‘Took away my hope.’ Federal workers say Trump mass firings upended their lives

Posted by author February 16, 2025 Jobs

The termination notice came just before Valentine’s Day, and Elena Moseyko’s heart was shattered as she broke down crying in front of her two young children.

She has bills to pay – a mortgage, preschool tuition, a car payment – and a scared family.

“I feel so angry now at the administration because I traumatized my kids,” she said. “I wish I would’ve never joined the federal government.”

Moseyko joined the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs last year as a data scientist. She’d been “happily employed” in the private sector for a consulting firm but thought a government job seemed more stable.

Instead, her life was turned upside down last week after President Donald Trump’s administration began instituting mass layoffs as part of an aggressive effort to trim the federal workforce.

Harrison Fields, a special assistant to the president, said in a statement to USA TODAY that Trump “returned to Washington with a mandate from the American people to bring about unprecedented change in our federal government to uproot waste, fraud, and abuse.”

“This isn’t easy to do in a broken system entrenched in bureaucracy and bloat, but it’s a task long overdue,” he said.

USA TODAY spoke to federal workers fired from the departments of Education, Veterans Affairs, Agriculture and Transportation who said they were shocked, angry and emotionally distraught by the terminations. They were scrambling over the weekend to figure out how to file for unemployment benefits and reviewing their budgets to adjust to a new financial reality.

They worried about everything from making rent to paying student loans. Many talked about going into government work because they value public service and feeling like those values are being trampled.

“I’m much more angry than devastated,” said Chelsea Milburn, a 34-year-old Navy reservist, who lost her job as a public affairs specialist for the Department of Education. “It took away my hope that I would continue to be respected and valued for my service. And especially in the way the termination happened.”

Firings target probationary employees

The ex-employees USA TODAY spoke to said they never received bad performance reviews at work, but their walking papers all included similar language:

“The agency finds, based on your performance, that you have not demonstrated that your further employment at the agency would be in the public interest,” multiple federal workers told USA TODAY their termination letter read.

“It read like a copy-and-paste letter that did not provide any specifics,” Milburn said. “It was just very cold and cruel.”

She said her teleworking job was a near-perfect situation after her life dramatically changed two years ago, first with a bout with COVID-19 and then being diagnosed with POTS, a disability that makes it hard for her to sit at a desk full-time.

Milburn was one of the nearly 70 employees in the Education Department still within their probationary periods who were let go Wednesday night. Federal employees in probationary status have typically been hired within the past year.

They are easier to fire because they lack the bargaining rights that career employees have to appeal their terminations. But some who had been in their departments longer than that got caught up, too.

Doug Berry, who worked for U.S. Department of Agriculture Rural Development, left his former career in real estate for his job at the USDA for more stability, was hired as a loan technician last January. But in July, the 53-year-old chose to take a position as a pathways intern instead, in part because it would give him a better career path after the probationary period, but also because he wanted to pursue an MBA at the same time.

His probationary period reset, but he couldn’t have known at the time what that would mean.

Berry said his termination letter was emailed to him close to 5 p.m. Thursday and was effective at the end of that business day, but his office closes at 4:30 p.m. and he was already gone for the day. He showed up Friday morning to discover his job was gone.

“I got to donate an hour of my time to clean out my desk and hand off what I was working on to my coworkers,” he said.

At least five unions representing government workers have filed suit over the administration’s firing of probationary workers, alleging it breaks the formal process used by government agencies to dismiss employees.

“These firings are not about poor performance – there is no evidence these employees were anything but dedicated public servants,” said Everett Kelley, president of the American Federation of Government Employees, which represents about 800,000 federal workers.

DOGE aims to slash government spending

The Department of Government Efficiency, led by Elon Musk, has been tearing through federal agencies, moving to shutter some and drastically cut back others. Nearly the entire federal workforce was offered a buyout. Then the notices began.

Thousands of workers have been laid off in recent days, with the terminations focused on newer hires who still have probationary status. The extent of the layoffs is still unclear, but roughly 220,000 federal employees out of 2.3 million had less than one year of experience in their current positions as of March 2024, according to the most recently publicly available data from the U.S. Office of Personnel Management.

Trump showed no signs of yielding despite a deluge of suits.

“He who saves his country does not violate any law,” Trump said on Truth Social, his social media app.

But as Musk’s team scours the federal government, looking to purge scores of employees, the president’s opponents continue to warn about the ramifications, both personal and national.

Sen. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, a GOP lawmaker who has occasionally opposed Trump in public, said dozens of federal workers from her state were suddenly laid off.

“I share the administration’s goal of reducing the size of the federal government, but this approach is bringing confusion, anxiety, and now trauma to our civil servants – some of whom moved their families and packed up their whole lives to come here,” she said.

The full ramifications of Trump’s decision, whether in the country’s urban centers or rural enclaves, won’t be fully absorbed for weeks or months. Asked for a total or estimate on how many workers have been let go, for instance, the Office of Personnel Management on Friday declined to provide USA TODAY with answers.

Former workers worry about the communities they were hired to serve

Victoria Porter, 28, said she found her dream job riding horses into the backcountry to maintain hiking trails for the U.S. Forest Service in Montana. That all went away Friday, when she said eight other people on her 12-person trail team also were fired.

The terminations will have a big impact the community around the forest where she worked, Porter said. Outdoor outfitters and other local businesses rely on the trails as an economic engine for the region. There’s “no way” the trails can be maintained with a drastically smaller crew, she said.

“They’ll try their best, but it will mean that hikers can’t get through, it will mean that the outfitters can’t get through and their livelihoods depend on taking people out to the backcountry,” Porter said. “So they will suffer. The communities around here will suffer. It’s going to hit the economy really hard because tourism will drop.”

Berry also worried about the impact of the terminations on the low-income, rural communities his work reviewing loans and funding for community projects served.

“USDA Rural Development helps the towns that voted for Trump every day, and I think there’s a disconnect between understanding that these things are necessary in small-town life and realizing that you just voted to get rid of the water project you need,” he said.

“I don’t know where I’m going to end up,” Berry said, now worried that he would have to disclose being fired for anything else he applies to. “I’ve never been terminated for cause in my life, until now.”

Moseyko joined the VA in June 2024 in a highly skilled position writing machine learning algorithms. She is confident about getting a new job with her skills, but said the sudden pink slip is taking a mental toll and the immediate financial concerns are worrying. She spent Friday figuring out how to file for unemployment.

“Mentally it’s very draining,” she said.

Berry has started the process of fighting the decision. Moseyko believes the termination was illegal.

“Every one of us who got the exact same form letter without proper process or actual cause have a grievance,” Berry said.

Meanwhile, Milburn said she now has to find work that will accommodate her medical condition like her federal job did. She is also upset that most Americans who support cutting government jobs aren’t really aware of the repercussions of the forceful downsizing that will eventually have a trickle-down effect.

“When I see people cheering on these broad, sweeping attacks on civil servants as if it’s a good thing, that is incredibly hurtful and infuriating to me,” Milburn said. “I feel like I have served my country admirably, and now it has betrayed me.

“But, I’m not going out without a fight.”

Contributing: Joey Garrison