We are, in short, in a truly strange and disturbing new world. With that
in mind, let Mazzarino lead you into her version of it. It should take
our collective breath away. --- Tom
The Costs of Trump’s War on Federal Workers
A Personal Dispatch from the Capital Region
By Andrea Mazzarino
The second administration of President Donald J. Trump has already started working its special magic across the Washington, D.C. capital region.
- Elon Musk and his Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) have fired tens of thousands of federal workers, with more to come.
- Those who have lost their jobs include people who find housing and other support for veterans struggling with mental illness.
- They include civil servants who maintained safeguards to prevent our nuclear weapons from becoming dirty bombs.
- They include healthcare researchers developing treatments for cancer and other killer diseases; workers who ensured that low-income, homeless, and rural students were able to get an education; agricultural researchers who opened up international markets to American farmers; and too many others to mention here.
My neighborhood, located on farmland about 40 miles outside Washington, D.C., is among those wracked by this administration’s shakeup of the government workforce. An estimated 20% of our country’s federal workers make their homes right here in Maryland and in nearby Virginia within reach of the capital. And that doesn’t count the tens of thousands of us who work in (or adjacent to) federal agencies as contractors. All those workers have also been subjected to the same back-to-work requirements, anti-DEI policies, and (depending on their roles) job insecurity, as their government colleagues.
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