AMERICAN CARNAGE

What DOGE destroyed.

Demonstrating the kitchen-table impact of the Trump administration’s attack on civil servants, Abramsky, an academic and journalist, fashions perceptive profiles of people fired by Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency. A reported 148,000 federal employees were idled in the first six months of Trump redux. Those featured here worked in consumer protection, public health, climate science, foreign aid, workplace safety, and tax collection, among others. Dismissed without valid cause and, in some cases, denied severance pay and pensions, Abramsky’s subjects—a racially diverse group of men, women, and nonbinary Americans—struggle to pay bills, obtain prescriptions, and get jobs in a market “saturated” with ex-colleagues axed by DOGE. In enraging detail, Abramsky describes Musk’s lackeys’ “cruelty” and carelessness. DOGE fires employees via wildly unprofessional emails and orders others to stop working entirely while still getting full pay. Angry and anxious, the former employees volunteer in their fields, pray, binge read historical fiction, meet up for “trauma-bonding,” and apply for jobs; one sends out nearly 200 applications. It’s touching that, through it all, the workers remain devoted to their agencies’ missions. An ex-USAID staffer weeps when discussing the agency’s canceled food programs, cuts that almost certainly resulted in preventable deaths abroad. Any organization employing hundreds of thousands is likely to have some waste, a reality Abramsky largely avoids. But his up-close attention to his subjects’ distinct post-government trajectories presents a poignant tableau “of a country in a profound moment of crisis and dislocation.” An erstwhile IRS staffer says that when DOGE came for his agency, he had to leave the building almost immediately. This made government work forever unappealing. Which, Abramsky’s conscientious reporting suggests, is just what DOGE hoped to accomplish.

A compassionate portrait of some of the many who suffered when Musk’s foot soldiers targeted dedicated professionals.