Recently fired Lockport veteran to join Schumer for Trump's speech to Congress
A disabled U.S. Army veteran who was recently fired from her job with the Office of Veterans Affairs in Buffalo will accompany U.S. Sen. Charles Schuer, D-New York, when he attends President Donald Trump's Joint Session of Congress on Tuesday.
Schumer announced that he has invited Alissa Ellman, a Niagara University graduate who served in Afghanistan and who was fired from her job with the VA last week, to hear Trump speak to members of Congress.
Ellman is one of hundreds of thousands of federal workers who have been fired by the Trump administration under the directive of the Department of Government Efficiency, directed by billionaire Tesla owner Elon Musk.
'Alissa Ellman dedicated her life to service for our country, both in the Army, where she suffered injuries, and here in Western NY helping her fellow veterans while working at the Buffalo VA," Schumer said in a release from his office. "Firing her, firing veterans and slashing thousands from the VA workforce is outrageous and should be reversed. This is not how you treat our veterans – it's not just unacceptable, it's un-American."
According to Schumer's office, Ellman found herself locked out of her computer, with both her and her boss thinking at first it was an error, only to later find out she had been fired.
Ellman said she never felt so disrespected after giving so much. She will attend President Trump's Joint Address to Congress Tuesday evening as Schumer's honored guest.
'I am speaking out because I cannot see how employing veterans in the federal government is fraud, waste, or abuse," she said. "Veterans are some of the best people I know. Veterans have sacrificed for this country; they are the ones who have been defrauded – their talents wasted and service abused. For many of us these jobs are more than a job, they are how we continue our service, continue our devotion to make America a better place. I'm not telling you my story for pity; my life will be fine. But we need to be making more thoughtful cuts to the federal workforce, not our vets.'
Ellman joined the Army National Guard at the age of 17, and she returned from basic training to high school 10 days before the Sept. 11 attack which further spurred her desire to serve her country. She deployed to Afghanistan voluntarily from January 2003 to June 2004 as a flight operation specialist. She returned to the Afghanistan with Halliburton from 2005-2008 managing flight line operations in Kandahar. In 2008, Alissa returned to Western New York, started a family and later graduate Magnum Cum Laude from Niagara University with a degree in Special Education.
In 2018, Alissa was diagnosed with a rare adrenal cancer, pheochromocytoma, associated with toxic burn pit exposure during her service in Afghanistan. After 5 years of treatment at the VA, she was deemed 100% disabled, a diagnosis she never envisioned, but knew that she continued to want to serve her community.
In December 2023, she began to apply to work at the Buffalo VA working for the education department to help fellow veterans as that means to give back. Not taking the job for the money, receiving only a few dollars more per month on top of her VA disability payments, but to continue to help the community she cared so deeply about, eventually being hired in April 2024.
According to Schumer's office, she met all the training and meeting production numbers, and in January had a 200% daily production average. When the VA began announcing the cuts under the new administration, she told her friends she was safe because she always exceeded work goals, but she was wrong.
Schumer said the Trump administration's "fire first, ask questions later" approach to cutting federal jobs has had a significant impact on veterans who represent 30% of the total federal workforce reductions so far. Schumer said Trump's hiring freeze has also led to hundreds of cuts for VA health research, including projects to study burn pit exposure and most recently contracts with VA to help vets with toxic exposure were temporarily suspended. Schumer described it as an "horrific pattern of cuts and firings" that have directly hit care for veterans in across upstate New York, including the VA in Buffalo.
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