Why does a billionaire with no government experience have the ability to destroy the careers of hundreds of thousands of American federal employees?

Note: On Thursday, Mar. 6, shortly after this article was written, President Donald Trump told his Cabinet members that they should “go first” in these firings, keeping the workers that they deem productive and firing those they do not. However, this does not erase Elon Musk’s and the DOGE’s power. Trump clarified that, “If [the agencies] don’t cut, then Elon will do the cutting.” 

   Elon Musk is a lot of things — billionaire, businessman, CEO of SpaceX and Tesla as well as the owner of X (formerly Twitter) — but by no means does this indicate that he is qualified to be the president’s Senior Advisor or the leader of the newly created U.S. Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE). 

    Almost immediately after Donald Trump took office, established the DOGE, and placed Musk in charge, the U.S. bureaucracy began to undergo waves of mass firings of its federal workers. Approximately 100,000 workers have been laid off. The problem with this?  The federal government is the backbone of the United States and, according to the White House, Musk “has no actual or formal authority to make government decisions himself.”  Not only this, but his name was nowhere to be seen on the 2024 presidential election ballots. That is, Americans did not actually choose or want to put him into office. So why does Musk get to determine the future of hundreds of thousands of federal employees’ careers?

    The DOGE has not demonstrated rationality, sense, or regard for federal employees’ feelings in its firings. Thus, Musk’s tactics are not helping to strategically improve the efficiency of the federal government. Rather, many Americans view his slash-and-burn approach as taking a metaphorical “sledgehammer” or “chainsaw” to the workforce with the sole intention of gaining money and power. 

    Musk even brought this figurative chainsaw into reality at the annual Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) meeting on Feb. 20 where he waved a chainsaw in the air, declaring “This is the chainsaw for bureaucracy.”

    Paul Light, a New York University professor emeritus and author of books about federal reform, said that these mass firings are comparable to a “random shooting,” explaining that “There hasn’t been much analysis.” 

    This lack of thoughtfulness in regard to federal layoffs has already become apparent on multiple occasions. For example, the Trump administration has had to reverse a large number of job cuts after realizing that these cuts would be detrimental to the country. Hundreds of nuclear security employees and some Department of Agriculture employees who focus on avian flu, for instance, were quickly rehired.

    Although the DOGE was able to gain these particular workers back, public policy professor Don Moynihan warns that “Once you do this damage, it’s going to be incredibly hard to rebuild the capacity of these organizations. It’s not like you can turn the switch back on and everything is going to be the way it was before.”

    These mass layoffs are arguably the most relevant in the DC area, which includes Washington DC, Virginia, Maryland, and parts of West Virginia, with Potomac Falls and other LCPS schools smack dab in the middle. Approximately one fifth of the entire federal workforce lives in the DC area, making it very likely that many PFHS families are currently suffering the effects of the DOGE. These include unemployment, financial struggles and a subsequent scramble to find a job, fear, and sadness for fired coworkers. This fear of being fired has even created widespread mental health issues and trauma throughout the federal workforce.

    Unfortunately, we are limited in what we can do to stop Elon Musk and his DOGE from illegally ruining the careers of hundreds of thousands of employees. Many of these employees are being punished solely for doing their jobs which just happen to go against Trump’s opinions (such as the FBI workers under scrutiny for investigating the January 6 Capitol insurrection). Others are only getting cut because they do not have as many rights or years of experience as other workers, regardless of their merit. 

    All there is to do is to protest and be supportive. Speak up for your values, support the policymakers who are fighting to bring an end to Musk’s reign of terror. Check in on your loved ones who may be or know federal workers. Understand that this is a hard time for them. In a world full of injustice and cruelty, empathy is one of the strongest forms of opposition.