termination date, listing Pinder’s name, email, and phone number.
But those who knew Pinder said the directive came as a “gut punch,” according to The Washington Post, since Pinder died last year.
“They couldn’t have run it past the people at CMS that were at the funeral and knew she died,” Karen Shields, one of Pinder’s former co-workers, told the Post. “This is a lack of communication. There is just a better way to do this.”
Shields told the newspaper that it “pained” her to see Pinder’s name used in the reduction-in-force notices.
“She would have been someone, even though her job would have been on the chopping block, she would have helped,” Shields said.
The negligent error is just one recent instance in which the “shock and awe” of the Trump administration’s federal makeover has resulted in dud details and mass confusion.
At the Food and Drug Administration, fired staffers were instructed to contact an Office of Equal Employment Opportunity employee that had left the agency more than a month ago, the Post reported.
So far, the Trump administration—directed by Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency—has fired more than 100,000 federal employees. But tens of thousands more government jobs are expected to be on the chopping block as Trump pursues a second round of “voluntary” buyouts.
More than 10,000 jobs are expected to be cut at the Department of Health and Human Services, which encompasses the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has proposed downsizing the agency’s 82,000-person workforce by nearly a quarter.