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What, I wonder, would Jackie Robinson have thought of an all-American world in which his story -- essentially all trace of him -- would be briefly wiped out at the Department of Defense website on DEI grounds? Yes, you know, those utter curse words of Trumpian America: diversity, equity, and inclusion. So how grimly appropriate that, in the wake (and that is indeed an all-too-appropriate word) of the president's executive orders to eliminate all DEI programs, the first Black man to break into then-segregated major league baseball by joining the Brooklyn Dodgers in 1947, after serving in the U.S. Army (and being court-martialed for refusing to move to the back of a bus) during World War II, would briefly be wiped from the Department of Defense website in the strange new era of Donald Trump and Elon Musk.
In some sense, it does feel as though the two of them have gone to war with a world that might accept anything but them and are seemingly trying to launch a new era of White male singularity, supremacy, and exclusion, or -- because an acronym is always necessary -- WMSE. (It's pronounced "whimsy.") After all, only recently the Arlington National Cemetery website even eliminated the famed civil rights leader and World War II veteran Medgar Evers.
And that's just to begin down a list of such names. Yes, we couldn't be living in a stranger or more unnerving world in which not only the dead but the living are being -- excuse the word -- crucified. And as TomDispatch regular Andrea Mazzarino reminds us today, Donald Trump and Elon Musk are now wiping out so much more than just a few dead Black veterans and all-American heroes. They and their minions have been firing startling (or do I mean staggering) numbers of all-too-living federal workers and, unlike with Jackie Robinson, those decisions haven't been reversed, not for a second.
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
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.
President Trump, his unelected right-hand man and billionaire businessman Elon Musk, and the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) began wreaking havoc on government agencies in late January with a poorly formatted, emotionally worded PDF that some in the civil service initially mistook for a phishing email. That "fork in the road" document offered workers a chance to take eight months of severance pay, or else face the possibility of simply losing their jobs -- a possibility that turned out to be all too real for those who risked staying and continuing to serve.
I hope that red state voters are happy.
My Own Deep State
Before all this started, life was pretty good for families like mine, who live here and depend on the federal government for work. Of course, I have to admit that, by many measures, we are privileged in so many ways: A White, upper-middle-class, dual-income (for now) family, with healthy kids, cats, and even a raucous flock of chickens. And as of yet, many families like mine are still fine. But for how long?
I think the wholesomeness of life in my area of Maryland owes much to the diverse cultures represented in our communities. You don't need to look hard to find someone who can tell you about customs, food, norms, and rituals in places as far away as Afghanistan, China, El Salvador, Ukraine, and elsewhere. (Maryland has long offered broad protections to refugees and asylum seekers.) Until recently, the military and the civil service also cast wide nets in their recruitment and anti-discriminatory hiring practices, coming up with some of the best of the best in every field, regardless of national origin.
To the cultural anthropologist in me, this diversity offers remarkable wealth. You can drive a few minutes from my house and get the crispest Peruvian chicken, the most fragrant Salvadoran pupusas, the tenderest Afghan kabobs. Kids growing up here have a chance to understand the world and international affairs in an up-close-and-personal way. My kids grasp just why democracy and peace are so important, because they know other kids whose families fled authoritarian dictators. They also get why hanging out with people who are different from you is both challenging and rewarding.
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