His IRS job in Kansas City was going to change his life. Trump fired him after a month
When Jasper Hudgins-Bradley received his first paycheck from the Internal Revenue Service a few weeks ago, he knew the money would change his life.
The 38-year-old Overland Park resident strives to limit his out-of-pocket expenses to $1,000 a month, part of a frugality born out of a challenging life. Originally from the Quindaro neighborhood of Kansas City, Kansas, Hudgins-Bradley is a one-time high school dropout who earned his GED but has spent much of his adulthood in a series of low-paying jobs.
Hudgins-Bradley began working at the IRS’ Kansas City campus on Jan. 27 in small business collections. It was the best-paying job of his life.
“When I got the check from the IRS that I got, the next day I paid for all the bills,” Hudgins-Bradley said, adding that after that “the terror, the constant thrum of ‘you’re behind on this bill if you don’t get it paid, this is going to get shut off’ – I didn’t have that because everything was paid and I still had money in my account.”
The IRS fired Hudgins-Bradley last week.
About 100 IRS employees in Kansas City were fired as part of a nationwide wave of terminations triggered by executive orders from President Donald Trump and billionaire Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency initiative, which is seeking to bring federal agencies to heel through slash-and-burn methods. Upwards of 6,000 IRS employees nationally were expected to lose their jobs just as tax season picks up.
Federal workers in Kansas City and elsewhere are bracing for more sweeping job losses in the months ahead. On Wednesday, the Office of Management and Budget directed agency leaders to submit plans by March 13 for additional cuts. Agencies must seek a “significant reduction” in jobs by eliminating positions “not required.”
Even as public attention quickly moves on to DOGE and Trump’s next targets, real people are left in their wake. The frantic, aggressive push to fire workers and gut spending has already upended dozens of lives across the Kansas City region, leaving disoriented ex-employees to try to pick up the pieces.
The Star spoke with three former Kansas City IRS workers who were fired last week. All voiced frustration and anger with not only the firings but the sudden, cold way they came. The ex-employees hail from different backgrounds but for all of them, a job at the IRS had marked a new beginning with promises of a richer life.
This is the story of one of those fired employees. Upcoming stories will feature the others.
The IRS workers fired last week were probationary, meaning the employees were in their first or second year on the job, depending on the positions. The fired workers who spoke to The Star had all been at the agency less than a year.
Hudgins-Bradley didn’t even make it a month.
“A Black man in America, I am very accustomed to stamping on my rage as a matter of survival, so I was livid,” he said. “On the way out, I was doing some paperwork and I literally could not remember my phone number. That’s the anger.”
The ‘Rules of Acquisition’
The IRS was supposed to offer a path to stability for Hudgins-Bradley.
His stepfather recently retired as a mail carrier and another family member who works at the IRS suggested he apply for the job in the first place. By his own account, he has several examples in his life of the stability a government job should provide – something he craves.
Hudgins-Bradley’s life has at times been tumultuous. High school was rough. He switched schools five times and tried to graduate during a second stint at Shawnee Mission East but by then was an adult living on his own, trying to balance work and education, and eventually dropped out.
“Moving ahead from there, I just did what I could,” Hudgins-Bradley said. “So getting walked out of the job wasn’t new to me because I dealt with things like that before.”
Hudgins-Bradley wants to build a massage therapy business. After earning a GED, he became a licensed massage therapist. He has a few clients, but not nearly enough to financially sustain himself.
His hope had been to build out the business gradually while the IRS job provided a financial foundation. He estimated that with the IRS job, he would have had around $3,300 a month in income.
The cash flow would help him pay off his student debt. He owes about $13,000, dating back to when he went to school to study massage therapy.
He also wanted to potentially provide massages at lower prices. As he sees it, those who need massage the most – workers who stand all day or perform manual labor – are often the least likely to afford it. He expects to hit pause on that idea for now.
A rented house in Overland Park has been home for the past year, but the interior appears as if someone could have moved in last week. The furnishings are very spare, with a single couch abutting a desk and computer in the living room. Although a friend is crashing with him at the moment, he lives alone except for his bearded dragon, a lizard named Desert.
He calls himself a minimalist but wants to better furnish the house. He envisions an open space where he can throw a dance party or practice martial arts.
One of the few decorations is a crescent-shaped blade that hangs next to the front door – a model of a weapon used by the Klingons in Star Trek.
With the IRS job, Hudgins-Bradley could sketch out a positive future in his mind.
Even though he’s had his own “disdain” with the government, he was prepared to compromise and had accepted “Trump basically being my boss.”
Hudgins-Bradley’s favorite Star Trek series is Deep Space Nine, a show that features the Ferengi, a mercantilist species that lives by the “Rules of Acquisition.”
“One of the Rules of Acquisition: dignity and an empty sack is worth the sack,” Hudgins-Bradley said, summing up the situation.
The axe falls
After applying last September, Hudgins-Bradley got a final offer in December. His job kicked off in January with training expected to last into April.
In small business collections, Hudgins-Bradley expected he would be able to empathize with the small business owners who would be calling in. After all, he has a small business. And a past stint at H&R Block had let him see both sides of the tax collection process.
But the tumult of the new Trump administration loomed in the background from the start.
The DOGE initiative was already underway and Trump had signed a slew of executive orders sending the federal government into turmoil. Officials were cutting diversity, equity and inclusion efforts. Agencies began firing probationary employees, the easiest to terminate on short notice.
Still, Hudgins-Bradley was connecting with his co-workers. From the managers to those who were in training with him, everyone was just taking things a day at a time, he said.
“There was very much a sense of we’re all in this together,” he said.
Hudgins-Bradley recalled bumping into an I.T. worker who had worked overtime a previous weekend to ensure he and his fellow trainees could smoothly access computer systems – only to have Hudgins-Bradley and his co-workers fired two days later.
Word of impending cuts at the IRS began circulating early last week. The National Treasury Employees Union Chapter 66, or NTEU 66, which represents IRS workers in Kansas City, sounded the alarm and warned that it feared up to 1,000 workers could be fired. The New York Times reported up to 6,000 IRS jobs could be cut nationwide.
The axe fell on Hudgins-Bradley last Friday as he and his co-workers sat in a training classroom.
“All of the managers from my division came in and told us, ‘we just got word, we’re going to have to let you go,’” he said.
Trump and national Republicans have largely stood by Musk and the cuts. At Trump’s first cabinet meeting of his second term on Wednesday, Musk spoke at length at his invitation.
“We have a mandate to do this, and this is part of the reason I got elected. I got elected based on taxes and based on many things, the border, but also based on balancing budgets and getting our country back into shape, and this is a big part of it,” Trump said at the meeting.
Closer to Kansas City, Rep. Mark Alford has staunchly defended the federal firings and DOGE’s cuts. The Missouri Republican held a raucous town hall in Belton on Monday, where dozens of people, including current and former federal workers, shouted at him for an hour and a half.
Alford emphasized that government jobs aren’t lifetime appointments.
“So I would encourage anyone who finds themselves in this situation to realize that we are going to get this economy turning again. There are jobs available. God has a plan and purpose for your life,” Alford said.
But the IRS needs investments that will lead to more revenue, said Daniel Scharpenburg, 1st vice president at NTEU 66. He called the firings devastating for the affected workers, adding that “what’s going on is not OK.”
“Elon Musk is not the president,” he said.
Seeking stability
As Hudgins-Bradley began an hour-long interview on Wednesday, he said he wanted to be a writer. He immediately corrected himself to say he is a writer.
He has a website with an eclectic variety of pieces. Open letters about the 2016 election and civil disobedience. A guide to a video game. Poetry. He said he’s working on a piece about his experience at the IRS.
Hudgins-Bradley has always liked stories, an interest his mother encouraged when he was a child. His appetite for reading was so voracious that once when he went into a Pizza Hut with a collection of “Book It!” certificates, the staff just gave him a full-size pizza, not the small personal pan pizzas prized by children.
He remembered a book from his childhood, “The People Could Fly: American Black Folktales,” a 1985 illustrated collection of myths and tall tales.
“I was interested in that because of the history of endurance, even though people were bonded they still imagine,” he said.
Asked how he imagines the next chapter of his own life, Hudgins-Bradley at first joked that “I’ve had enough trauma that I could, like, start my evil villain arc.”
But turning serious, he said he wants his next chapter to be stable.
He’s gotten back on LinkedIn and job hunting websites. He’s working leads on massage therapy jobs. He’s asking friends and family if they have ideas.
When he began working full-time, Hudgins-Bradley said he never expected to crisscross the world or own a yacht. He wanted to afford a house or apartment in his own right, feed himself, save money and travel a bit.
“That was it. That was the first step,” he said. “But I’ve never been able to work a job that’s permitted me to do that.”
This story was originally published February 28, 2025 at 5:30 AM.
