Tag
The systematic destruction of federal agencies and programs, including mass layoffs, budget elimination, and institutional capture. Covers the deliberate hollowing-out of regulatory, scientific, and social service functions of the U.S. government.
11 incidents
DOGE's elimination of the State Department's energy diplomacy bureau months before the Iran war left the U.S. without key personnel who monitored energy chokepoints, oil markets, and Iranian energy infrastructure — capabilities now desperately needed during a conflict centered on the Strait of Hormuz and Iran's oil economy.
RFK Jr.'s dismantlement of federal health agencies during an active measles crisis — including firing vaccine advisors, cutting thousands of positions, and clawing back billions — has resulted in the worst measles outbreak in 30+ years and threatens America's measles-elimination status.
DOGE fired over 600 National Weather Service employees including hurricane hunters, meteorologists, and storm modelers, leaving 30 forecast offices without lead meteorologists. The NWS Goodland, Kansas office became the first to abandon 24/7 operations. Five former NWS directors warned the cuts endanger lives heading into tornado and hurricane season.
DOGE fired 350 NNSA nuclear weapons workers, including warhead assemblers at Pantex and radioactive waste managers at Savannah River, as part of a 2,000-person Department of Energy purge. Most firings were rescinded within 24 hours after bipartisan alarm over nuclear stockpile security, but the incident exposed DOGE's indiscriminate approach to agencies with critical national security functions.
The systematic dismantlement of the Department of Education began with DOGE slashing $881 million in research contracts and eliminating IES, followed by cutting half the workforce, and culminated in an executive order to shutter the entire department.
DOGE operationally shut down the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau — a Congressionally-created agency protecting 330 million Americans from financial fraud — by ordering staff to cease all work, deleting social media accounts, and planning to fire nearly all 1,700 employees. Federal courts intervened but the agency remains gutted.
Mass layoffs at the FDA driven by the Department of Government Efficiency eliminated over 3,500 staff in 2025, causing foreign food safety inspections to drop by nearly half, outbreak investigations to go unsolved at record rates, and critical programs like avian influenza testing to be halted.
Trump fired at least 17 inspectors general across the federal government without the advance notice to Congress that the Inspector General Act generally requires, and a later federal ruling said the notice failure violated the statute.
A systematic effort to dismantle federal disaster preparedness and response capacity through budget cuts, mass layoffs, program terminations, and structural reorganization. FEMA's workforce has already shrunk by one-third, with plans to cut it in half. The disaster response workforce faces a 41% cut and the surge workforce an 85% cut, leaving the country dangerously unprepared for hurricanes, wildfires, earthquakes, and other disasters.
A systematic dismantlement of OSHA's regulatory and enforcement capacity through mass deregulation, inspector cuts, and penalty reductions that experts warn will lead to preventable worker deaths across construction, manufacturing, and agricultural sectors.
The US withdrew from the WHO effective January 2026, removing the organization's largest funder and dismantling pandemic preparedness infrastructure. The WHO announced plans to cut 2,300 jobs — 25% of its workforce. The withdrawal degrades global disease surveillance, influenza vaccine matching, and outbreak response capacity at a time of ongoing zoonotic disease threats.