The Democracy Papers: Paper Fourteen

Valentine's Day Massacre

The Department of Government Efficiency, DOGE, under Elon Musk’s leadership, has taken a chainsaw to the federal workforce, eviscerating agencies under the guise of "efficiency." But let’s be clear, this isn’t about making government work better. It’s about breaking it beyond repair. Slashing thousands of jobs doesn’t make agencies leaner or more effective; it cripples them, ensuring that government services grind to a halt. In reality, it’s going to cost more, not less. The government’s job is to stop the worst from happening before it happens but with DOGE hacking away at the safety net, we’re about to see what happens when all those invisible safeguards disappear.

The Bloodbath: Who’s Getting the Axe?

This past Friday saw at least 10,000 federal employees dismissed as part of Musk's illegal terminations, gutting nearly 3% of the entire civil service in a matter of days. But DOGE isn’t stopping there, more layoffs are on the horizon and they’re hitting the agencies that keep us safe, healthy and functional.

• Department of Veterans Affairs (VA): Over 1,000 employees fired, including Veterans, primarily targeting frontline healthcare workers. It also includes key Information Security personnel that were keeping Veteran information safe and secure. The VA also plans to eliminate 10,000 more positions through attrition, gutting Veterans' healthcare under the pretense of "efficiency."
• Health and Human Services (HHS): 3,600 staff, gone. That means fewer people tracking disease outbreaks, responding to health crises and ensuring we don’t have another COVID-level disaster on our hands.
• Food and Drug Administration (FDA): Key regulatory positions slashed, putting food safety and medical oversight in the hands of corporations instead of public health experts.
• Federal Aviation Administration (FAA): Hundreds of air safety employees cut. Because who needs oversight when you’re 35,000 feet in the air? Right? Right?
• Forestry Service and National Park Service (NPS): Nearly 2,500 wildland firefighters and support staff fired just before fire season. With climate change fueling more extreme wildfires, fewer firefighters mean longer response times, more property loss and an increased risk to human lives. Park rangers, environmental scientists and conservation teams have also been slashed, leaving national parks and public lands vulnerable to neglect, illegal exploitation and environmental degradation.

These aren’t "wasteful bureaucrats." They’re the ones making sure your food doesn’t poison you, your plane doesn’t fall out of the sky and your fellow Veterans get the care they earned. When they’re gone, we all suffer.

The Myth of Efficiency: Why Mass Layoffs Cost More

The talking point is always the same: "Cutting the workforce saves taxpayer money." But that's fucking bullshit.

• Loss of Institutional Knowledge: You can’t replace decades of expertise overnight. When experienced employees walk out the door, the knowledge goes with them, leaving behind an undertrained, overwhelmed skeleton crew trying to piece together how to do their jobs.
• Skyrocketing Costs: Training new hires, dealing with operational breakdowns and fixing the mistakes that never had to happen in the first place? That costs way more than just keeping the damn experts.
• Diminished Public Services: Even longer wait times for Veterans’ healthcare. FDA approval delays for lifesaving drugs. Increased flight risks due to FAA understaffing. These aren’t hypotheticals, these are the consequences that we're already seeing.

We’ve seen this before in the 2013 budget sequestration that gutted the federal workforce, resulting in 750,000 fewer full-time jobs and a 0.6% drop in GDP growth. It was an economic punch that took years to recover from and now DOGE is doing the same thing but on meth.

The Hidden Cost of a Broken Government

Most people don’t think about the government when it’s working, because when it works, nothing goes wrong. But now, that safety net is gone. Now, we’re about to start noticing every little thing that goes wrong:

• Public Health Emergencies: With fewer CDC and NIH staff, pandemics and disease outbreaks will spread faster and deadlier.
• Food and Drug Safety Disasters: Fewer inspectors mean contaminated food and unsafe medicine hitting the shelves.
• NOAA and Weather Reliability: With mass layoffs hitting the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), weather forecasting is becoming less reliable. Fewer meteorologists and climate scientists mean delayed storm warnings, inaccurate climate data and a public left unprepared for hurricanes, tornadoes and extreme weather events.
• FEMA Recovery: As disaster relief staffing is slashed, FEMA’s ability to respond to natural disasters and humanitarian crises is crippled. Slower response times, fewer resources and a lack of coordination will turn preventable disasters into full-blown humanitarian catastrophes.
• Infrastructure Collapse: As federal oversight disappears, we’ll see more train derailments, more bridge failures and more deadly accidents.

This isn’t cutting red tape, it’s lighting the match and watching the whole god damn system go up in flames.

The Real Cost of a Broken Government

DOGE’s mass layoffs aren’t just reckless, they’re calculated sabotage. Every job cut, every agency gutted, every safeguard erased brings us one step closer to full-scale governmental failure. And make no mistake: we will all pay the price.

This was never about saving money. It’s about breaking the system beyond repair so that when it collapses, private corporations can swoop in, buy up the scraps and sell us back the essential services we once took for granted—at a premium. This is privatization by destruction.

If we don’t fight back, the government we knew won’t exist anymore. And when we look back at what we lost, it won’t be abstract. It’ll be the delayed ambulance, the poisoned food, the flights that never should have taken off.

It’ll be our lives on the line.

What We Can Do Right Now

We still have power but we have to use it before it's too late. Here’s what we can do:

• Call Your Representatives – Flood their offices with calls, emails and letters demanding an immediate halt to these mass firings. Hold them accountable for defending the civil service before there's nothing left to defend.
• Organize and Show Up – Peaceful sit-ins, demonstrations and public rallies will make it impossible for them to ignore the damage being done.
• Support General Strikes – If the system is being dismantled to serve corporate overlords, then we refuse to participate. Strike action sends a message that workers—not billionaires—keep this country running.
• Amplify the Message – Share this, talk about it and make sure people understand what’s happening before it’s too late. We can’t fight what we don’t see.

The OG resistors didn’t wait for permission to fight back against tyranny. The Boston Tea Party wasn’t just about taxes, it was a warning shot against unchecked power. They knew that the moment you accept injustice, you invite more of it.

This is our Tea Party moment. We don’t have to wait until the last agency is gutted and the last service privatized. We must fight now, before it’s too late. Stand up. Refuse to be silent. Take action. Just like the ones who came before us.

So let's go spill some motherfucking tea, before there's no tea left to be spilled.