Labeling Federal Workers as Duplicative is Slander

It's not enough for the Trump administration to fire us, they continue to demonize and lie about federal workers

News is breaking today that the U.S. State Department is going to be firing over 1,300 federal workers today. This is being reported by CNN based on internal documents it has received. This continues the Trump administration’s war on the federal workforce as it razes agency after agency. As someone who has been a victim of this war, I continue to be saddened and enraged about this cruel, wanton destruction of our government, and the trauma being imposed upon good people who are just trying to serve their country.

But in reading the coverage from CNN, one word just really stuck in my craw. CNN quotes language from the internal memo “justifying” the mass terminations. The memo uses this word that has been used in so many of these mass firings, and I feel it needs to be challenged, because it really hasn’t been challenged at all.

“Headcount reductions have been carefully tailored to affect non-core functions, duplicative or redundant offices, and offices where considerable efficiencies may be found from centralization or consolidation of functions and responsibilities.”

Duplicative

Coupled with redundant.

Let me be crystal clear and to the point. “Duplicative” is slander. And I think it is intentional slander. This administration doesn’t just want to get rid of us, it wants to make sure we understand how worthless they think we are as they are showing us the door. And unfortunately, the followers of Trump, will unquestioningly believe this. It is easy to label important work that you can’t begin to understand as “duplicative” or “redundant". But it is false.

In my Region 1 office for SAMHSA, I lead an amazing team of four. Myself, our awesome Program Support Assistant, and our two amazing Regional Behavioral Health Advisors. When RFK and DOGE fired us and closed all of the SAMHSA Regional Offices, the reasoning was that we were “duplicative” and “redundant”. But that was so wrong. I say this with love, but the people remaining at SAMHSA headquarters cannot do the jobs we were doing in the regions. They cannot be the on the ground partners for states, helping them to provide effective and culturally responsive behavioral health services with their federal funding. They don’t have the local context that we have to solve problems. They aren’t ready to provide the same responsiveness we can in the face of disasters.

We were not “duplicative”. Our jobs simply aren’t going to be performed any longer. States simply will no longer have federal partners in their efforts to address addiction and mental health. Being an HHS employee I’m not going to claim to know the 1300 positions at the State Department that are being eliminated. But what I do know, is that in the time I have been a federal employee, I have not met one other person in one other federal position where they were performing “duplicative” work. More often than not, they were in a role where they needed more people.

I had two spectacularly skilled and knowledgeable Regional Behavioral Health Advisors. They had distinct skill sets, distinct portfolios of work. Our office would’ve been at a tremendous deficit if we had lost either one of them. The supports we provided to the states in New England would’ve been significantly diminished. The reality is, we needed to have at least one or two more in our office. As I see it, one of the roles of the government is to solve big problems, and we have many of them in this country, even before we had an authoritarian become President. Again, I am far from an expert on the work of the employees at the State Department, but I know we aren’t seeing a decrease in conflicts and challenges across the globe. It’s ludicrous to think now is a time where we need less capacity in the government.

You are NOT duplicative!

In closing I just want to say to any fellow #firedfed or #currentfed reading this piece, YOU ARE NOT DUPLICATIVE! You came to your role for the exact same reasons I came to mine. There are big problems and challenges facing the country. YOU had the expertise and the desire to jump into your federal role to help tackle them. YOU brought distinct skills and experiences that no one else had, and you made your agency, your department, your team, and our nation, better for it.

Know that you are seen, you ARE valued. They are winning their war against us for now but we will find a way to the other side of this time and rebuild what is being broken. But we are clear-eyed. The days are dark. And there will be darker days still. It’s hard to see any chances of light ahead. But I think we must tell ourselves this: Destruction is cheap power, but the will to serve, help, and heal is real power. It is power that is resonate, meaningful, and worthy of respect and admiration. The struggles ahead are real, but our commitment to make our communities and our country safe, secure, and healthy is also very real.

We find ways to stay grounded to this…to rally and support each other…we will find our way back!