Gabriel D’Alatri was five days away from securing permanent status at his federal job after the one-year probationary period. But on Feb. 20, the Marine veteran from Vernon lost his job at the IRS.
Nearly a month earlier, Michael Missal and more than a dozen inspectors general were abruptly fired by the Trump administration. The Bristol native was confirmed in 2016 as the Veterans Affairs IG and served under three presidents, including during Trump’s first term. He and other agency watchdogs are fighting the termination in court.
Both D’Alatri and Missal were to watch President Donald Trump’s address to a joint session of Congress Tuesday night from inside the House chamber. The invitations are part of a theme for Connecticut’s congressional delegation — putting a spotlight on the local impact of mass firings in the federal workforce and proposed cuts to funding.
U.S. Sen. Chris Murphy, D-Conn., is the only member of the state’s delegation who will not be watching the speech in person from the House chamber. He instead gave a prebuttal with some other senators and was to take part in a live chat as Trump delivers his speech. The event was organized by grassroots group MoveOn.org Civic Action.
“I’m not going, because I try to look out for my own spiritual health,” Murphy said in a playful manner during the live-streamed prebuttal event.
“I went to the last State of the Union speech in 2020. I was at a MAGA pep rally. I wasn’t at a speech to the nation,” Murphy said, adding that he expects the same kind of political speech on Tuesday night.
But the lawmakers who are attending with guests are using their stories to make a larger point about what Trump and Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency means for Connecticut.
Of all the calls flooding into his office, U.S. Rep. Joe Courtney, D-2nd District, said the story of D’Alatri stood out. The Vernon resident, who is a new father, served in the U.S. Marine Corps but got out after an injury. He later pursued higher education at the University of Connecticut, eventually landing a job as a project manager that oversaw all IRS facilities in the state.
Courtney said there was “no question that the No. 1 issue that’s really troubling many, many people is DOGE, and the really extralegal efforts that are going forward.” The congressman noted that his eastern Connecticut district has a higher concentration of federal workers, particularly with the Naval Submarine Base New London in Groton.
“I didn’t have any performance issues. I was a stellar performer. I’m here to try to get veterans their jobs back,” D’Alatri said, adding that he wants to “send a message that we need to work together to fix this.”
D’Alatri said he voted for Trump during the 2024 presidential election, noting that the president put an emphasis on veterans while campaigning. He supports trying to make the federal government more efficient, but the mass terminations came as a surprise. He is one of about 6,000 veterans who have lost their jobs in the civilian workforce.
“I didn’t think I was going to lose my job. It came as a shock to me when the rug got pulled out from me,” D’Alatri said.
“I was in support of government being more efficient,” he added. “I didn’t think people would be fired en masse like this.”
Missal’s dismissal, meanwhile, drew major headlines because of the sudden terminations of 17 inspectors general in late January. He led the VA inspector general’s office of more than 1,100 staff to ensure accountability over veterans programs.
Under federal law, the White House is required to give Congress 30 days notice about the intention of firing the inspector general of a federal agency.
Missal said he had not initially seen the Jan. 24 email about his termination but started to see some chatter from other IGs who said they were fired. He then looked at and found the email that he would lose his job due to “changing priorities.”
That was on a Friday night. The next day, he was part of a Saturday virtual meeting with other inspectors general where they decided to send a letter stating that the firings violated the law about notification to Congress. That Monday, he lost access to his government email, and he cleaned out his office the next week.
Missal said it did not completely catch him off guard, as there were indications from Project 2025, the conservative presidential transition plan developed by the Heritage Foundation and Trump allies, about inspectors general.
He is one of a eight terminated inspectors general who have since filed a lawsuit for their reinstatement. There is a hearing on the lawsuit in federal district court in Washington, D.C., next week.
“We filed the lawsuit, and it’s a pretty simple allegation. We were wrongfully terminated because under the law you have to give Congress 30 days’ notice, you have to give detailed case-specific reason. Because that was not done, we’re asking the court to declare the firings were illegal and asking for an injunction against preventing us from coming back and that we want to be reinstated,” Missal said.
Inspectors general are independent watchdogs who are tasked with accountability of federal agencies and identifying fraud and abuse within them. While he was still working, Missal said, he was involved in many of the 1,000 active criminal investigations as well as 150 health care reports and about 100 performance audits regarding the VA. Since his dismissal, he said, some in the office have decided to resign.
Blumenthal argued that Missal “stood up” to both Republican and Democratic administrations, noting that the Biden administration “had some fairly harsh things to say about him” given one of his past investigations.
“Nobody likes the whistleblower if they’re the target. [Missal is] a stand-up guy, and he’s going to call them as he seems them. And that’s exactly what Donald Trump apparently didn’t want,” Blumenthal said.
The Democratic lawmakers want legislation focused on job protections for federal workers, particularly those who are veterans. But any bills face a challenging path with Republicans controlling both chambers of Congress.
Courtney has co-sponsored the Protect Veteran Jobs Act, which seeks to reinstate veterans working in federal civilian jobs who were terminated “without cause” starting on Jan. 20, the day of Trump’s inauguration. Blumenthal said the Senate is looking at similar legislation as well as measures that would protect veterans’ benefits and health care.
Connecticut lawmakers also brought guests who are on the front lines of programs and schools that rely heavily on federal funding.
The Trump administration’s federal funding freeze created a lot of uncertainty for community health centers last month, even after it was paused in the courts.
Mollie Melbourne, the CEO of Southwest Community Health Center in Bridgeport, came as the guest of U.S. Rep. Jim Himes, D-4th District. Southwest’s seven clinics serve more than 29,000 patients in Fairfield County.
Like other community health centers in the state, Melbourne’s had some initial issues with the payment management system, but those cleared up after a couple of weeks.
If federal funding is cut off, she said, they could operate longer, but only for a matter of months. But if Medicaid sees steeps cuts, “we’re talking a matter of six to eight weeks.”
“Our outlook is very short-term. Our staff are nervous. And we are talking with them about it, having conversations, trying to reassure them that we’ll do everything we can … to avoid any disruptions. But if federal funding is cut or delayed, if Medicaid is significantly reduced, we have to make some really difficult decisions,” Melbourne said.
Community health centers serve about 440,000 patients in Connecticut. There are 17 federally qualified health centers in the state that provide medical, dental, behavioral health and addiction recovery services with locations across 40 towns and cities, as well as clinics based in schools.
About 60% of their patients are on HUSKY, the state’s Medicaid system, with smaller percentages of people who have commercial plans or are on Medicare. They cannot refuse care to someone based on payment, and about 16% of the patients they serve are uninsured.
Confusion over the funding freeze and the lingering effects created instability for community health centers. CEOs and providers from clinics across Connecticut have said some staff are wondering if they should consider finding other jobs, and some patients are choosing not to come in due to fears stemming from various executive orders like immigration enforcement.
While funding was supposed to keep flowing amid a federal court’s temporary halt on the freeze, several clinics in the state had been unable to draw down their funds through the Health Resources & Services Administration’s payment management system.
Typically, health centers can access that funding within 24 hours of when they make the request. But their requests remained pending for at least a week, though the issue had been largely resolved last month.
“What we’re doing is really trying to put a human face on a great deal of misinformation that has been put out there by Trump and his people,” Himes said.
Teachers in Connecticut, like Julia Miller, have similar concerns about potential cuts to funding as Trump seeks to dismantle the U.S. Department of Education along with newly confirmed Education Secretary Linda McMahon, who described the “final mission at the department as an overhaul.”
Miller, the 2025 Connecticut Teacher of the Year, came to D.C. on Tuesday as the guest of U.S. Rep. Rosa DeLauro, D-3rd District. She is a social studies teacher in New Haven, noting that about half the schools in the area receive Title I funding, which provides additional resources to schools with high concentrations of low-income students.
She said she also worries about the status of Pell Grants that provide aid to attend college. A day earlier, Miller said she found out one of her students got into almost more than a dozen colleges but cannot attend most because they are too costly.
At her confirmation hearing last month, McMahon said defunding programs like Title I funding for K-12 public schools and Pell Grants “is not the goal.”
“Cuts to federal funding for the Department of Education would impact millions of students,” Miller said.
Some of the federal funding goes to special education, career and technical programs, support for students learning English as a second language and before- and after-care programs for working parents.
“I’m deeply alarmed by the attacks against our public schools and our education system,” DeLauro said. “Education is a new battle that we have to win.”