When President Donald Trump was campaigning for president, he routinely promised he would “drain the swamp,” abolish the “Deep State,” and ask billionaire Elon Musk to do a “performance audit” of federal agencies in Washington.
“We’re going to cast out the corrupt political class. We’re going to restore our republic,” Trump promised at one rally. “We are going to drain the swamp, and we’re going to do it once and for all.” Altogether, it was an enticing proposition for voters exhausted of all things Washington.
But what if Trump had promised something else instead on the campaign trail? Something like: “When I’m elected, I will end the program that’s putting math teachers in high-poverty schools from Macon to Tifton to Albany, Georgia! Then, I’ll fire the people at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention who just told you there was lead in your child’s applesauce! And when I’m done with that, we will make sure the Department of Veterans Affairs in Atlanta has fewer employees than the day I take office!”
That’s the promise Trump should have made, because that’s what he’s delivered in Georgia so far.
Among the mass layoffs and random budget cuts happening all across the federal government, Georgians have been among the first to lose their jobs. The CDC offices in Georgia, for example, have lost about 1,300 employees. Layoffs happened at the VA in Atlanta, too, although calls to the agency to find out how many and which positions were eliminated have gone unreturned.
Hundreds of millions of dollars in medical research for Georgia institutions has been scrapped, too. Even a grant program to put teachers in high-poverty areas in rural Georgia was eliminated without warning last week.
Other cuts have certainly happened in Georgia, but it’s hard to know who or what has been affected because the White House and Musk aren’t telling us and many of the people involved at federal agencies are afraid to speak out for fear of retribution.
Credit: AP
Credit: AP
Megan Hightower, a mom of three who lives in Cartersville, had just gotten a promotion in the CDC’s Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry when she found out she had been fired in an email Saturday night. Although her agency has a complicated name, her office had a simple job — to warn the public and local health agencies about toxic substances that could hurt or kill people.
“One of the biggest ones we worked lately on was the situation with lead in applesauce for young children,” she said. “It’s very important work.”
The email that Hightower received Saturday night was identical to others that have been sent to federal workers across the country since Musk and his Department of Government Efficiency started firing large swaths of federal workers. The email points to poor performance, even though Hightower had been performing so well she had just been promoted in December.
“The Agency finds, based on your performance, that you have not demonstrated that your further employment at the Agency would be in the public interest,” the emails read.
Credit: AP
Credit: AP
Along with the shock of being fired, Hightower said she is also worried that the language of the email will make it harder for her to receive unemployment benefits. “They stated false information about why I was being terminated,” she said.
With two teenagers and a five-year-old, she said she and her husband, who works in manufacturing, are now worried about how they’ll afford the basics. “This has impacted us already,” she said.
Another Georgian impacted is Justin Hockey, a high school math teacher in the Bibb County School District who had been getting a master’s degree in teaching at Mercer University until he received an email last week notifying him that the entire program he was participating in had been defunded.
The program, funded through the U.S. Department of Education, placed teachers like Hockey in high-demand subjects in high-risk schools around Georgia while also paying their tuition to study education. “The current administration has determined that the grant does not align with its current policies,” his program leader wrote in an email.
It was a gut punch for Hockey, 25, who said he felt he was uniquely able to connect with his students and make math relevant to their lives.
“Pretty much my whole life, I’ve always wanted to be a teacher,” he said. “I thought it was a great opportunity.” The program included a five-year commitment for young teachers like Hockey to stay in underserved areas in the state. Now he’s not sure what the future holds.
It’s easy to see why Trump’s voters bought into his promise to cut spending and overhaul government. But there’s a smart way to cut government and there is this way.
Credit: AP
Credit: AP
The smart way happened during the Clinton administration, when former President Bill Clinton promised to “reinvent” the federal government. After a six-month study, loads of congressional input, and multiple pieces of legislation, Clinton eventually eliminated nearly 400,000 federal jobs through the National Partnership for Reinventing Government. Along with GOP congressional leadership, Clinton even balanced the federal government for a minute.
Compare that to the Trump way of cutting government so far. Along with little transparency about who is making the decisions and which roles are being cut, it seems like the people making the cuts have no idea what they’re doing.
How else can you explain why DOGE fired 350 people over email at the National Nuclear Security Administration on Thursday, the same ones who safeguard the country’s nuclear arsenal? Or the decision to fire FAA employees who were working a radar system to protect Hawaii from incoming cruise missiles?
Trump may have promised to “drain the swamp” and eliminate the “Deep State.” But so far, he’s only draining vital programs in Georgia and eliminating people in crucial roles with competence and experience. Which swamp is that?
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