WASHINGTON — The setting was both formal and serious, but that didn’t stop Ashley Ranalli from comforting one of her peers.
Ranalli moved from her appointed position at the front of a capital press conference, went over to Madelyn de Manincor, who had become emotional after speaking, and gave her a hug.
Ranalli, who lives in Fredericksburg, didn’t know de Manincor before Tuesday, but they now share a bond neither sought.
Both were National Park Service employees until last month, and they’re now among the thousands of federal workers who have been fired by the Trump administration in recent weeks.
They came to the press conference on the U.S. Capitol grounds to share their stories and to support bipartisan legislation that would ensure that federal workers terminated during a trial or “probationary” period wouldn’t have to restart that period if reinstated to their jobs.
The Protect Our Probationary Employees Act was introduced Tuesday as the first bill from freshman Rep. Sarah Elfreth (D-Md.), and it’s accompanied by similar legislation in the Senate authored by Democratic Sens. Mark Warner of Virginia and Chris Van Hollen of Maryland.
Under current federal law, no uniform provision guarantees that federal employees who are separated from service will not have to restart their probationary period if reinstated. As progress is made in the courts to reinstate federal workers, this legislation would clarify these guidelines and regulations, Elfreth’s office said.
At the press conference, Elfreth said that Ranalli, de Manincor and countless others were fired through no fault of their own. Rather, as probationary employees, they had fewer protections than other federal workers.
“And let me be clear,” the congresswoman said, “they were not given two weeks’ notice. They were not given a severance. They were cut off from their emails and from their careers and from their livelihoods when they have children in school and mortgages to pay and parents to take care of.”
For Ranalli, a former park ranger at Fredericksburg and Spotsylvania National Military Park, the occasion marked the second Tuesday in a row she’s traveled to the Capitol to advocate for herself and other fired workers. Last week, she was Warner’s guest at President Donald Trump’s speech to a joint session of Congress.
This week, Ranalli introduced her colleague Maddie Hollis and said that the pair weren’t “lazy bureaucrats who loafed around all day.”
“Maddie’s really special to me as she and I were both national park interns in 2020,” she said. “We both fought for five years — five years to chase our dreams and land permanent jobs only to have our careers taken simply for being on probation.”
Hollis, who lives in the Hartwood area of Stafford County, quoted George Washington and said that she fears that the way she and her colleagues were terminated so quickly meant that not all of the consequences could be thought through.
“We hope that this conversation that we have with representatives later about these solutions can protect people going forward,” said Hollis, who worked at the Maggie L. Walker National Historic Site in Richmond.
Elfreth’s bill has 39 co-sponsors, including first-term Republican Reps. Michael Baumgartner of Washington and Jeff Hurd of Colorado and Virginia Congressmen Don Beyer (D-8th District) and Suhas Subramanyam (D-10th District). Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a national figure in Democratic circles, and former House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) also have signed on.
Hoyer on Tuesday said that Trump and his supporters have tried over the past few weeks to make the federal government as inefficient as possible so they can claim that it doesn’t work. And federal employees, especially probationary ones, have “borne the brunt of this assault.”
“Their actions are unprecedented, illegal and cruel,” Hoyer said.
