Dear Editor,

It was February 14. But what nearly 400 Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) employees got that day were not Valentine’s Day cards. They were pink slips.

The firings touched critical roles in EPA offices across the country, including dozens of scientists at the agency’s Chicago office.

The American people did not vote for toxic air and poisoned water. But that will be the consequence as Donald Trump and Elon Musk move not only to dismantle the programmes that keep our families healthy and safe but to fire, recklessly, the dedicated civil servants who have devoted their careers to doing the same.

That same wave of civil servant layoffs ensnared about 3,400 US Forest Service employees and roughly 1,000 employees of the National Park Service (NPS). You might be struggling to make sense of a decision to institute big cuts at an agency tasked with managing forests and preventing and fighting wildfires immediately following some of the most destructive wildfires this country’s ever seen. But an examination of these mass firings also shows that senselessness and sloppiness — and utter inefficiency — are hallmarks of Trump’s and Musk’s so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE). Further illustrating that sloppiness: across agencies, some of the most egregious terminations of vital workers had to be rescinded days later.

Imagine vacationing with your family at one of America’s beloved national parks and getting stuck in a bathroom for hours because something is wrong with the lock but the park doesn’t have a locksmith.

Nate Vince, Yosemite National Park’s locksmith, was also fired on Valentine’s Day. He explained in a post on
Instagram that he was just three weeks shy of the end of his one-year probationary period, after apprenticing for four years under the park’s previous locksmith. He also noted Yosemite is the size of Rhode Island, with “more locks than a small city”, for everything from a federal court to administrative buildings, gun safes, and more. “Without a locksmith I’m deeply concerned for the safety and security of the park and people in it,” Vince said. “The people that fired me don’t know who I am or what I do. They simply don’t understand this park and how big and complex it is.”

Park ranger Alex Wild, also fired on Valentine’s Day, was the only emergency medical technician at Devils Postpile National Monument, a rock formation and waterfall along California’s Pacific Crest Trail.

And the layoffs hit other popular sites, like Grand Canyon National Park, which prompted the Association of National Park Rangers to warn of slower rescue efforts as well as reduced programmes and more litter. Following layoffs that gutted the team managing rentals within Gettysburg National Military Park in Pennsylvania, visitors received notice their reservations had been indefinitely cancelled.”

The list of examples goes on. And again, this is not what the American people voted for. Three-quarters of Americans see the National Park Service in a positive light and 88 per cent of Americans (including 85 per cent of Republicans) want National Park wildlife better protected.

The financial folly of the Trump-Musk slash-and-burn project also jumps out. Their supposed efforts to save taxpayers money by laying off thousands of hard-working civil servants and cutting food aid, science, education, medical research, and more are going to end up costing Americans more out of their own pockets. In some cases the programmes and agencies being gutted will cost taxpayers far more in economic growth and direct government revenue than the savings from the “cuts”.

For the past few years the National Parks Services budget hovers at just over US$3 billion per year. In 2023 alone, that budget (a relatively high US$3.75 billion that year) supported 415,000 jobs and US$55.6 billion in economic output. To put it another way, for every US$1 invested, American taxpayers see a nearly US$15 boost to their national economy.

This is part-in-parcel with the sloppiness — and also dishonesty — with which DOGE is operating. The total personnel expenditure for the federal civilian workforce is only 4.4 per cent of the federal budget. Foreign aid — which has been at the top of the headlines since Trump and Musk decided to decimate USAID — has only ranged between 0.7 per cent and 1.4 per cent of the budget since 2001.

As they gut key agencies and the federal workforce, what are some examples of where this Administration is focusing our tax dollars? Well, there is the US$200-million international ad campaign by the Homeland Security Department, personally requested by Trump, “thanking” the president for his immigration and border policies. And, of course, there are the massive tax cuts for America’s very wealthiest who are really the crown jewels of the Trump-Musk agenda.

The great John Lewis, who would have turned 85 this past Friday, wrote: “When you see something that is not right, you must say something. You must do something. Democracy is not a state. It is an act, and each generation must do its part to help build what we called the beloved community, a nation and world society at peace with itself.”

That act of democracy must not happen only in election years. It is up to all of us to hold power accountable, keep sounding the alarm, and keep speaking out for justice for all. Because, as Representative Lewis also reminded us, “A democracy cannot thrive where power remains unchecked and justice is reserved for a select few.”

Ben Jealous

Executive director of the Sierra Club