Trump kills summer job and post-grad opportunities for students

Over spring break, Bella Nesbeth `26 was shocked to receive an email from her summer job informing her that President Donald Trump’s federal hiring freeze had cancelled her internship with the U.S. Foreign Service.

“The Foreign Service internship … was under a congressional mandate,” Nesbeth said. “Me and the other members of my cohort really expected this to continue and go through because this is a very important program, but it did not.” 

Nesbeth said that she felt blindsided by the news about losing the highly selective internship with the U.S. government after receiving an offer in October 2024. In February 2025, she met with her cohort, and everything seemed normal.

“In accordance with the President’s Executive Order entitled Hiring Freeze and the Office of Management and Budget and Office of Personnel Management’s joint Memorandum entitled Federal Civilian Hiring Freeze Guidance effective January 20, 2025, the Department hereby rescinds your final offer to participate in the U.S. Foreign Service Internship Program,” the U.S. Foreign Service wrote in an email to Nesbeth.

Nesbeth is not the only Grinnell student dealing with the loss of a summer or postgraduate opportunity due to funding cuts from the Trump administration. 

In October 2024, Mira Diamond-Berman `25 applied for a job at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease, following her inspiration to continue scientific research. In December 2024, she spent 5 hours interviewing for the position with most of the scientists in the department she applied for. 

Mira Diamond-Berman `25 applied to a job a federal agency which she later found had been put on pause by funding cuts. (Chhayachhay Chhom)

Four days after Trump’s inauguration, she received an email from the lab’s principal investigator saying that he was unsure of the lab’s funding status for the coming year. 2 weeks later, Diamond-Berman received a follow-up email – the program was on pause due to a presidential executive order holding funding. 

“Because this is where Dr. Fauci used to be in charge, I think my department in particular is being cut,” said Diamond-Berman. “Right after the inauguration, the [principal investigator] was like, ‘Things are not looking good’ … He’s like, ‘I’m not really sure. You can email me to check back if you don’t hear from us in a month or so, but just read the news. I don’t know any more than you do.’”

Since the program’s pause, Diamond-Berman has found a postgraduate job at a privately-funded fertility clinic after having difficulties finding other federally-funded science research opportunities. 

“I don’t think I would have found that if it wasn’t for the fact that I was like, ‘I need to find something that’s privately funded and not government funded,” Diamond-Berman said. 

In an email to The S&B, Daniel & Patricia Jipp Finkelman Dean of the Careers, Life, and Service Center Mark Peltz, wrote that the Careers, Life, and Service Center is concentrating their outreach in organizations with less reliance on government funding following federal funding cuts and freezes impacting Grinnell students and alumni. 

“Sadly, we’ve also received reports from Grinnell alumni who have been directly impacted by the many staff reductions across federal departments and agencies,” Peltz wrote. “For the students who have received an internship, job or graduate school offer, some remained worried — for understandable reasons — that those offers will be rescinded due to additional cuts or freezes.”

Still, many students have yet to find summer internships or postgraduate opportunities following federal funding cuts and hiring freezes. Nesbeth said that she has not been able to find a summer internship yet. 

“All of these student internships in all the departments have been canceled, so it’s competing against a lot of people trying to find things last minute,” Nesbeth said. “There’s a lot of opportunities that I applied to last year that I didn’t this year because I already had this job back in October, and I would have applied to them knowing that I wasn’t gonna have this.”