The Purge That No One Mourned: Inside the Government’s Abandonment of Its Own
Suicide, Silence, and the Cost of Erasure in the U.S. Federal Workforce
They didn’t do this quietly.
They did it with press conferences, memes, and executive orders. The destruction of public institutions wasn’t a backroom decision—it was a spectacle. But what caught many of us off guard wasn’t the noise. It was the speed. The shock. The way entire careers, missions, and communities vanished overnight while the country applauded or looked away.
This isn’t an exposé. It’s something harder. A record of harm. A story of grief. A reckoning on behalf of colleagues and communities who were erased while serving the public good.
No Obituaries for the Discarded
I’ve learned that the absence of evidence is not the absence of pain.
There were no obituaries when the Trump administration, under Elon Musk’s bureaucratic cleansing machine, fired over 275,000 public servants. No National Day of Mourning. No televised reckoning. No farewell, dignified or otherwise. Only silence—and in it, something more dangerous than indifference: a deliberate state strategy to erase grief, purpose, and people.
The Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) didn’t just restructure the federal government. It purged it. This was no cost-saving operation. It was ideological warfare. A campaign against public service itself. An effort to root out not inefficiency, but ethics.
The Agencies That Fell
Entire agencies have collapsed. The United States Agency for International Development (USAID) is gone—nearly all 10,000 staff terminated or put on indefinite leave. The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) has been gutted, reduced from 1,700 employees to just over 200. The Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) is all but erased. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Injury Center (CDC) lost a third of its team. The Department of Education (ED) cut half its workforce. The Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) has proposed eliminating over 80,000 jobs. The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) is cutting 20,000 positions through layoffs and early retirements. The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) plans to cut its 90,000-strong staff in half.
The AmeriCorps National Civilian Community Corps (NCCC) has been shut down. The National Park Service (NPS) laid off more than 1,000 workers; the U.S. Forest Service (USFS) is losing 7,000. The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has begun layoffs, starting with 200 in its Office of Environmental Justice, part of a broader plan to reduce the agency by 65%. The Department of Justice (DOJ) is trimming 8% of its staff. The National Institutes of Health (NIH) cut 1,300 employees and canceled nearly 800 grants. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) is seeing its climate research programs hollowed out. The National Science Foundation (NSF) is preparing up to 750 layoffs. The National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) has issued termination notices to 65% of its staff. And universities—Harvard, Columbia, Duke—are bleeding federal research funds, freezing hires, shutting down labs, and suing the government.
These aren’t bureaucratic shifts. They’re deliberate erasures. Every statistic is a story: a scientist sidelined, a mission ended, a public left without its public servants.
What the Trump administration called “streamlining” was, in truth, an effort to hollow out democracy and rebuild government in the image of allegiance.
This wasn’t fiscal policy. It was authoritarian infrastructure—a live-action morality play designed to reward obedience, destroy expertise, and sever the bond between governance and care.
The people weren’t inefficient. They were inconvenient. Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) professionals. Climate scientists. Humanitarian coordinators. Civil rights litigators. Their crime wasn’t performance failure—it was fidelity to something larger than politics: truth, equity, humanity.
Disabled, Dismissed, and Disavowed
And quietly among them were hundreds of disabled public servants—individuals across hiring categories: Civil Servants, Foreign Service Officers (FSOs), Personal Services Contractors (PSCs), Third Country Nationals (TCNs) and Foreign Service Nationals (FSNs). Exceptional analysts. Crisis responders. Logisticians. Health professionals. They had found rare refuge in federal spaces where disability was accommodated, even affirmed.
Now, they were severed—not just from a paycheck, but from identity, care, and safety.
National public health data confirms what many in this workforce already knew: working-age adults with disabilities are up to three times more likely to experience suicidal ideation than nondisabled peers, due to higher rates of isolation, discrimination, economic instability, and limited access to care.
The federal workforce was one of the few exceptions—offering accessibility, trauma-informed leadership, flexible work, and comprehensive health care. When those systems vanished overnight, the psychological fallout wasn’t just predictable. It was inevitable. And for some, potentially life-threatening.
Their sudden removal didn’t just strip people of income. It severed people from safety.
The Unspoken Collapse
Grief followed. Not on cable news, but in Reddit threads, Signal groups, WhatsApp chats, and encrypted emails where pain could speak freely.
“Terminated Feb 24 and I cry every single day,” one USAID employee wrote. “Still no final pay. Still no healthcare. Still no word.”
Another: “Tension all over my body. Hurting at the mention of DOGE. The mention of Trump.”
This isn’t burnout. This is state-induced psychic collapse.
For those who served overseas—FSOs, PSCs, and especially FSNs—the devastation was even more profound. Many Americans worked in these regions, but FSNs remained the longest—embedded in authoritarian regimes, conflict zones, famines, floods, and civil wars. They facilitated evacuations. Pulled survivors from rubble. Watched colleagues die. They didn’t just witness crisis—they inhabited it.
Then, with a single executive action, they were erased.
At many posts, mental health care for FSNs is virtually nonexistent. Stigma is severe. Therapy can carry professional or personal risk. U.S.-backed health coverage was often the only path to care. Its removal wasn’t just logistical—it was the destruction of a survival infrastructure.
Dr. Monica Casper calls this “stratified grief.” Some people are allowed to mourn. Others are made to suffer in silence. Disabled workers. Immigrant staff. Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC) professionals. Queer public servants. Their pain is seen as unproductive. Their mourning, unpatriotic.
What remains is moral injury—when those who served are betrayed by the very institution they upheld. Dr. Neil Greenberg uses the term in military contexts, but it applies here with painful accuracy.
A Personal Interlude: The Suicides We Can’t Speak Of
I’ve experienced the loss of someone to suicide at least twice. Probably more.
Sometimes you never know for sure. A friend of a friend. A distant colleague. You read the obituary. Maybe it says, “died unexpectedly.” Or “left us too soon.” You learn the coded language—meant to preserve dignity, to protect the life lived over the way it ended.
And yet, silence doesn’t lessen grief. It makes it heavier.
When someone dies by suicide, the grief doesn’t end with them. It passes on like an aftershock. And you don’t always know how to name yourself. Am I a survivor? A witness? Someone who should’ve known, or should’ve done more?
In college, someone from my dorm took their life. We weren’t close, but I knew their name. We’d shared space, shared silence. And one day I returned from a weekend away and learned they were gone. I think the trigger was something as small as a speeding ticket. But maybe it wasn’t small. Maybe it was the final straw in a long and silent collapse I never saw. I have carried his absence ever since. It has lived with me—not as a memory I revisit, but as a quiet presence that has shaped how I move through the world. The way I hesitate before calling someone resilient. The way I listen for what isn’t being said. The way I know now that grief doesn’t always wait for proximity—it can take root in silence, too.
So, when it happened again, years later, I felt that same hollow echo. This time, I was working for USAID. A colleague. A friend. Brilliant. Committed. Fierce.
One day they were gone. No explanation. Just the word suddenly. A ripple of disbelief across emails, WhatsApp threads, Signal messages.
And then, the backchannel truth: it was suicide.
The loss shattered our team, but it devastated our FSN colleagues even more. They had worked with this person across the globe—especially in Africa, where their presence had lasting reach.
Because this person had left a mark. A mark of strength. Of compassion. Of brilliance. Of relentless advocacy—for the work, and for the people behind the work.
That kind of silence hollows you out.
When my mother passed from dementia, it was excruciating, but slow. We had time. Time to grieve. To say goodbye. To gather.
Suicide is the opposite. It’s fast. It’s disorienting. It’s sometimes hidden even from the people who need to mourn the most.
And here’s the truth: we don’t need to judge the way someone dies to love them.
We can’t stop suicide if we refuse to speak of it.
We can’t build community if our grief is constantly exiled.
We cannot endure what this government has done unless we are willing to say out loud: this broke something sacred.
What the State Owes Its Discarded
There have been suicides. In Zambia, three health workers died after USAID-funded programs collapsed. In the United States, no such deaths have been publicly reported. But that doesn’t mean they haven’t happened.
We know this is happening among us. We carry that knowledge like a bruise no policy will name.
Dr. Julie Cerel’s #Not6 model—a public health correction to the outdated belief that only six people are affected by each suicide—reminds us: every loss can reverberate through the lives of up to 135 others.
And yet, no branch of the federal government is monitoring suicide exposure among the terminated workforce. This isn’t a data gap—it’s intentional omission.
Some call this political. Let us be precise: this is violence.
A Road to Repair
These are not final. They are a starting point—what a suicide prevention expert, labor advocate, and mental health professional might call the bare minimum for repair.
Six Months of Post-Termination Health Continuity
High-risk groups—overseas staff, the disabled—may need a full year. Family coverage is not a benefit. It is a human right.
Trauma-Informed Exit Programming
Programs should be co-designed by survivors and tailored by region and risk.
Federal Suicide Postvention Protocols
Create cross-agency postvention teams. Normalize grief response. End the cleanup mentality.
A Congressional Truth & Testimony Commission
Hold space. Document loss. Recognize erasure as historical fact.
A Federal Archive of Displacement and Dignity
Record names, agencies, and testimony in the national archive. Preserve the fragments.
Rebuild the Staff Care Infrastructure
Codify care. Protect accommodations. Institutionalize trauma-informed practices.
Public Acknowledgment of Harm
Agency heads can issue apologies. Congress can adopt a joint resolution. Someone must say: this mattered. You mattered.
Let Us Begin Here
You don’t have to be a federal employee to understand this moment.
You only need to believe that service deserves remembrance. That care is a civic duty. That grief, spoken aloud, is not weakness—it’s resistance.
If you were fired and feel unmoored:
You are not invisible
You are not broken
You are not alone
This wasn't just about jobs. It was about who counts. And who the state believes it can discard without consequence
Let that count now. Let us begin here.
Postscript: The Comments Are Open
I’m leaving the comments open here. You are welcome—however you are, wherever you are.
If you’ve experienced loss—of a colleague, a friend, a team, a purpose— If this story struck a chord or surfaced something you haven’t said aloud— If you need a place to name what wasn’t named—
Come as you are.
No shame. No perfection. No qualifications required.
This space is open for reflection, remembrance, and repair.
Let’s begin that together.
This is so sad to think about. I heard directly about one suicide in the elimination of USAID. I know of many local staff that are scared for their futures after working with the US. We are mourning, but in silence - I am so disappointed, disgusted, and overall disheartened that not more influential people are standing up for what’s right and against what’s happening. Where are our leaders?
This is something I’ve been thinking about. How are we coping? The daily waves of grief & tears, while cooking dinner, waking up in the morning, grocery shopping, job searching, making my daughter’s lunch - it strikes any and all the time and is disorienting when I can’t pinpoint what I’m grieving exactly - or maybe it’s the immensity of all I’m grieving at once. It’s a loss of purpose, a loss of identity - nationally & personally - and knowing we pulled the rug out from families that have no food & nothing left. And it’s the pure, unadulterated rage I’ve internalized