Hanna Hickman, a now-terminated worker for the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, told ABC News the last four days have been a roller coaster.
“It’s scary,” said Hickman, who was fired last Tuesday. “I had a real moment — I was at CVS the other day and … it kind of came on me all at once that I might not have health insurance in a few weeks, and that really hits you. I think it underscores the fact that we’re just regular, middle-class people, just like the people we’re trying to serve.”
Hickman was senior litigation counsel for the Division of Enforcement at the CFPB in Washington, D.C. She is one of thousands of mostly new employees known as probationary workers laid off this week across the federal government. Those recent hires had joined the federal workforce within the last one to two years, depending on the agency, and have fewer protections.
Hickman was a probationary hire who had been at the CFPB just under two years until Tuesday around 9 p.m., when she saw a termination notice pop up on her phone.
“It was shocking, frankly — not just to us but to our direct managers, who had not been told this would happen and received notice of the terminations at the same time we did because they were CC’d,” Hickman told ABC News.
The mass layoffs have wreaked havoc on scores of federal employees, including at the Department of Education, the CFPB, the Department of Veterans Affairs, and other agencies. Hickman stressed that last Tuesday was surreal because CFPB employees had already been told last weekend that they could not show up to work in person. Her belongings are still inside the bureau.
“It’s really a shock,” she said, “especially for a lawyer because we have professional obligations. I have a case that I’m currently litigating for the bureau, and all of a sudden, I’m cut off from our systems, and it’s the equivalent of being escorted out of the building and fired. It’s just, it’s absolutely shocking, especially when there have been no concerns about my performance during my time at the bureau.”
Hickman hasn’t been inside the CFPB in over a week since that Friday, Feb. 7, when Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency descended on the CFPB headquarters. That day, Musk posted on X: “CFPB RIP.”
“We’re under attack by billionaires, but I’m not a billionaire, so, you know, for me, the next steps are scary. I’m trying to stay focused working productively, but it’s a scary moment,” Hickman said.
Hickman said she believes Musk is attempting to “destroy” the agency started by Congress. But she and several of her former colleagues vowed to continue fighting, looking into all available legal options, because she said that’s what civil servants do.
“Civil servants do this work to fight for regular Americans,” she said. “That’s what the job is. That’s why it’s intended to be insulated from partisan swings. That’s why it requires expert people skills and experience, and that’s why there are these protections around the jobs. I mean, we are people who go to work every day to fight for regular people.”
CFPB employs the “cops on the beat for the financial market,” according to Hickman. She said her job was critical to safeguarding the public from financial market crashes, loan schemes and hiked interest rates.
“Donald Trump and Elon Musk can just call their lawyers,” Hickman said. “But regular people don’t just have a lawyer they can call, and these agencies are intended to fill that gap and to keep people safe. … For me, this was, you know, a calling.
“It was something that I felt really passionate about doing in this next phase of my career,” she added. “I’ve been in private practice for 15 years before this, and this is just a whole different type of practice — and one that was incredibly fulfilling for me before I was terminated.”
“Nobody knows anything”
Earlier this week, ABC News spoke to several other federal government probationary employees who had been fired by receiving notices that said: “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.”
Chelsea Wilburn, a disabled veteran, said she was fired on Wednesday from the Department of Education via a memo that “didn’t give any specific reasons as to why” she was let go.
“I was definitely upset,” Wilburn told ABC News. “I’ve only ever gotten positive feedback from my team and leadership, so I was pretty surprised to get that email.”
A former Federal Student Aid probationary hire at the Department of Education received an unexpected call on Wednesday from a supervisor who was on the other line crying. The supervisor told the former probationary employee: “I’m getting word that you’ve been terminated.”
The person, who spoke with ABC News on the condition of anonymity for fear of it affecting future employment opportunities, said it is “devastating” and they don’t know where, or when, their next paycheck will come from.
“It was heartbreaking,” the former employee said. “When I went up to my computer, it was already locked down. I couldn’t access anything. I’m still trying to reach out to HR to find out, do I get a severance package? What is my health insurance benefits? When does it end? Nobody knows anything.”
Fritz Farrow contributed to this report.
The post ‘We’re under attack by billionaires’: Fired federal workers speak out on terminations appeared first on ABC News.
