Vulnerable to Attack

I’m a political adviser (POLAD) working with our Air Force in Europe. At least twice last year, swarms of small drones overflew our airfields at two U.S. bases in Europe. It’s quite possible or even likely a state actor was behind these overflights.

Neither the U.S. response nor the host government’s was adequate. We worry about our vulnerability to an operation such as Ukraine’s Spider’s Web attack on Russian airfields.

I was recently in touch with colleagues at the Bureau of European and Eurasian Affairs (EUR) about building a Department of Defense–State campaign to help raise awareness of the problem and increase cooperation with host governments. EUR told me the civil servant working on this issue—an expert with 15 years of experience—voluntarily resigned under the deferred resignation program. A second colleague working on the issue expected to be terminated in a reduction in force, or RIFed.

Our relatively small agency has lost our best expertise on 21st-century national security threats. This does not make America stronger, safer, or richer.

—State FSO

Poaching Rhinos and Other Iconic Wildlife

As a result of cuts to all foreign assistance to the Republic of South Africa, as well as broader foreign assistance cuts, a program used to identify rhino horns, elephant ivory, and other trafficked wildlife products with airport x-ray scanners has been stopped, soon after successful interdictions in Angola and elsewhere.

This will lead to continued poaching of iconic species and allow international criminal networks to thrive. Since traffickers are commodity agnostic, this withdrawal puts everyone’s security at risk and may allow for more drug, weapon, and human trafficking in the future.

—State FSO

Wore Two Hats, Got the Boot

I am currently overseas with my tandem spouse on a DETO (domestic employee teleworking overseas) assignment. I wear two hats, working for my office in Washington, D.C., while also serving as an active member of our post community. I recently volunteered to serve in a leadership role to help organize our annual Independence Day Reception (IDR), at which we usually host more than 2,000 people. It’s a huge lift. And with my entire team located in D.C. and unconnected to post, I stood to gain nothing from volunteering except the satisfaction of helping the embassy community.

Meanwhile, my entire office in D.C. was eliminated. I was RIFed, and I lost access to systems. I spent hours trying to figure out how I would lead my IDR team using only my personal device and without access to any of our files, because I still wanted the IDR to be a success. I did not want to let the embassy down, so I continued to coordinate the event as best I could. I still wanted the IDR to be a success, and it was.

And in return? The department blocked me from being paneled into my onward assignment (scheduled to start in August) and gave me the boot instead, for no reason except that I was in the “wrong” assignment in May. I wish the department would show their FSOs the same courtesy and respect that we show the department.

—State FSO

Human Fallout

In the wake of USAID’s dismantling and the abrupt termination of Foreign Service officer assignments abroad, many Foreign Service families have been bilked out of thousands of dollars in legal and travel costs related to the expedited naturalization process under INA Section 319(b). We qualified when we applied. But due to premature repatriation, we were later deemed ineligible.

The government changed the terms. And yet the Department of Homeland Security’s Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) has refused to acknowledge the circumstances or offer recourse. This story has gone largely unnoticed, but it carries serious human, legal, and political implications.

Our assignments ended not by choice but because of an illegal RIF. Still, USCIS denied our expedited applications, even when we presented compelling evidence or sought congressional intervention. My spouse and I served in Nicaragua under increasingly difficult conditions, including surveillance and phone tapping. And now, after risking our well-being in service of the United States, we are not only being denied something as basic as the citizenship path we earned—we are being denied justice.

We have lost more than money. We’ve lost time, legal status opportunities, job prospects for our spouses, and the ability to travel. We’ve endured stress, instability, and a stunning lack of support from USAID or any other government entity. Most of us received no guidance on next steps. No accountability. No empathy.

This is the cruelest part: We were asked to serve our country, and now we’re being punished for it.

This is not a bureaucratic hiccup—it’s systemic neglect. And no one is talking about it. We are not just statistics. We are the human fallout of a broken system—and we’re ready to be heard.

—Jared O. Bell, PhD
USAID FSO

Wrong Place, Wrong Time

I am a 9-plus-year veteran of the Foreign Service and have served in South Asia, Europe, and Washington, D.C. I was en route to support efforts in Ukraine when a health concern arose 12 months ago, requiring me to temporarily relocate stateside. I secured a domestic assignment supporting infrastructure abroad, ensuring that our people and facilities are safe, secure, and functional.

This is important work that I fully enjoyed and faithfully executed. I have now been RIFed for simply having been in the wrong place at the wrong time.

—State FSO

An Invitation to China

I am a tenured economic-coned officer who has served for eight years. I speak four languages. I received a handshake for a hard-to-fill, 35 percent hardship post. I would have been working to strengthen our critical minerals supply chain. Now that position will remain unfilled.

Leaving jobs like this unfilled is like a special invitation to China to come fill the vacuum.

—State FSO

Losing $18,500 Dollars Every Day

I’m an FS-3 consular officer serving in a domestic office as a rover, which means I have spent the last 11 months overseas. My job is to fill in when there are critical staffing gaps in consular sections that could not otherwise be filled. I’ve been working for the State Department for almost a decade and received a RIF notice yesterday.

I’m currently overseas, and my phone and email access have been cut off. I don’t have a plane ticket home. I am sitting in a hotel, prohibited from working, collecting per diem because nobody involved in the RIF process thought about this or seems to understand that it is possible to have a job that “lives” in a domestic office but functions solely overseas.

This consular section processes enormous numbers of Iranians, Afghans, Iraqis, Syrians, Yemenis, and so forth, but will not have a single visa manager as of Aug. 1. The only managers left will be the American Citizen Services chief and Consular Affairs’ Minister Counselor.

In addition to the huge security risk this represents, this is an incredible waste of taxpayer money. I would also note that a typical visa adjudicator earns the department about $18,500 a day ($185 x 100 applications); ensuring that these officers can do their jobs safely and efficiently is not only in the interest of our national security, it’s in our economic interest as well.

—State FSO

Americans Will Die Alone

Ten years ago, I left behind a legal career in middle America to join the Department of State to help protect my fellow Americans as they traveled to all corners of the world. In my decade in the Foreign Service, I’ve held the hand of the dying, pushed the injured and the ill by wheelchair to the airport gate to board a flight home, and reunited the missing and the kidnapped with their families in South Asia, in South America, and in the Middle East.

In 2020 I spent months sleeping on my couch (the only place internet reached), alone in a foreign country, with my laptop open to answer emails, and taking middle-of-the-night calls from Americans terrified they would never go home again during the pandemic. I also personally adjudicated tens of thousands of visas that put tens of millions of dollars into the U.S. economy.

I’ve missed Christmases and weddings, and I’ve missed saying goodbye to dying family members. I supported a parent through cancer treatment and recovery mostly by phone. I have paid a high price to serve my country.

Two years ago, I accepted a two-year assignment in an office in Washington, D.C. On Friday, July 11, I received a RIF notice along with more than a dozen Foreign and Civil Service colleagues in my office alone.

I do not expect to be replaced. I expect that Americans will die alone because no one will be there to hold their hand. I expect that injured and ill Americans may never come home because no one will be there to help them navigate the local language and laws. I expect that American parents will never see their children again because no one will be there to advocate for them.

—State FSO

Do the Math

Let’s do the math: A consular officer adjudicating 100 visas per day generates around $4 million per year in visa fees alone. If we add to that the amount of money travelers spend in the U.S. on vacation and the less quantifiable benefits like the value or economic activity that people on work or student visas generate, we are looking at financial gain that is orders of magnitude more than $4 million. Assuming the annual cost of a consular officer is $220,000 (including housing and benefits), we are still talking about a return on investment of more than 18,000 percent on the visa fees alone!

—State FSO

Losing More Than a Role

I’m a career FSO with more than a decade of service across seven countries and multiple bureaus. I’ve served as a public diplomacy officer, helped lead the Critical Language Scholarship program to strengthen U.S. national security through language learning, and run an investment visa portfolio facilitating cross-border business that brought capital and jobs to the United States.

In recent years, I focused on climate diplomacy, first in South and Central Asia and later in the Office of Global Change (OES/EGC), where I managed more than $60 million in federal climate adaptation funding and led U.S. diplomatic engagement with some of the world’s most climate-vulnerable countries.

I speak Greek, Turkish, and Spanish—languages I’ve used throughout my career to strengthen alliances, de-escalate tensions, and communicate U.S. priorities.

When the State Department eliminated the Office of Global Change earlier this year, I didn’t walk away. I requested leave without pay to pursue a master’s degree at the Harvard Kennedy School’s midcareer master’s in public administration focused on climate adaptation—fully self-funded—so I could return better equipped to serve in an increasingly unstable world.

Instead, I was RIFed.

Not for performance. Not for lack of mission need. But because I happened to be in a domestic assignment when the cuts hit.

This wasn’t reform. It was arbitrary. And it sent a clear message that skill, commitment, and achievement are no longer a safeguard.

What was lost wasn’t just my role—it was deep expertise in climate policy, crisis response, and public diplomacy at a moment when the U.S. can least afford to lose it.

—State FSO

Coordination Is Not a Curse Word

I retired from the State Department in March 2025, ending a 30-year career in the Civil Service working on nuclear nonproliferation. Throughout my career, I learned from my predecessors, built my own expertise, and passed on what I had learned to my successors. Public service is not just a career or a calling; it depends on transmission of knowledge and a cultural ethos from one generation to the next.

At my retirement ceremony, I assured those in the next generation that they would figure out what needed to be done, but after July’s RIFs, that next generation is in tatters. My own office dealt with multilateral nonproliferation diplomacy and was not directly in the path of destruction, but key counterpart offices that do multilateral disarmament diplomacy, that lead or coordinate responses to nuclear challenges from Iran and North Korea and with allies in Europe and the Pacific, were wiped out.

Not only did this cut short promising careers, but it leaves the U.S. government without anyone who knows how to do this essential work. There is no one left who knows how to deal with the nonproliferation, security, arms control, and disarmament issues that come up every year at the United Nations and all year round in Geneva, leaving us unequipped to advance or even defend our national security interests in multilateral settings.

“Coordination” was a particular target of this massacre. Foreign affairs involves the complex interplay of policy, political, administrative, and legal imperatives. This can be a source of frustration for officials at all levels, but it is intrinsic to the work.

Those responsible for the RIF bloodbath seem to think that coordination is not an essential skill but an extra layer of bureaucratic red tape. But, in fact, bureaucratic dysfunction occurs because people lack the skills and habits of working together across those organizational lines. Eliminating those offices will make that dysfunction worse.

—State FSO

$176 Billion in Exports—Gone

I am an FS-2 political officer with nearly 17 years of State Department service, and I was RIFed on July 11 along with my entire office in the Bureau of Economic and Business Affairs, Office of Agricultural Policy.

Before we were fired, my team drove $176 billion in annual U.S. agricultural exports that directly translate into income and higher standards of living for millions of American farmers and ranchers. We negotiated highly technical trade agreements to ensure that U.S. agriculture remains globally competitive. My particular role helped guarantee U.S. primacy in cutting-edge biotechnology and facilitated delivery of life-saving humanitarian food assistance.

—State FSO

Losing Health Security

I’m both a civil servant and a diplomatic spouse (in the parlance of the State Department, an EFM, eligible family member). Both my FSO spouse and I received RIF notices July 11.

With my layoff, the foreign affairs apparatus is losing a technical expert on global health, who helped ensure Americans were safe by bolstering health security and monitoring infectious disease outbreaks. As a health policy analyst, I helped ensure that the taxpayer dollars Congress appropriated to address humanitarian need in complex emergencies were spent on the highest quality assistance programs that could be staged in places like South Sudan and Bangladesh. I helped ensure the assistance didn’t go to sanctioned groups or terrorist organizations and wasn’t diverted by armed groups. I ensured the programs were not wasteful, fraudulent, or an abuse of taxpayer and congressional intentions.

The State Department’s ability to do that important work is lost because the reorganization effort has eliminated my office and my team of nonpartisan sectoral experts.

My family and I willingly made sacrifices in service to the United States and in service to the idea that diplomacy makes the world safer and more stable for Americans who never met us, and we secured markets for U.S. businesses whose owners may never have considered what paved the way for their success overseas.

—State Civil Service officer

Consider the Person, Not the Office

I was an FSO in the U.S. Department of State’s Office of Recruitment. The entire office (senior Civil and Foreign Service, recruiters, student program leads, etc.) was gutted on one day in July. Every single person in our office received a reduction in force (RIF) email. There was no consideration of merit, no regard for awards or promotions.

Cutting the entire Office of Recruitment pushes away top talent, weakens U.S. global influence, and gives a free pass to China, which is increasing its diplomatic corps and its global influence as we destroy our own. And the decision to cut the entire office contradicts the White House’s stated priority of putting “America First” and countering China’s rise.

Additionally, the hasty decision to cut entire offices (ours wasn’t the only one closed that day) without examining both merit and prior investment in staff is not only sloppy and lazy work but is reckless, dangerous, and a colossal waste of taxpayer money. If the idea were to truly save the American taxpayer money (as the administration frequently touts), layoffs would have been made by merit, not by issuing blanket RIF notices to entire offices.

The department has invested heavily in its diplomatic corps, and Foreign Service officers have undergone long-term training in foreign languages to represent the United States overseas. If national security priorities such as combating China’s rise were truly taken into account, they would have looked at who was being fired, what skills they had, and what training the department had already invested in them.

Before I spent five years representing the U.S. in Asia, the department invested in a two-year, full-time Mandarin Chinese language program for me. Yet they RIFed me without considering this investment, simply because I happened to be working in the Office of Recruitment.

Instead of developing a coherent strategy, they hastily removed top talent in whom the department has already heavily invested, slashing the U.S. taxpayer’s return on investment while weakening American interests around the world.

—State FSO

Disappearing Data … and People

As a Foreign Service Limited employee based in Washington, D.C., I supported USAID missions and overseas staff. I was rarely at my desk—I traveled often, leaving my family and young children to visit every mission in my portfolio across Asia, Africa, and Latin America. It mattered that both local staff (FSNs) and FSOs at missions had a friend in D.C. like me. I worked with in-country mission teams to support local partners and act as an interlocutor between the needs of the field and the demands back home.

I delivered year-round capacity building to staff in the countries where we provided food security funding to help strengthen their strategies, programming, and data metrics to report results to the public. I traveled to the nine countries and regions I supported to deliver in-person workshops, leading to more robust data collection and greater accountability for U.S. taxpayer dollars.

Why does this matter? Every year from October to March, we conducted an extensive review process of all the data collected by our partners for every activity funded by USAID and provided an aggregate analysis report to Congress. It was an intensive, robust workflow process. Working collaboratively and holding each other accountable were key to our success. In early 2025, this process were cut short and terminated by stop-work orders.

Within a week of the issuance of the stop-work orders, the system of record disappeared, and the reporting and review machine came to a halt. Our data disappeared before our eyes. There is no longer a system of record, no accountability for taxpayer dollars. This led to a waste of funds and loss of staff capacity implementing tools to collect data in the field for transfer to D.C. The mechanism for collecting this data—data that tells our stories, the stories of the communities we served, and shares demonstrated impacts of our activities on the ground—is gone.

What concerns me most about this disappearing data is that it not only represents the work of USAID but also the people of USAID. Our program participants—farmers, women, children, and small businesses—along with the partnerships we built are no longer visible. And when you’re not seen, you’re not heard.

It is important for Americans to understand that what occurred in the first half of this year is wrong. These actions have consequences, and the data we use to tell stories of the communities we serve matter. These stories amplify and encourage good will and positive sentiments toward the U.S. Without them, our national security is at risk.

—Anjali Richards
Former USAID Foreign Service Limited employee

I Have Known People

MONROVIA, LIBERIA

I have dinner with a Liberian midwife friend. We eat barracuda, fufu, and fried plantains.

I write about the food because it is easier than sharing the conversation. We talk about our common calling as midwives—we who sit with women through hard labor, clasping their hands, holding their gaze, bearing witness to their journey.

She tells me about her work as a midwife through the 14-year civil war. Brutal beheadings, beatings, rapes. Terror and mistrust. Utter fear. Her 3-year-old daughter fled the country with her father, who resettled in Minnesota. She hasn’t seen her daughter since. That was more than 12 years ago.

The war waged on, with unending fighting, terror, destruction.

And still babies were born. She did her best to attend to women with dignity in disaster. Dodging bombs to cower in the basement of Redemption Hospital, welcoming babies and fending off hemorrhage, rarely with the necessary supplies.

She survived.

Fifteen years later, my midwife friend attended mothers through the Ebola pandemic in the same hospital. Even with the fear of infection, women kept coming, and midwives kept working. Many new mothers bled to death. Not from Ebola but from postpartum hemorrhage. She did what she could, with no drugs, no surgeons, no help. There were 16 midwives in her hospital. Ten of them died of Ebola.

She survived.

As she shares her stories, I have no words. So I touch her arm silently. She catches my gaze and takes my hand, saying gratefully: “You are a midwife sister. You understand.”

But the thing is, I don't understand. I can’t understand. It hadn’t happened to my own friends or colleagues, to my family. Some things are just too big to fathom.

But I can hold her gaze, clasp her hand, and bear witness to her journey. We are midwives.

BERTOUA, CAMEROON

Today I am greeted by a slight waif of a girl, leaning against the wall with her makeshift IV pole, hovering behind the matron in curiosity as we review clinic records. When she sways slightly, the matron heaves herself up with lightning speed, catching the girl on her way to the ground. I see it all too slowly to respond. The matron gives a wry smile: “You learn quickly when it happens all around you.” She helps carry the unconscious child back to bed, ensuring the IV line hasn’t been pulled out.

The girl had had a home abortion. She hemorrhaged, and now she is septic—a classic case study from this part of the world. The Catholic matron thinks abortion should be legal. Not because she believes in abortions, but because she is tired of hemorrhage, sepsis, and young mothers dying in her care.

If this were the United States, I would say this girl will be fine. We would treat her with strong IV antibiotics, a blood transfusion, and we’d go on with our day. But this is Cameroon. I can’t say that for sure.

At the end of my visit, we stop in to see the girl—still unconscious—and then walk out, down corridors smelling of Dettol and urine, emerging from the building into scents of roasting seafood and plantains. I give thanks for the matron’s quick thinking, skill, and dedication, and say a little prayer that the girl will survive. And we go on with our day.

IBANDA, UGANDA

I am in a level 2 health center with the 22-year-old midwife who asks if I have ever lost a woman to postpartum hemorrhage. She lost a woman last week, and it haunts her. As a skilled midwife, she knew what to do.

She knew she needed to give oxytocin. But there was none in the health center. She knew the woman needed to go to a hospital, so she called the ambulance. But nobody answered the phone. She needed a senior clinician to help manage the situation, so she called her facility director. But he was away on leave.

In the end, she was left alone, at night, in the dark, with a woman who didn’t need to die. Holding her phone in her mouth for light, she performed a bimanual compression, one fist deep in the woman’s uterus and the other pushing on her abdomen from above—trying to exert enough pressure to staunch the bleeding. She sat with that woman through agonizing minutes, with blood pouring down her arm and tears running down her cheeks.

I sit with her as she weeps and tells me this story. I clasp her hand and hold her gaze as I bear witness to this tragic story.

The world’s trajectory is not altered for any one of us having been in it. But our impact on the world comes from the people we have known, we have seen, we have witnessed.

The people of this world repeat in infinite hues coloring similar themes.

I have known people.

—Robyn Churchill
USAID Maternal Health Lead until July 1, 2025