In September, Anissa Nanavati (SFS ’26) interviewed for an internship with the U.S. Agency for International Development’s (USAID) private sector engagement hub. In November, Nanavati received a tentative offer for the job. She was thrilled.
“I was very happy, because it basically ticked off all my boxes on something that I wanted to do, and also actually really gave me the opportunity to help people,” Nanavati said. “I think that’s what the best part about working with government internships is, is having that ability to deliver positive outcomes for people.”
Last Wednesday, USAID rescinded her offer.
In light of the Trump administration’s federal hiring freeze, USAID informed Nanavati that they could not hire her or any other interns. The freeze, which was announced on Jan. 20 and is set to last at least until late April, has put countless potential federal employees out of jobs, including Georgetown students.
Peyton Austin (SFS ’26) was also set to intern at USAID this semester. When word of the hiring freeze started circulating, Austin didn’t think it would affect him. In 2017, the first Trump administration instituted a hiring freeze that exempted fellowships and many internships. This time, though, it wasn’t the same.
“I saw the memo that they actually sent out the guidance, and it was like, ‘If you haven’t been appointed by January 20, you’re screwed.’ And I was like, ‘Oh, that’s not good,’” Austin said.
The Trump administration instituted the 90-day hiring freeze in an attempt to “drain the swamp,” or shrink the size of the federal government. A White House press release promised that, “The president will usher a Golden Age for America by reforming and improving the government bureaucracy to work for the American people.”
In the past, government hiring freezes have not saved taxpayers money. A Government Accounting Office analysis of hiring freezes from the Carter and Reagan administration hiring freezes found that unfilled positions at the IRS led to inefficiency and an estimated $222 million in unpaid taxes, and only saved $10.9 million in agent salary and benefits.
Trump’s last hiring freeze in 2017 was also unsuccessful in its goal to shrink the federal workforce. From December 2016, just a month before Trump’s first inauguration, to December 2020, a month before he would leave office, the federal government added 64,785 jobs, growing by 3.5% under his leadership.
By the time the Trump administration handed down this most recent hiring freeze, both internship application season and Georgetown’s add/drop period were over. Students had created schedules around jobs that didn’t exist, and they would be hard-pressed to find a new internship.
“I took all classes in the evening so that I could work this internship. I lightened my load a lot extracurricular-wise, so that I could do this internship without crashing out,” Nanavati said. “By the time [USAID] told me, it was last Wednesday, so that’s past add/drop, I could not change around my classes to make them at better times. I asked the registrar—they said no.”
Austin had turned down other internship offers to work at USAID, because he felt their work was important.
“I was doing it for the experience, and I was doing it to serve in USAID, because that’s an honorable thing to do,” Austin said. “I did pass on other offers because it’s USAID, right? So that was the bullish part, was knowing you could have had something, but you turned it down for this, and then it just got pulled.”
USAID offers paid positions—a hot commodity in federal government internships. While having an inconvenient schedule or losing out on other internships is a concern, students who were planning to rely on their salaries to support their time at Georgetown are now left without a source of income.
“I quit my job so that I could work internships,” Nanavati said. “My parents have told me, it helps out a lot when [I] work. I’ve had a work study job since I stepped on campus. Literally the week after I got on campus, I got a job, and it’s always been something that I’ve been proud of, to be able to provide for myself and to lift an economic burden off of my family.”
Now, Nanavati is struggling to find another job.
“It’s just generally kind of hard to find stuff, because everything’s already filled. The deadlines have already passed for spring internships,” Nanavati added.
Still, both Austin and Nanavati emphasized that their situations seemed small compared to the enormity of the impacts of Trump’s recent executive actions.
“It’s a thousand times worse for the people for whom this is their livelihood—they need this to pay the bills, feed their children,” Austin said.
“Even though what happened to me is definitely very sad and very disappointing, and I definitely cried about it, for sure, I think that I just put it in perspective, and I’m really just more heartbroken for the people whose lives this is permanently altering,” Nanavati added. “For some people, this is literally like, I get to stay in this country, or I don’t, or I feel safe in this country, or I don’t.”
Now without internships for this semester, Austin and Nanavati question whether they would apply to work with the federal government again—not out of a grudge, but out of fear for the impacts of their work as the Trump administration begins a campaign of mass deportations, defunding of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) initiatives, attacks on gender nonconforming Americans, and more.
“As a woman of color, I care about helping other minorities. I care about making sure that everything is equitable, and people who are left out of traditional government are being incorporated in the space, and the fact that they’re getting rid of all the DEI programs, it’s so crazy,” Nanavati said. “If I’m working in the government and all I’m doing is actively hurting people and their livelihoods, I cannot do that without a guilty conscience.”
