Liz Goggin recently had an encounter that reminded her of why she once cherished being a federal employee.
She had taken her kids out for ice cream and stopped to chat with a man who was blowing balloons and selling them for a couple of bucks. She quickly learned he was a veteran, struggling with housing issues along with serious health issues — some psychological.
In the past, she would have found a way to bring him into the Veterans Health Administration, where she had worked for a decade, providing therapy and connecting veterans with a range of services available to them.
Then she remembered, she doesn't do that anymore. Goggin had quit her job as a clinical social worker in June after twice being rejected for the "Fork in the Road" buyout offer.
She gave the man some pointers on how to navigate the VA. It was all she could do in her new life outside of government.
"I had this real feeling of sadness," she says. "It definitely sat with me."
An exodus of 317,000 federal workers
Just one year ago, being a federal employee was a very different proposition: It meant job security with solid benefits, for the most part, and the chance to serve the American people. Then in January, President Trump returned to the White House and scrambled those assumptions.
Month after month of firings, buyout offers and heightened uncertainty for the federal workforce has led to a mass exodus.
By the end of 2025, some 317,000 federal employees will be out of the government, according to the Office of Personnel Management. Tens of thousands were fired. Far more retired or resigned, many out of fear they would lose their jobs if they stuck around. Others, like Goggin, say the working conditions became untenable.
"Things felt really hard," says Goggin, pointing to new demands that seemed to come out of nowhere: A mandate that employees send their supervisors five bullet points of what they accomplished that week. A directive to report any anti-Christian bias they observed in their co-workers.
"In my whole time at the VA, I did not see any anti-Christian bias," she says. "To be clear, that was not even remotely an issue."
Trump's crackdown on diversity, equity and inclusion had also left Goggin and her co-workers unsure of what was still OK to discuss. Could they focus support groups around their clients' experiences with racism? Could they talk among themselves about their own implicit bias?
"It was a deluge of things," says Goggin. "Morale was very low."
Tossed out and still struggling
For other federal workers, leaving the government was not a choice.
Hours after his inauguration, Trump signed an executive order cracking down on DEI throughout the government, calling it illegal and immoral.
Mahri Stainnak, who was based in Maine, was put on leave the next day and fired soon after.
Stainnak's work with the Office of Personnel Management's DEI office had included introducing people from different backgrounds to careers in the federal workforce.
"Veterans, people with disabilities, recent graduates including from minority-serving institutions," Stainnak recalls proudly.
Stainnak, who uses they/them pronouns, had actually moved to a new role just before Trump's return to the White House, and still they were fired. Today, they are still struggling to find full-time work.
"It's an incredibly difficult job market right now," Stainnak says. "Each application, each interview, the stakes feel so high."
Once the main breadwinner for their family, Stainnak says they've been forced to make difficult decisions.
"When I lost my job, I lost our family dental insurance," says Stainnak. "So do we take our toddler to the dentist and pay out of pocket, or is that an expense that we choose to cut?"
Stainnak is now part of a class-action lawsuit alleging that the Trump administration illegally discriminated against potentially thousands of federal employees who worked in DEI roles before they were fired.
Those Stainnak knows personally are all people of color, women, or members of the LGBTQ+ community.
The lawsuit alleges that Trump and others in his administration targeted the employees because of their actual or perceived political beliefs, their advocacy on behalf of members of protected groups, or their race or gender.
"It's not OK for the Trump administration to target us because of who we are and what they think we believe," Stainnak says.
The Trump administration has not yet filed a response to the legal complaint, and the White House declined to answer a question from NPR about the lawsuit. In his January executive order, Trump asserted that DEI efforts under former President Joe Biden amounted to "immense public waste and shameful discrimination."
Saving the country vs. "burning the whole house down"
Throughout the year, Trump has celebrated the disruption he's brought to the government after vowing for years to "drain the swamp."
"After a lifetime of unelected bureaucrats stealing your paychecks, attacking your values and trampling your freedoms, we are stopping their gravy train, ending their power trip," he told a cheering crowd at a rally in Michigan in late April.
Trump insists he is saving the country from waste, fraud and abuse.
Max Stier could not disagree more.
"They are burning the whole house down," says Stier, founding president of the Partnership for Public Service.
For more than two decades, the nonprofit has worked across both Democratic and Republican administrations, helping to guide presidential transitions, conducting leadership training, and proposing ways to make the government function better.
Now, Stier warns, by getting rid of institutions and people he doesn't care for, Trump is turning back the clock to the 1800s, when the government served the private interests of those in power, not the public good.
"It's been 140 years since our country had something remotely close to this experience," he says.
In response, White House assistant press secretary Liz Huston wrote: "President Trump's only motivation as the President of the United States is improving the lives of the American people and making our country greater than ever before."
She added that in less than a year in office, Trump has made "significant progress" in making the government more efficient, pointing to Trump's plans to overhaul the nation's air traffic control system and a sharp decrease in the number of veterans awaiting benefits, among other achievements.
Stier says he recognizes that there are some good things happening, and they should be embraced. But the problem is scale.
"If they figure out a way to better paint one of the rooms, that's great. But burning the house down is so overwhelming that it's difficult to pay a lot of attention to that," he says.
A golden opportunity lost
Like Goggin, Keri Murphy often finds herself grappling with sadness.
Back in the summer of 2024, Murphy had been thrilled to land an administrative job at the Commerce Department.
"Outside of being called a mom, it was the best title I've ever been given — being a federal employee and civil servant," she says.
Nowadays, she struggles to remember why she was so proud.
Starting in March, Murphy was swept up in the Trump administration's chaotic purge of probationary employees, mostly newer hires. Many of them were told they were being fired because of poor performance, even though it wasn't true.
"I had just received an award," she says, "for outstanding performance."
She'd been laid off before. But this was a new experience.
Lawsuits ensued. Murphy was temporarily reinstated under court order, then fired again when an appeals court overruled that order. A different court issued a final judgment this fall, finding the mass firing of probationary employees was illegal. But the judge did not order workers reinstated, saying too much water had passed under the bridge. The decision left Murphy deeply disappointed.
"We're still drowning in that same water," she says.
A few weeks ago, Murphy started a new job, one she thinks is a good fit. But the pay is about half of what she was making in the government, and there are no benefits.
"So that's why I don't know if this will work," she says.
Thriving but wistful
After deciding she was done with the VA, Goggin, the clinical social worker, made a profile on Psychology Today, found an office in a quiet commercial strip near her home and began providing therapy to private clients.
It's clear the skills and expertise she brought to the government are in high demand outside government too.
Six months after walking away from her job, Goggin is busy — perhaps too busy. In addition to seeing private clients, she runs a weekly support group at a substance use recovery program. She likes the work and the flexibility that comes with being self-employed. But leaving the VA was hard, she says.
"I think of those people that I worked with, and what I learned from them, and how meaningful it felt over the years — and intense. I mean, that's the word I'd use," she says.
Even with a thriving private practice, Goggin can picture herself returning to the VA someday. She still finds herself checking the government's hiring portal, USAJobs, just to see what's available.
"It's this weird habit that I have," she says.
Murphy says she too would consider going back to the government, despite all she's been through.
"It's crazy. I would love to," she says. "Just not under this administration."
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