Nick Hand ’11 was making pasta for his 3-year-old daughter when he received a notification on his work phone. It said that he had been logged out of his government Microsoft account. Twenty minutes later, he was sent an email saying that he had been terminated.
“I saw the message, and the juxtaposition was very odd … because a 3-year-old doesn’t care if you just got fired illegally. She was sort of happily playing and being her happy self,” Hand said in an interview with The Daily Princetonian.
Hand worked at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) in the Enforcement Division. He helped attorneys at the CFPB better understand the companies they would be investigating. Hand told the ‘Prince’ that he was likely going to be on the team monitoring Elon Musk’s proposed digital wallet and payment X Money. According to Hand, nearly all of his co-workers were also laid off.
Hand is one of over 750 Princeton alumni who TigerNet records as working in federal agencies. Tens of thousands of federal employees were laid off when Musk and the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) swept through federal agencies.
The alumni that the ‘Prince’ interviewed described the mass firings as illegal, echoing lawsuits from fired federal employees demanding their reinstatement.
Nick Hand ’11 is one of many federal workers laid off by DOGE.
Courtesy of Nick Hand.
“They’re supposed to give us, by law, 30 days notice, and by our union contract, 60 days notice, but they gave us no notice. They just said: You’re fired immediately,” Jacob Essig ’22, who was terminated from the CFPB, told the ‘Prince.’
Larry Handerhan GS ’12 added that “what is happening is so blatantly illegal.”
In 2023, Handerhan was appointed to be Deputy Assistant Secretary for Management at the Administration for Children and Families (ACF), which oversees the federal government’s Head Start program and states’ child welfare programs on adoption and foster care. At the ACF, a number of people who were fired before their security clearances were checked have been reinstated. Federal law holds more stringent termination standards for positions of higher security clearance.
Handerhan echoed that these firings are “just so cruel … you hear stories about federal employees who are losing their jobs, people who have newborn kids that they’re not sure how they’re gonna … survive economically.”
Handerhan also explained that the government is losing many of its most knowledgeable employees. “All the best people, people who are the most efficient and the most knowledgeable about the subject, they’re the ones who are most mobile and can go take jobs elsewhere, and they're the ones that are doing that because of this chaos,” he said.
Some former government employees have begun to fight the layoffs. Charlotte Burrows ’92 was the Chair and Commissioner of the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. Her term was originally supposed to expire in 2028, but she was fired a week into President Donald Trump’s term. She retained lawyers the day after her termination.
“I strongly disagree with the President’s actions, and will explore all legal options available to me,” she wrote in a statement. “I will continue to do all I can to fight for the rights of American workers and to support the efforts of others who do the same.” Her lawyers declined to provide further comment to the ‘Prince.’
Lisa Brown ’82 was nominated in 2021 to be the general counsel of the Department of Education, and ran a team of about 100 lawyers focusing on Title I, Title IX, and student loan repayment programs. After her term as a political appointee ended in January, Brown referred to the layoffs as “heartbreaking.”
“DOGE has come in like a wrecking ball,” she said. “They have come in and somewhat randomly … put on administrative leave anybody who had worked on or gone to any type of DEI training.”
Over the past two months, several federal agencies have laid off many probationary employees — those in their first year or two of employment or first year after a promotion, demotion, or reassignment. More recent court rulings have ordered the reinstatement of these employees, but confusion regarding the employment status for many remains.
Cameron McKenzie ’19 worked as a community engagement specialist and a Presidential Management Fellow for the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) Forest Service and was one of the affected probationary employees. He told the ‘Prince’ that he is going to have to sell his house after being fired because he and his husband can no longer afford the mortgage.
“I’m entering the job market along with 30,000 or 40,000 other people who are engaged in environmental work with the federal government, in an already tight job market for the environmental sector,” McKenzie said in an interview before the court’s reinstatement ruling. “I feel like I have two full-time jobs now. One is getting my house ready to sell, and another is just applying to jobs. So I’m trying to stay sane and upbeat as much as I can, juggling those two things.”
Even with the court-ordered reinstatement of probationary employees, McKenzie explained that there is confusion about if and for how long he can return to work.
Cameron McKenzie ’06 will have to sell his house after being fired from the U.S. Forest Service
Used with permission from Jonno Rattman for The New York Times.
Princeton’s School of Public and International Affairs (SPIA) has actively offered to help its alumni navigate the job market. According to Essig, SPIA has tried to connect alumni out of a job with those who might have job opportunities.
“I have noticed, as the new administration has started, that SPIA has been sending emails trying to help connect the alumni who have job opportunities with newer graduates and younger graduates, who are probably going to have a lot of trouble finding [jobs] under the new environment,” he told the ‘Prince.’
In a newsletter on the SPIA website, Dean Amaney Jamal wrote that there are “many ways” that the department is “assisting those affected by recent changes at the federal level.”
“This includes career-focused programming, in-person networking for students and alumni, and events where students can engage with SPIA faculty for insights on navigating change,” the statement explains.
SPIA did not respond to multiple requests for comment in time for publication.
For those who are still working in government agencies, the chaos has meant that any day could be their last at work.
“I think everything just feels very uncertain and unpredictable with the people we have in charge at the agency and in the White House,” said one Princeton alum working in the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), speaking anonymously for fear of losing their job.
“I think probably every other conversation that I’ve had over the past six weeks has been some version of ‘well, if I’m here next week,’ or ‘if I still have a job,’” another Princeton alum at the State Department, speaking anonymously for fear of losing their job, told the ‘Prince.’
The current employees also expressed that morale is low among those still with jobs.
“When I go to work, everyone around me just seems dispirited because the goals of this administration are so against the goals of a lot of our programs,” said the HHS employee. “During the Biden administration, I feel like our agency had really high job satisfaction. I think people really feel that we’re making a difference in the lives of Americans and all these changes are definitely going to plummet job satisfaction and job security.”
In January, federal employees across almost all branches received an email with the subject line “A Fork in the Road,” offering employees a choice to resign in return for eight months of pay. Employees more recently received another email from Musk, asking them to list five things they had done on the job that week and threatening dismissal if they did not comply.
Handerhan said that it is “incredibly condescending” to “have some other person who doesn’t understand your job” assess your work. He noted how unusual these emails are, as performance is typically determined at the agency level.
Beyond impact on individuals, alumni emphasized dire impact on agency functioning, and on daily public services benefiting Americans.
“The fabric of government is one thing, but the fabric of America is what people don’t realize is changing: things like national parks, like the social safety net, that you are brought up to believe will exist because they are based on the values of our country,” Handerhan told the ‘Prince.’
The first agencies targeted by DOGE included the U.S. Agency for International Development, which provides global aid, and the CFPB, where Hand and Essig worked.
Jacob Essig ’22 was laid off from the CFPB.
Courtesy of Jacob Essig.
On Tuesday, March 11, the Department of Education announced it was cutting its workforce in half, terminating 1,300 employees in the name of efficiency and eliminating “bureaucratic bloat.”
Among these terminated employees is Caroline Chang ’95, whose job was focused on efficiently administering Department of Education services such as the Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA), federal student aid, and loan repayment.
Chang told the ‘Prince’ that she asked multiple officials for an explanation for her termination, but received none.
“I could only infer that the main likely reason was because I was in the physical space that the DOGE team chose to use for their operations at the Department of Education. And so to put it bluntly, I think I was in their way, or maybe just an annoyance,” Chang said. “That is obviously my interpretation, not what anybody ever told me, because nobody told me anything.”
Chang was given only 60 minutes to pack her things and leave after being terminated.
“A security guard knocked on my door and said, ‘You have to leave now’ ... I’ve revisited that 60 minutes in my head a number of times,” she told the ‘Prince.’ “It seemed a little, at the time, excessive and unnecessary to be escorted out of the building. It felt very weird, like out of a movie, or a dystopian story or something.”
Caroline Chang ’06 who was terminated from the Department of Education.
Courtesy of Caroline Chang.
The alumni referred to Princeton and its informal motto, “in the nation’s service and the service of humanity,” as one of the reasons for their commitment to public service, and expressed that these cuts would hinder the government’s ability to help Americans.
Handerhan expressed that the “drying up of the resources that are going directly into communities” is particularly worrying. “ACF is a grant maker. The vast majority of our money goes directly into the pockets of families and communities who need it. And I think once people see the impact of that, they’re going to be pretty pissed,” he said.
“Education is an opportunity driver, and the cuts will hurt those who can least afford it. That is what is devastating,” Brown said in an interview with the ‘Prince.’
“My Princeton experience is why I’m in government service in the first place and why I have any of the opportunities that I’ve ever had in my life,” McKenzie explained.
“I’ve always very much internalized the ‘Princeton in the nation’s service’ motto,” Chang said. “I hope that the University continues to be a space for encouraging service, democracy, [and] free speech.”
“It definitely helped [that] Princeton [instilled] a need to use your skills for good,” Hand expressed. “I wanted to use the education and the knowledge that I had to kind of make an impact for others.”
“My immediate hope is that people who are students now don’t get discouraged or dissuaded from pursuing public service in one form or another,” Chang said. “Because that would be really detrimental to the future, if people just give up.”
Were you affected by DOGE? Send your story to news[at]dailyprincetonian.com
Charlie Roth is a senior News writer and editor emeritus focusing on local, state, and national politics.
Abby Leibowitz is a senior News writer for the ‘Prince’ from Silver Spring, Md.
Please send any corrections to corrections[at]dailyprincetonian.com.
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