Beyond the politics, my heart has been heavy as I’ve witnessed the destruction caused by President Donald Trump’s broadside attacks on our own government.
The media often talks about these attacks as targeting government agencies known by their acronyms: DOD, FBI, EPA, DOE, USAID, and so many others. But here in the D.C.-Maryland-Virginia area, we are experiencing the damage our president is doing not to anonymous entities but to our fellow citizens whose names we know.
In a democracy, the government is not just by and for the people; the government is comprised of the people. This truth has become exceptionally clear here.
Robert P. Jones
In our inner circle of friends and neighbors, only two families have not had at least one spouse lose his or her job since Jan. 20.
Among them are a lawyer who left a lucrative private practice to work at the Department of Education because she believed in the importance of our public school system that offers free education to all; a gifted project planner who immigrated to the U.S., became a U.S. citizen, and worked to implement USAID grants providing access to HIV medications, women’s reproductive health and food to underserved areas of rural Africa; and a Harvard Law grad who took a job at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau to protect consumers from predatory business practices like junk fees and the deceptive financial practices that led to the 2008 financial crisis.
They already are burning through vacation days and preparing to cash out retirement and college savings accounts to pay the mortgage and buy groceries.
Two others at the Environmental Protection Agency and the Food and Drug Administration — who take pride in ensuring we have safe air to breathe, clean water to drink and reliable drugs to treat illnesses — have been showing up to work in a demoralized daze, wondering if each day will be their last.
“So many families have been devastated that local churches are holding federal worker appreciation events.”
So many families have been devastated that local churches are holding federal worker appreciation events. At the top of this column is a photo I took of one such event that will be held this weekend.
I have no doubt that we likely have hundreds of similarly impacted fellow citizens among my readers — people who sought out a federal or related nonprofit job because they believed in the ideals of good government and public service. If that is you, I want to personally say I am so grateful for your service and your dedication to helping our democracy work for everyone.
We see you, we appreciate you, and we will continue to resist this destruction of our government. A president is not a CEO who has unlimited authority to dispose of a company’s assets for his own benefit and as he alone sees fit; a president is someone we select to have the honor of taking a limited turn stewarding a government that serves the people.
Robert P. Jones serves as president and founder of PRRI and is the author of The Hidden Roots of White Supremacy and the Path to a Shared American Future and White Too Long: The Legacy of White Supremacy in American Christianity, which won a 2021 American Book Award.
This column originally appeared on Robert P. Jones’s substack #WhiteTooLong.