Rachel Gittleman, Employee at the U.S. Department of Education (on Admin leave pending Supreme Court decision)

I came to the U.S. Department of Education to help people. Like many of my colleagues, I wasn’t looking for prestige or a six-figure salary. I believe deeply in the idea that government can and should serve the people. I believe that behind every student loan is really a person trying to build a future. And I believe that my job—solving problems for those borrowers—was one of the most meaningful things I could do with my life. 

Until they took it away.

When I started in the Federal Student Aid’s (FSA) Office of the Ombudsman, I was assigned to work with stakeholders—state attorneys general, regulators, legal aid organizations, and advocacy groups like NELP. While my larger team handled complaints directly from borrowers, I focused on complaints referred by these stakeholders, most of which were from borrowers who the system had already failed.

The federal student loan system is famously broken. Servicers, the first line of defense, are woefully unequipped to handle complicated cases. By the time complaints reached us, borrowers were desperate. Some had attended college, but had to leave without a degree. Some were public servants who had done everything right for more than ten years only to be denied loan forgiveness. Some were parents drowning under Parent PLUS loans, one of the most predatory credit products the federal government has ever sanctioned.

I helped them all. Borrowers who had been scammed by predatory for-profit colleges. Borrowers whose schools had closed before graduation. Borrowers who were in default, facing wage garnishment or Treasury offsets. I helped veterans’ families, people with disabilities, those in bankruptcy, and people who had been victims of identity theft. People who had tried everything else and were at the end of their rope.

I helped them all. People who had tried everything else and were at the end of their rope.

I had over 300 open cases when I was fired.

By “fired,” I mean I was part of a “Reduction in Force” (RIF), though that’s not what really happened. Legally, a RIF means your office and your job duties are eliminated permanently. But they didn’t stop doing the work—I know, because I had to submit spreadsheets so they could reassign it. The same borrowers, the same caseloads, the same stakeholders asking for our intervention on the same issues. Just now with fewer staff, fewer experts, and zero continuity.

The Office of the Ombudsman has gone from 62 people to just 25 this year. Multiple teams within the office have been dissolved entirely. Others, pushed out through so-called “voluntary” retirement programs or buyout programs, the “Fork in the Road” resignation program. Some of my colleagues had been cornered into quitting—particularly those with disabilities, who were forced to reapply for their reasonable accommodations under new, deliberately convoluted rules. Accommodations that used to take a supervisor’s approval now had to go to the Secretary of Education. Many never got answers before they were RIFed or otherwise pushed out.

The Department leadership—career staff installed under the Trump administration—pushed hard for the cuts. We were sent daily emails pressuring us to take buyout programs or early retirement. They forced people to make life-altering decisions under the threat of losing everything: their job, their severance, their health insurance, their children’s stability. It wasn’t voluntary. It was manufactured attrition.

When I think of what was lost, it’s not just jobs—it’s justice.

Take Sweet v. Cardona, a landmark case on behalf of defrauded student loan borrowers. We were triaging thousands of complaints, uncovering systemic credit reporting errors that affected not just Sweet plaintiffs, but every borrower receiving borrower defense discharges. Our team was making a monumental amount of relief happen. They fired us anyway.

When I think of what was lost, it’s not just jobs—it’s justice.

I was still helping a woman with more than half a million dollars in Parent PLUS loans navigate the total and permanent disability discharge process. I was still helping borrowers who’d been in repayment for 25 years—borrowers who should have qualified for forgiveness under income-driven repayment plans, but now couldn’t because of right-wing lawsuits sabotaging the system.

Now, my 300 cases? They’re being handled by one person. That’s not a typo. 

The Trump administration’s quiet purge at the Department isn’t just about bureaucratic reshuffling. It’s about dismantling the capacity of government to help people. It’s about taking away tools that disproportionately serve people of color, low-income families, immigrants, and disabled Americans—many of whom rely on federal loans to access higher education in the first place. It’s about ideology and power, cloaked in budget spreadsheets and HR memos.

This wasn’t partisan work. I helped borrowers in red states and blue states. I helped veterans and teachers, nurses and single moms. I helped people who voted for Trump and people who never voted at all. 

We were civil servants in the truest sense. And we were targeted for doing our jobs.

I keep thinking about my coworkers—the ones with kids, with mortgages, with invisible disabilities, the ones who are afraid to speak out. I have the privilege of being able to. I’m single. I have a cat. The financial risk of losing severance or vacation payout is real, but not insurmountable. For others, it would be devastating.

We were civil servants in the truest sense. And we were targeted for doing our jobs.

Since being fired, I’ve been organizing—talking to my coworkers, learning about the Department’s many silos and systems, many of which have also been gutted. The Office of Grants Management? Gone. Or the School Eligibility and Oversight Service Branch tasked with ensuring financial soundness of FSA funding recipients– all but two divisions are completely gone.  The very people responsible for preventing waste and fraud, fired by an administration that claims to be fighting it.

There’s a lot of grief and anger. But there’s also solidarity.

We all have stories to tell. And I’m telling mine because this is not just about me. It’s about 42 million borrowers. It’s about a government that should work for the people, not against them.

We all have stories to tell. And I’m telling mine because this is not just about me. It’s about 42 million borrowers. It’s about a government that should work for the people, not against them.

And it’s about the civil servants who still believe that’s possible—even as the house collapses around them, held together with duct tape and determination.