Tia Mitchell, AJC Washington Bureau Chief (@tiamitchell.com)

‘We are alive:’ federal workers get hugs, validation in fraught period of shutdown and layoffs WASHINGTON — The poem about vulnerability and persistence was hitting its mark. It could hardly have found a more appropriate audience. “We are alive and we are trying,” Drew Tye Ruby-Howe recited… https://www.baltimoresun.com/2025/10/03/we-are-alive-federal-workers-get-hugs-validation-in-fraught-period-of-shutdown-and-layoffs/