Public Execution by Policy: Inside Trump’s War on Government—and on Us

The destruction of SAMHSA isn’t an accident. It’s a warning.

It’s easy to talk about the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) as a joke—after all, Trump literally put Elon Musk in charge of dismantling the federal government. But what’s happening now isn’t just corruption or incompetence.

It’s mass-scale sabotage, and its consequences will be measured in lives lost.

We know this because we’ve seen it before. From COVID to hurricane relief, the Trump regime has one goal: break the government, ensure it fails, and then use that failure to justify more destruction.

Nowhere is this clearer than in the purging of the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA)—the agency responsible for suicide prevention, addiction treatment, and crisis response services.

Art Levine and Rob Waters’ reporting at MindSite News reveals the horrifying reality of what’s happening inside SAMHSA and other federal agencies. Hundreds of mental health workers have been fired. Funding has stopped flowing to crisis centers. The 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline—a vital resource for those in distress—is now at risk of collapse.

One of the purged was Nate Billy, a licensed mental health therapist, national expert in youth addiction prevention, and proud member of the Choctaw Nation. Just months before his firing, he had been helping Washington State Indian tribes implement the Icelandic Prevention Model—a groundbreaking public health framework that cut teen drug abuse in Iceland by nearly 50% over two decades by mobilizing entire communities to create drug- and alcohol-free environments. He was also expanding tribal access to Naloxone, the lifesaving overdose-reversal drug, and had just returned from Iceland to learn more about the suicide drug-use prevention model summit, with his brain “on fire” with ideas to bring back to his region.

Instead of being allowed to implement what he learned, he was fired via automated email.

The message he received was a cold bureaucratic form letter that read:

"Your ability, knowledge and skills do not fit the Agency’s current needs, and your performance has not been adequate to justify further employment at the Agency."

This wasn’t just an insult. It was a lie.
And it’s a window into the moral rot driving this regime.

You don’t fire someone like Nate Billy unless the goal is destruction.

A former SAMHSA employee put it bluntly:
"We don’t really know what’s going on as far as continued funding for 988 moving forward. If we don’t receive funding, I don’t know if my job continues. I don’t know if the state has staff. And if there’s not money going out the door to support the people that are doing the work and answering these calls… then people are going to die."

This is not a side effect. This is not an accident.
This is the plan.

Mass Firings and the Destruction of Public Services

Since taking power, the Trump-Musk DOGE operation has:

• Fired 100 workers at SAMHSA in what employees called the "Valentine’s Day Massacre."

• Axed tens of thousands of federal workers across multiple agencies—including those handling veterans' healthcare, emergency response, and crisis intervention.

• Ordered 700,000 additional layoffs, gutting one-third of the federal workforce.

• Erased information for LGBTQ+ youth in mental health programs—with a court later forcing them to reinstate some information, which they now label with a disclaimer saying it is “inaccurate and disconnected from biological reality.”

• Cut off funding to suicide prevention services at a time when suicide rates are higher than ever.

This is not about efficiency. This is about breaking the government so that it can never function again.

The endgame is simple:
Destroy public services → Watch them fail → Declare government useless → Replace it with private, profit-driven alternatives run by GOP-aligned corporations.

It’s disaster capitalism applied to every sector of American life.

The Consequences: This Will Cost Lives

• Suicides will rise. SAMHSA workers are already warning that LGBTQ+ youth—who face disproportionate suicide risks—will be among the first to suffer.

• Veterans will be abandoned. The VA is facing 83,000 job cuts, gutting the largest healthcare provider for former service members.

• Addiction deaths will skyrocket. The opioid epidemic is already worsening. With treatment programs losing funding, overdoses will increase.

• States will be left to fend for themselves. Without federal coordination, mental health services in red states will collapse entirely.

We saw this happen before—when Trump dismantled pandemic response programs and ignored early COVID warnings. The result? Hundreds of thousands of preventable deaths.

They are doing it again, just slower, more methodically.

These aren’t future hypotheticals. These are the real, measurable outcomes of a government being gutted in real time. And it's exactly what a functioning government is meant to stop.

This Is What Government Is Supposed to Prevent

A functioning government exists to solve problems like these. That’s why SAMHSA existed in the first place—to ensure people in crisis have somewhere to turn. That’s why the 988 Suicide Lifeline was created—so that no one struggling with their mental health would have to suffer alone.

A government that works prioritizes:
✅ Public well-being over corporate profits
✅ Mental health support over privatization schemes
✅ Safety nets over billionaire-driven greed

But under Trump, every safeguard will be gutted.

This Isn’t Just a Bureaucratic Nightmare—It’s a Political Weapon

Trump and his allies want government to fail because they know suffering breeds desperation. When people lose faith in government, they become easier to manipulate.

This is the Steve Bannon strategy in action:
"Flood the zone with shit."

Destroy services, overwhelm people with chaos, and offer authoritarianism as the only solution.

• You purge the experts and replace them with MAGA cronies.

• You sabotage programs so they fail.

• You blame immigrants, "the deep state," or "woke ideology" when people suffer.

And then, when everything is broken, you say:
"Only I can fix it."

This is how fascists consolidate power.

The Urgency of Resistance

There’s no room for "neutrality" here. If we don’t fight back, the entire foundation of public services will be destroyed, possibly beyond repair.

This is the moment to:

Expose the Sabotage — Call It What It Is: Deliberate Destruction, Not Mismanagement

We need to stop pretending this is just “mismanagement” or “bad leadership.” This is not bureaucratic incompetence—it’s ideological warfare.

The Trump regime—through DOGE and beyond—is systematically dismantling the capacity of the federal government to serve the public. They are not failing to govern; they are governing through failure. When services collapse, when agencies implode, when vulnerable people are left to die, they see that not as a crisis but as a proof point—an opportunity to say: “See? Government doesn’t work.”

It’s a rigged game:

• They sabotage agencies by purging experts and cutting resources.

• Then they point to the dysfunction as evidence that the agency was always broken.

• Then they privatize or eliminate the service, handing power to unaccountable corporations and cronies.

It’s not a bug in the system. It’s the system they’re building.

And the only way to stop it is to call it what it is—every single time:

• The gutting of SAMHSA is not a “reorg.” It’s a targeted attack on mental health infrastructure.

• The firings at the VA aren’t about “efficiency.” They’re an attempt to destroy one of the last functioning public healthcare systems.

• The erasure of LGBTQ+ resources isn’t about “biological truth.” It’s about political control, repression, and fear.

This is not government in decline—it’s government under attack. And we cannot afford to describe it in polite, technocratic terms. We must name the sabotage and make sure the public understands the stakes: if we don’t stop this now, there may be nothing left to save.

Amplify the Human Cost — These Aren’t Just “Job Cuts.” These Are Policies That Will Kill People.

We have to stop talking about this like it’s just some inside-baseball shakeup of the federal bureaucracy. These are not abstract policy moves. These decisions have blood on them.

Art Levine’s reporting lays it out in devastating detail. At SAMHSA, funding for the 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline has already been disrupted. State offices are going dark. Staffers don’t know if they’ll be paid next week. And the people on the other end of those crisis calls? Many of them are LGBTQ+ youth, who already face four times the suicide risk of their peers.

This isn’t theoretical. It’s not long-term. This is happening right now. The people who answer those calls, who coordinate addiction treatment programs, who bring overdose prevention medication to tribal communities—they’re being fired mid-mission, replaced with silence, confusion, and fear.

And it doesn’t stop at SAMHSA:

• Veterans will show up at VA clinics and find fewer doctors, longer waits, worse care.

• Addiction survivors will relapse because their support networks are being dismantled.

• Trans teens—already under siege—will lose access to counselors trained to help them survive in a hostile world.

This is what the “efficiency” cult of DOGE really means: gutting the lifelines while lying about it in press releases.

We must refuse to speak in euphemisms. These aren’t reforms. They’re removals. These aren’t budget cuts. They’re body counts.

Every Democrat, every journalist, every ordinary citizen with a conscience must start asking the only question that matters: Who is going to die because of this policy?
And then follow it with the second question: Who will be held responsible?

If You Believe in This Fight, Help Keep It Alive

There’s still much more below, I just need a moment of your time.

The American Manifesto isn’t backed by corporations. There are no ads, no paywalls, no billionaires funding it.

It’s just one person, fighting like hell to expose the truth and give you the weapons to push back.

If you value this work—if you want this movement to keep growing, keep calling out fascism without fear, and keep fighting for the future we deserve—then I need your support.

Join the fight. Become a supporter. Every contribution keeps this mission alive.

Because silence is surrender. We do not surrender. We are #TheRelentless.

Demand Accountability — Name Them, Shame Them, Politically Destroy Them

This isn’t a moment for polite disagreement or “both sides” debate. This is a moment for moral clarity and public accountability. The people behind this assault on the federal government—those who planned it, those who executed it, and those who enabled it—must be called out by name, every time, in every space available.

They are not faceless bureaucrats. They are political operatives and collaborators in a fascistic regime. And they count on your silence. They count on the media soft-pedaling the story. They count on the public moving on.

We can’t let them.

We must make them infamous.

What that looks like in practice:

• Flood their offices with calls. Demand your representatives denounce these mass purges. If they won’t? Hold them accountable at town halls, in letters to the editor, and in every conversation that follows.

• Show up. Peacefully, visibly, vocally. When they hold public appearances—go. Make sure they can’t pretend this is happening in the dark. Bring signs. Bring survivors of the system. Bring the truth.

• Organize in your community. Whether it’s through progressive orgs, veterans' groups, mental health coalitions, or just your local coffee shop—make this a local issue. Because it is. Every congressional district has people who will suffer from these cuts.

• Be a loud, relentless voice online. This matters. Today, social media is the town square, and the fight for public opinion is happening there in real time. If they’re lying on X, TikTok, Facebook, or YouTube—we have to be louder, faster, and more truthful. Every time you post the truth, you break their spell a little more.

Trump’s movement thrives on fog, confusion, and cowardice. That’s why naming names is so powerful.

Start with Elon Musk, who’s not just complicit but leading this with gleeful cruelty.

Then call out the architects inside HHS who are signing the termination letters.

Call out your own member of Congress if they’re silent—because silence is complicity.

And don’t stop there.

Make sure that anyone connected to this purge knows: they will be remembered. Their actions will be known. And their political careers are over.

This Is a Battle for Public Opinion—Not Just a Courtroom or a Ballot Box

Yes, the courts have blocked some firings. Yes, elections matter. But let’s be absolutely clear: the courts will not save us, and waiting until 2026 is a gamble we can't afford to take.

At best, the judiciary can slow the regime down. It can buy us time. But it cannot defeat fascism—not when the other side is already using every day to consolidate power, flood the media with propaganda, and dismantle the very systems designed to hold them accountable.

This is not just a legal fight or an electoral one. This is an information war, and it’s already underway.

We need to:

• Shatter the right-wing narrative machine by relentlessly exposing the real-world consequences of their lies.

• Break the fascistic spell on their base by showing them the suffering their leaders are actively causing—to veterans, to mental health patients, to the vulnerable.

• Flood the public discourse with unrelenting truth. Do not wait. Do not equivocate. Meet them where they lie and drag the facts into the light.

2026 may be the last chance to cement a reversal—but 2025 is our last chance to make reversal possible. This battle is now. And it must be fought in the public square.

A Government That Works for Us, Not Against Us

The attack on SAMHSA is just one piece of a larger assault. But it’s one of the clearest examples of what happens when government is deliberately dismantled for political gain.

Lives will be lost. People will suffer.
And if we don’t stop them, this will only be the beginning.

This regime is not just waging war on democracy—it’s waging war on stability, dignity, and survival itself.

And it’s doing it in your name, with your money, in your silence.

So, break the silence. Name the truth. And make damn sure they never get away with it.

Corrections:

Added Attribution to Rob Waters

Corrected information about trip Nate Billy returned from

Join the Fight, Amplify the Truth

Because silence is surrender. We never surrender. We are #TheRelentless.