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OK. The MET Gala may be over, but there was another formal affair - last night. This one was in Washington, D.C., and it's colloquially known as the Oscars of government service. The honorees are federal workers doing extraordinary things for the public good. And as NPR's Andrea Hsu reports, this year, there were far fewer awards than usual.
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ANDREA HSU, BYLINE: It's been a ritual for 25 years, built on the belief that celebrating what the government does right is fundamental to its success.
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MAX STIER: All right. Welcome to the Sammies.
HSU: The Service to America Medals, the brainchild of Max Stier. He's founder and CEO of the Partnership for Public Service, which works with Democrats and Republicans to build better government. Since 2002, the nonprofit has recognized more than 800 federal employees - engineers, economists, enforcement officers, scientists of all types.
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STIER: Together, our honorees represent an extraordinary set of accomplishments for our country.
HSU: Normally, several dozen are celebrated on this night. But this year, only four awards were given. Stier told NPR the largest share of nominations have always come from federal agencies. But this year...
STIER: That didn't happen, and it's not just that the nominations didn't come, but it's also that the employees themselves were sometimes scared, frankly.
HSU: To be singled out in this way, at a time when the Trump administration has taken an axe to the civil service. Some 300,000 workers left the federal government last year. Stier says an unbelievable number of talented people were chased out.
STIER: What has occurred in the last 14 months has been apocalyptic in terms of the capacity of our government to do the things that we want it to do.
HSU: The White House countered that in a statement, insisting the American people are seeing a more effective federal workforce under Trump. Stier says there's no doubt good work is still happening. And for a few hours last night, the spotlight was on the good work - including by a team of agricultural researchers. Presenter Amna Nawaz of PBS spoke of their work studying the digestive systems and DNA of dairy cattle.
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AMNA NAWAZ: The results - holy cow. Each U.S. dairy cow now produces nearly 2,800 gallons of milk annually. That is twice as much as in 1980. That is udderly (ph) impressive.
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HSU: American cows now also consume far less feed, and losses from disease are down. Two of the scientists, Ransom Baldwin and Curt Van Tassell, come from dairy-farming families. Van Tassell, whose speech is slowed by Parkinson's, was first in his family to go to college. Over the decades, he's enjoyed seeing the advancements made possible by their discoveries.
CURT VAN TASSELL: My brother is still on that farm that I grew up on. So I see it every time I visit that farm.
HSU: And he knows American families are benefiting at the grocery store.
VAN TASSELL: When I was a college senior, a gallon of milk costs $2.05 at Egan's (ph).
HSU: In Ithaca, New York, 40 years later, a gallon of milk at Costco is only slightly more than that.
VAN TASSELL: That's what makes me sleep at night, producing the best cow that we can, given the knowledge that we have.
HSU: Baldwin says steady government funding has enabled their success.
RANSOM BALDWIN: The knowledge that we're going to have funding to do our work every year allows us not to focus so much on what's the next project that we need to run.
HSU: In academia, he says, projects tend to last about four years, a typical graduate student career. In government...
BALDWIN: We can conduct research over 10s and 15s and 20s of years, and we can have our share of failures.
HSU: High risk, high reward. Also critical, Baldwin says, is having the trust of dairy farmers who hand over their data, knowing the government will turn it into tools to help them. Van Tassell, who's just days away from retirement, says it's been tremendously satisfying. Science and government, he says...
VAN TASSELL: I think it's a match made in heaven. It's incredibly complex, and we do a good job with it.
HSU: Now, under Trump, the dairy cattle research is still funded - but it's not going to happen at the place where Van Tassell and Baldwin have spent their careers. Last month, USDA announced the entire Agricultural Research Center in Beltsville, Maryland, will be shuttered starting this year. Andrea Hsu, NPR News.
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