'I’ve become sort of afraid of my own government': Fired federal workers speak out

After a long holiday weekend, Allison Hassett Wohl of Maryland said she woke up at 3 a.m. feeling anxiety about what's going on with federal workers.

“Quite frankly, I’ve become sort of afraid of my own government,” she said. “And boy, that is a scary position to be in as a citizen.”

Hassett Wohl is one of the thousands of workers that the Trump administration has let go in recent days in its effort to purge and shrink the government. She says she received a termination letter from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services on Saturday.

For almost two years, she worked in public affairs for a small division called the Administration for Community Living. It helps older adults and people with disabilities live independently instead of in nursing homes.

She said her termination letter stated that her performance was inadequate to justify further employment.

“However, I had just received my fiscal year performance review, and it actually says the opposite of that,” she said. “Which is that I received a performance evaluation that put me in the top category of employees in our agency and specifically this quote that says that I ‘bring key expertise on disability issues to inform Office of External Affairs work, improving the quality, clarity and effectiveness of our products.’”

Hassett Wohl was on a probationary period when she got the letter and said she is being paid through March 9.

Financially, she has two kids to worry about now that her family’s income is getting chopped in half. Her youngest has a disability and her oldest is on his way to college in the fall.

Professionally, she said she's still grieving the loss of a job at ACL that meant something to her.

“I have a teenager who has Down syndrome. I was a caregiver for my parents who both had dementia. And so, the mission of this agency was sort of a dream come true to work there,” she said. “So, on a personal level, I'm really devastated because I loved working there and I went there specifically because I had such a deep personal connection to the work.”

Hassett Wohl’s story is not unique. Other federal workers describe similar experiences, and some are now pursuing legal action.

One of them is Renad "Nina" Emlemdi in Washington D.C., who up until last week, worked in the U.S. Department of Education, where she handled complaints from student-loan borrowers.

She said she got a termination notice on Wednesday, Feb. 12.

Fifteen minutes later, she was logged out of all of her government equipment.

She said the letter claimed she was a probationary employee and that meant she had the right to be terminated at any point. But in her case, this was an error, she said.

“I was hired in August of 2023, and received multiple forms of documentation that stated I was on a one-year probationary status,” she says. “In August of 2024, I received documentation stating that my probation was over.”

Emlemdi and around 10 colleagues were in the same position.

She said they emailed the chief deputy operating officer in their division with the documents to back them up, and he responded, saying he was aware there could be system errors and that he would look into it.

But Emlemdi said she never heard back.

Here & Now reached out to the Department of Education for comment and was referred to their press team, which has not responded.

Emlemdi said she had read stories about federal workers being fired, but didn’t think it would happen to her.

“I heard chatter about it, but I would always tell my colleagues that our work is needed, so I didn't worry too much about it,” Emlemdi said. “And it ended up me on the chopping block.”

Emlemdi knows that President Trump campaigned on a promise to trim down the size of the government, and he is doing what he said he would do. But she doesn’t think this is the way to go about it.

“I think on any side of the political spectrum, you won't find someone who doesn't want the government to be efficient, who doesn't want wasteful spending cut,” she said. “But it doesn't come from those who are working every day to help the American people.”

For now, she’s focused on packing up and moving back in with her parents in Ohio while she figures out what to do next.

Emlemdi’s said she's not sure she would return to her job if officials fixed the paperwork error and told her she could come back to work.

“I think it would be a lot to think about,” she said. “Working for a government that constantly undermines you and sells you short. That would be my biggest reservation, but again, it’s helping the American people, and the borrowers specifically, that would push me to go back.”