Battling Two Cancers: Her Private Health Fight vs. Washington's Political Purge

By Annie Lowrey

In the chaotic political landscape of Washington D.C., where accusations of "draining the swamp" and dismantling "deep state" bureaucracy dominated headlines, one woman found herself fighting a deeply personal and equally insidious battle: a rare, aggressive cancer. This is the story of Anne Romatowski, a dedicated civil servant caught between a life-threatening illness and a government intent on undermining the very institutions she believed in. Her quiet resilience highlights the profound human cost of political upheaval and the unwavering spirit of those committed to public service.

A Startling Diagnosis Amidst Political Turmoil

Just before Christmas 2024, Anne Romatowski, working remotely from New York for the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB), noticed a small, soft bump near her collarbone. Initially unconcerned, she nonetheless scheduled a long-overdue mammogram. The appointment day, a frigid Thursday before Valentine’s Day, arrived amidst mounting anxiety of a different kind: Donald Trump’s return to office, spearheaded by Elon Musk’s new Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), was aggressively targeting federal agencies, including the CFPB. Days earlier, Russell Vought, the acting director, had frozen all CFPB operations.

Battling Two Cancers: Her Private Health Fight vs. Washington's Political Purge

Anne, an expert in artificial intelligence, focused on protecting taxpayers from digital scams, biased banking algorithms, and predatory lending. Her work was vital, and the CFPB, funded by fines and the Federal Reserve—not direct taxpayer money—was a crucial shield for ordinary Americans. Yet, just two days before Anne’s mammogram, DOGE had fired 70 CFPB employees, sending out carelessly composed emails riddled with typos and generic placeholders: “The Agency finds that you are not fit for continued employment.”

During her mammogram, the technologist immediately noticed the bump. Within moments, Anne was rushed to a radiologist. Masked and obscured by screens, the doctor delivered the chilling news: "You have a lump… on your left… breast. It’s extremely… likely that you have breast… cancer." Tears welled as Anne desperately asked for an immediate biopsy, adding, "I work for the federal government, and I think Elon Musk is going to fire me."

As she left the clinic, her phone, bombarded with messages, died. Upon recharging it, she was met with a flood of pings: dozens more colleagues had been locked out of their systems. Her union sent a Zoom invitation for terminated workers. Elon Musk had indeed fired her. Anne, listening to the emergency call through an empty shopping cart at Target, struggled to unmute herself to ask a critical question: What about her health insurance?

Double the Fight: Triple-Negative Cancer and the "Deep State" Purge

Days later, a biopsy confirmed the devastating news: triple-negative breast cancer, a rare and aggressive form. A rogue cell, driven by damaged DNA, had proliferated wildly, forming a mass that had infiltrated her nearby lymph nodes. Doctors outlined an arduous treatment plan: two rounds of chemotherapy, immunotherapy, a mastectomy or lumpectomy, potentially a third round of chemo, and radiation. The fight for her life had begun.

Battling Two Cancers: Her Private Health Fight vs. Washington's Political Purge

Simultaneously, Washington was gripped by a different kind of purge. President Trump declared he was "getting rid of all the cancer" in the "deep state," portraying civil servants as parasitic bureaucrats undermining the public will. The rhetoric was explicit: "We’re getting rid of all the cancer." For Anne, the metaphor hit terrifyingly close to home.

Unwavering Dedication Amidst Personal Crisis

Anne texted me, her friend of two decades, the afternoon of her diagnosis. When I visited her days later, she picked at her Thai food, her mind not on her personal misfortune, but on logistics. She had already scheduled multiple physician consultations and networked with fellow breast cancer patients. Simultaneously, she was meticulously planning how to transition her critical work to remaining CFPB colleagues and actively searching for new employment for herself and other laid-off staff. "Others had it worse than she did," she insisted, noting the tragic reality that "A lot of people get fired when they get sick. A lot of people get fired because they are sick."

Battling Two Cancers: Her Private Health Fight vs. Washington's Political Purge

Anne, a selfless, levelheaded, and quick-witted individual, dedicated her career to "financial inclusion," a field she described as "policy work, close to people." Her background included helping low-income mothers secure housing, assessing anti-poverty programs in Kenya, directing philanthropic investments in distressed communities, and protecting New Yorkers from financial scams. Joining the CFPB had been "a dream."

The CFPB stands alone as a financial regulator focused on direct public support. Over 15 years, it has capped credit card late fees for millions, cleared medical debt from credit reports, handled tens of thousands of weekly complaints, returned billions to consumers, and imposed significant fines on firms. Anne firmly believed such assertive oversight was essential to prevent predatory lending and reckless speculation from plunging individuals into bankruptcy or the global economy into recession, having witnessed the devastating impact of the 2008 financial crisis firsthand. The CFPB, she told me, existed to "prevent it from happening again."

The Political Onslaught and Legal Reinstatement

Despite its consumer protection mandate, the CFPB faced fierce opposition. Banks accused it of stifling innovation, while Republicans argued its independent budget made it unaccountable. The Trump administration escalated the attack: Vought branded it "woke & weaponized," Musk declared "CFPB RIP" on X, and Trump himself called it "a very important thing to get rid of." Notably, the CFPB held regulatory authority over areas like the president’s crypto token and Tesla’s auto-lending arm.

Anne, despite her firing, held onto hope. She knew the administration hadn't followed legal protocols for mass layoffs. More importantly, the Constitution demands the president "take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed." The Dodd-Frank Act of 2010 had created the CFPB to protect Americans from "unfair, deceptive, or abusive" financial contracts, a law Trump was constitutionally bound to uphold.

Battling Two Cancers: Her Private Health Fight vs. Washington's Political Purge

The day she was fired, a legal team representing Anne and her colleagues filed suit, accusing the administration of "the unlawful dismantling" of a government agency. Attorney Deepak Gupta argued it was "a tragedy for American consumers, and it is lawless." The mass firings were temporarily halted as the case proceeded.

In early March, after a union legal strategy call, Anne underwent an MRI for her tumor at Memorial Sloan Kettering. The month continued with a barrage of medical appointments and bureaucratic hurdles: a painful biopsy of her lymph nodes, consultations on the Trump administration's attempts to shut down the Community Development Financial Institutions Fund, an echocardiogram, applying for unemployment, moving back to her childhood bedroom in Virginia, and having a chest port installed for IV infusions.

Then, on a Saturday evening, salvation arrived: Judge Amy Berman Jackson issued a scathing 112-page opinion. An affidavit had revealed the administration's intent to reduce the CFPB to "a room at Treasury, White House, or Federal Reserve with five men and a phone." Jackson declared the president was acting in "complete disregard of the decision Congress made"—the decision that the CFPB "must exist."

Anne had her job back. On Monday, she caught up on financial news. On Tuesday, she went to Georgetown University Hospital for her first round of chemotherapy.

The Bureaucratic Maze and Worsening Health

It took Anne two weeks to receive a new laptop from the CFPB. She waited three hours in the lobby of agency headquarters—where she and most colleagues had been banned—only for the computer to not boot up. Vought had ordered civil servants to stop working but provided no alternative instructions. Anne was unsure of her job's current scope. Still, drawing a salary meant working. Barred from industry meetings, she delved into merger and acquisition data. Unable to assist other agencies, she attended internal meetings and performed "statutory" tasks mandated by Dodd-Frank, such as monitoring FinTech financial statements. Each Monday, she submitted a five-bullet-point email to the Office of Personnel Management, detailing her weekly labor.

Her oncologist suggested that being fired again might be a "silver lining," allowing her to focus solely on treatment. But Anne scoffed at the idea: she'd lose her insurance and income. She opted not to disclose her illness to her boss, anticipating the escalating side effects—nausea, exhaustion, anemia, brain fog, digestive problems—that would intensify from spring through winter.

On April 17, a second email arrived: "Specific Notice of Reduction in Force." She'd lose computer access again, be placed on administrative leave for two months, then be let go. A virtual town hall that night revealed the dire state: the CFPB, once 1,700 strong, was down to 200. Even if reinstated, the agency was disintegrating, with skilled staff gone and critical contracts canceled.

The Human Cost of "Trauma"

Visiting Anne in Virginia in late April, I saw the physical toll: her hair, once pink, was thinning. She moved slowly. My constant queries about her well-being were met with gallows humor: losing her job, getting cancer, moving back home—a terrible punch line, a gut punch. What truly distressed her, however, was Vought's leaked video expressing a desire for bureaucrats "to be traumatically affected," to "not want to go to work because they are increasingly viewed as the villains," and to "put them in trauma."

Rohit Chopra, former CFPB director (fired by Trump in February), confided that many Republicans privately supported the agency due to its benefits for their constituents. He believed Trump was not just destroying the agency but "state capacity" and "the human capital that really powers" the government. Chopra, who battled thyroid cancer himself during his CFPB leadership, understood Anne's plight deeply. "You never want to feel like it’s over," he mused.

Two days after my visit, Anne received another email: "Recission of Specific Notice in Reduction in Force" (misspelling "rescission"). DOGE had ignored a court order requiring a "particularized assessment" of each fired employee, a whistleblower testified; only "the numbers" mattered. Judge Jackson once again forced Anne's reinstatement.

The Relentless Grind of Treatment and Public Service

In early June, I accompanied Anne to immunotherapy and chemotherapy. The night before, at her parent's house, she showed me a ludicrous email from the Treasury claiming she owed the government over $11,000 for an alleged overpayment (she calculated they owed her interest on back wages). I watched her condense her week's work into DOGE-mandated bullet points for her weekly email.

Weeks earlier, I had connected Anne with Allison Rockey, who had just finished treatment for the same aggressive breast cancer at the same hospital. Allison had given Anne special cold mitts to prevent nerve damage during chemo. Anne mentioned wanting to catch up with Allison. I stammered, then delivered the crushing news: Allison, who thought she was in remission, had died two days prior; her cancer had metastasized to her brain. "I'm sorry, I'm so sorry," I repeated. Anne, ever selfless, interrupted: "I'm sorry."

The next morning, masked, we drove to the hospital. A nurse practitioner ordered a CT scan for gastrointestinal symptoms, considering a week's chemo deferral if inflammation was high. The phlebotomist struggled to find a vein, forcing a trip to another department to access her chest port. Hours passed before the test and go-ahead.

Finally, settled in the infusion center, I convinced her to let me get lunch. "Literally anything," I offered. She chose crab cakes, which arrived comically boxed. As she ate, I chattered, trying to lift her spirits. Nurses hooked her up, and I helped strap on Allison’s cold mitts. They weren't just for neuropathy, Anne explained but also prevented nail loss and infection. "If you get sick while you have cancer, you can die," she stated starkly. "You can get an infection that your body can’t fight, and then you could die."

As the "life-destroying, lifesaving medication" flowed, Anne drifted off. I thought of Susan Sontag’s 1978 meditation on cancer, and how it was then riddled with metaphors of shame. In 2025, the metaphors leaned into cancer's endogeneity, sickness from within.

The previous night, Anne had described how moving it was to take the oath of office. Her grandfathers had served in the military, and her parents in government. She felt profound pride in being a public employee, sworn to "support and defend the Constitution against all enemies, foreign and domestic." The next day, she would log on and do her job. She would try to protect consumers, just as her doctors tried to protect her, her union protected the CFPB, regulators protected markets, and courts and bureaucrats protected the Constitution and the country—human beings in human systems, striving to heal human faults.

As for Elon Musk, he abandoned his "radical treatment" for the civil servants Trump had labeled a "metastatic disease." After a falling out with the president and failing to "make the government more efficient," Musk had fired himself from DOGE.