The following warning about the ongoing destruction of U.S. government is from economist Paul Krugman:
If a rocket blows up, you can build a new rocket and try again. “Move fast and break things” is sometimes an OK approach if the things in question are just hardware, which can be replaced. But what if the object that experiences “rapid unscheduled disassembly” is something whose continued functioning is crucial to people’s lives — say, something like the U.S. government?
This isn’t a hypothetical question: Musk, with backing from Donald Trump, is blowing up significant parts of the U.S. government as you read this. And we can already see the shape of multiple potential disasters.
The Muskenjugend — the mostly very young people Musk has hired to work at the Department of Government Efficiency, which isn’t actually a government department in any legal sense but which Trump has effectively given huge and probably unconstitutional power to remake federal agencies — generally seem to share three characteristics.
First, they all seem to be extreme right-wing ideologues: whenever journalists investigate the social media trail of one of Musk’s operatives, what they find is horrifying. For example, Marko Elez, who had access to the Treasury Department’s central payments system, had in the recent past advocated racism and eugenics.
Second, they don’t know anything about the government agencies they’re supposedly going to make more efficient. That’s understandable. The federal government has around 2 million workers, many — I would say the vast majority — performing important public services, in a huge variety of fields. You can’t parachute into a government agency and expect to know in a matter of days which if any programs and employees are dispensable.
But the third characteristic of the Muskenjugend is that, like Musk himself, they’re arrogant. They believe that they can parachute into agencies and quickly identify what should be cut.
So last week, when the Trump administration began laying off large numbers of probationary workers, the only real questions were how quickly it would become clear that essential government functions were being compromised and just how scary the damage would be.
And the answers were that the damage became obvious almost immediately, and some of it looks very scary indeed.
A word about language: the term “probationary workers” can sound as if we’re talking about problem cases, people who’ve had poor performance reviews or something. But all it means is employees who were hired relatively recently, usually within the past year, and as a result have weaker job protection than their more senior colleagues.
So what would be your worst nightmare about large, hastily announced job cuts? Maybe firing the people responsible for keeping our nuclear weapons secure? Sure enough, on Thursday night, according to CNN’s reporting, Trump officials fired more than 300 staffers at the National Nuclear Security Administration, apparently unaware that this agency oversees America’s nukes. (Maybe the name should have been a giveaway?)
The next day, realizing the enormity of the error, the agency tried to reinstate those workers — but was having trouble getting in touch, because the terminated workers had already been locked out of their government email accounts.
Trump officials also summarily fired 3400 workers at the National Forest Service, which plays a critical role in fighting forest fires. The administration said that no firefighters were laid off, but right now — before fire season begins — is when the service should be trying to prevent fires by, among other things, clearing vegetation that can feed those fires. That work has now been hobbled, in some cases brought to a complete halt. (Remember when Trump blamed California for devastating fires, claiming that the state hadn’t raked enough leaves?)
There have been large layoffs at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, just as America is experiencing a serious spike in ordinary flu cases and alarm bells are ringing about a potential bird flu pandemic. Under political pressure, the CDC has been withholding reports. So we might not even know about the next pandemic until it’s well underway.
Large layoffs have struck at the Department of Health and Human Services, including, according to CBS, half the officers of the Epidemic Intelligence Service, sometimes called the “disease detectives,” who play a crucial role in identifying public health threats. There have been layoffs at the FDA, which monitors the safety of food additives and medical devices.
And according to the union, several hundred workers have been fired at the Federal Aviation Administration.
The list goes on. But peering through the details, the overall strategy is clear: Musk and his minions decided to summarily fire as many federal workers as they could without making any effort to find out what these workers do and whether it’s important.
Despite Musk’s escalating claims, these firings won’t save tens of billions of dollars. Moreover, DOGE has mandated large layoffs at the IRS — creating an open season for wealthy tax evaders which will eventually increase the budget deficit.
So what is this about? Think of it as austerity theater: suddenly getting rid of thousands of federal workers looks strong and decisive to people who don’t understand what it will do. Remember, just a few weeks ago workers all across the federal government received a mass email urging them to take a buyout offer and “move from lower productivity jobs in the public sector to higher productivity jobs in the private sector.” The new wave of layoffs probably reflects the fact that not many workers took the offer, realizing, correctly, that it was almost surely a scam.
Well, it seems all too likely that Americans are about to learn the real costs of austerity theater. Many of the suddenly laid off workers were providing essential services. Nor should we underestimate the demoralization the vindictive layoffs have created even among those workers who still have their jobs (so far.)
So when we experience our next wave of devastating forest fires, when significant numbers of Americans begin dying from preventable diseases and faulty medical devices, remember: These disasters will be partly the fault of arrogant, ignorant men who decided to smash up a reasonably functional government.
