A former federal employee recounts how she was abruptly fired under Trump’s mass purge—a calculated attack on civil servants and the people they serve.
Up until last month, I was a federal employee of the U.S. government. On Feb. 15, 2025, I received an email from the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) entitled, “Read This Immediately.” It contained a termination letter, based solely on my probationary status with the government and this assessment:
“Unfortunately, the Agency finds that you are not fit for continued employment because your ability, knowledge, and skills do not fit the Agency’s current needs, and your performance has not been adequate to justify further employment at the Agency.”
Many variations of this cold and completely unsubstantiated letter have gone out to thousands of people who recently joined the federal government. And even though I understand my termination’s justification is meritless, its impact is demoralizing—which is exactly the point.
From day one, the Trump administration has launched a strategic campaign to intimidate federal workers and the people they serve. From my perspective working as the ombudsman for unaccompanied children, a senior career position within the HHS, I observed a pattern quickly emerging. The president would issue an executive order, which was then “implemented” through an Office of Personnel Management (OPM) memo directing agencies to carry out the order, followed by daily meetings that mysteriously popped up on our calendars with little rhyme or reason.
These meetings were often farcical. Jaws would drop, and bodies would stiffen as the career officials attempted to deliver the latest bombshell with a straight face. Among the low points was a memo from the OPM that urged people to turn in anyone who was doing work on DEI under the cover of a different job, a ban on travel and stakeholder engagements, and being encouraged with “fork-in-the-road” emails to leave before you were fired.
But for me, the prospect of losing my team of mostly probationary employees was the worst. In October 2024, I became the first-ever ombudsman for unaccompanied children, a new position and office created to provide impartial and confidential assessments of the government’s treatment of unaccompanied children. By January 2025, we were a team of seven and had begun investigating individual cases and systemic concerns about care, custody and services for children. Our job—which required us to meet with stakeholders and visit various childcare sites—was immediately impeded by the ban on travel and public engagement.
Jaws would drop, and bodies would stiffen as the career officials attempted to deliver the latest bombshell with a straight face.
Four of us were still on “probation,” having joined the federal government recently. Despite my years of service as both a federal attorney and a political appointee, I was probationary because this was my first job within a competitive branch of the civil service. The fact that I was a political appointee under Obama and a fairly vocal advocate before assuming my new role likely made additional marks against me.
Understanding the likelihood of my fate, my job became about protecting the team. I asked repeatedly to meet with both the head career official and the senior political official who, according to regulation, should have been my supervisor. No one responded.
I questioned if anyone could genuinely evaluate my office and my staff when we were so new and just beginning to do our work. We were told to justify retaining each probationary employee, so we got to work writing recommendations that praised their contributions to our new team. In some cases, we only got 45 minutes to craft these career-changing recommendations. When I asked whether anyone was doing the same for me, nobody would answer.
I found out that I was going to be fired when I was uninvited to a manager’s meeting on Feb. 14. I was told that the topic of the meeting was handling probationary employee termination issues. Because I was among those terminated, the organizer of the meeting decided that I should not attend, even though I was still responsible for my own probationary staff. I was even asked later in the day to confirm that I had received a termination email from HHS, but my agency did not even send the letters until the next day.
Within the Administration for Children and Families (ACF), we all supposedly got the same letter—with one exception. Most people were given administrative leave until Mar. 14, 2025. People whose probationary period would end before that time were given shorter periods of administrative leave, so their termination would be effective while they were still on probation.
This reckless treatment of the federal workforce is utterly unjust. Its conduct has proven itself unprofessional, shoddy and arguably illegal. But I don’t believe these poor termination tactics derive solely from incompetence. Setting termination dates just days before someone is no longer on probation takes planning. It takes a certain ruthlessness that is part of this administration’s ongoing pattern of intimidation.
Just the other day, I received boxes of things from my office. I wasn’t even permitted to return to the office myself and pack up my own items; heaven forbid I would go in and remind other people of my existence or talk about what happened to me.
It’s important to note that just recently, Trump walked back his directives to fire federal employees—not out of a change of heart, but rather, out of reluctant compliance with U.S. District Judge William Alsup, who struck down the president’s actions as unlawful. But regardless of these developments, the impact of these directives remains and reflects how this administration views federal workers.
Ultimately, demeaning and demoralizing a workforce to score political points is unpresidential. Civil servants don’t deserve this—and neither does the public.
