Anonymous USDA Employee

The priorities that this office works on is the first 1,000 days of life. So when a woman finds out she's pregnant all the way up until a child is two years old, the U.S. government funds programs that do breastfeeding promotion and support for moms, maternal care, newborn care.

This is soft diplomacy, but it's also life-saving critical care, and it is democracy and peace relationships.

It's devastating. We worked on child wasting, for example, is when a child has a low weight for their height. There are kids who will no longer receive treatment, who will slide back into wasting. There are families who really, really relied on this care.

Do I need to just make money where I can and hope for the best? But it would be sad to give up my version of what my career path was. But at this point, it seems like we just need the money. I mean, who cares about a dream at this point?

I have an 18-month-old little boy. He's enrolled in a great daycare. And I don't think we're going to be able to afford to keep him there anymore. And my son has to get a procedure and I'm already really stressed about the copay. We have to pay for that. I have no idea how we're going to pay that. I'm already looking at the bills and it makes me sweat. I don't know.

Thursday is when things started coming to a halt. We started pausing meetings. There was a palpable tension in the air. And we started receiving emails from our new acting administrator.

I logged on and I got an email, which was just a copy and paste template that they sent to probationary employees telling me that because of my, quote, poor performance, I was determined unfit for the civil service. And that's why I was being terminated. My supervisors did not know. I had to be the one to notify them that I was no longer under their employment.