Here's How You'll Feel the Loss of Federal Workers

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If you, like me, are close to someone who is employed by the federal government, the past six-ish months have been a roller coaster. In the first weeks of the second Trump administration, the Elon Musk–run Department of Government Efficiency started eliminating entire departments and ranks of workers while also attempting to get everyone who was employed by the federal government to email justifications to keep their jobs. It was a mess , so farcical that it almost didn't feel real, except that it was.

In those weeks, there was plenty of exceptional journalism chronicling what precisely was happening on the ground— essays from federal workers , reporting from inside DOGE , exit interviews with those who had lost their jobs . I felt terrible for the workers who were losing what they previously had every reason to believe were secure jobs, some in dire circumstances , some just before their pensions should have kicked in . But I was also haunted by something I have learned during my years as a journalist: The pace of what happens in the world is often far slower than the pace of the news cycle.

We all know by now that one of Donald Trump's greatest strengths is his ability to “flood the zone with shit”—to do so much awful stuff at once that it feels almost impossible to keep up with the chaos, to track the change, and to understand the ramifications. Indeed, Trump has already very publicly broken up with Musk, before the ramifications of DOGE—which still exists, without Musk —have even begun to become legible to the rest of us.

Which is why, for the past several months here at Slate, we've been collecting stories from government (and government-adjacent) workers—not exactly about what happened to them or their colleagues, but about when they think the country will notice they are gone. This list is not exhaustive, nor does every item on it carry the same level of import. (You will see entries by former counterterrorism officials and a former keeper of dogsledding dogs in Denali National Park; also, we granted anonymity to workers who are either still employed or fighting for their jobs.) This is our effort, on this Fourth of July, to track just what is happening, slowly, to America. —Susan Matthews, executive editor

Around 2014, I was having the regular experience of being struck with an idea of ​​how to locate new information on ISIS leaders trying to strike the West while I wasn't at the office. If this happened at night or on the weekend, I'd drive the 20 minutes of wooded roads to CIA headquarters, beep through the empty lobby, and snake through silent hallways to my desk—only to find many of my colleagues already online. We'd debate reporting that came in overnight and trade ideas on links between terrorists for no overtime pay. When the workweek began, we'd agree with analysts from other agencies to murder-board our hunches on how and where the next attack might occur. We worked hundreds of extra hours, off the clock, because we knew that the National Security Council and White House cared enough about our work to consume it and potentially use it to save lives.

Like any organization, the CIA has pockets of bureaucratic bloat—some officers produce far less than they should, and some trips abroad are more expensive than necessary. But its analytic corps is structured in a way that flips that government stereotype on its head: Each CIA analyst is essentially an independent investigator. We are given a narrow subject to research but wide latitude to pursue threats wherever intelligence leads us. Our office mates are researching subjects so similar to ours that we can quickly fuse into teams when necessary. It is these teams of “line analysts,” not our managers or their superiors, who decide the threat levels of the country or terrorist group we're tracking. This structure is by design. When a Mount Everest of threat intelligence pours into headquarters every hour, more bureaucratic world experts reading and working together are vastly better than fewer.

Now the government is dismissing national security officers by the hundreds and setting security priorities based on one leader's personal whims. This does not make a team more nimble, budgets more affordable, or security more effective. Autopsies of intelligence failures repeatedly suggest that had we had more officers working collaboratively and reporting to receptive administrations before 9/11 and Pearl Harbor, we could have prevented catastrophe. These days, what keeps me up at night is not ideas that used to propel me to the office but the worry over the catastrophes that might slip through. —Brent Giannotta, former CIA counterterrorism analyst

There has been a complete stop to all the processing of all the complaints we get. Thousands and thousands. There's already a significant backlog of cases. They're supposed to be completed on a 180-day timeline. We can't even meet that at a normal time. —Anonymous, Department of Education, civil rights division

We monitor and oversee the financial health and governance of public housing authorities, looking through audits and making sure they are in compliance. One project I was starting was looking into a case of alleged fraud. I'm a CPA, so I'd been an auditor, and I knew exactly the concerns we were looking for. I was in the process of setting up our team to begin this review, walking the team through “How are we going to screen for this investigation into fraud?” But before that could happen, I was terminated. —Frank Zhu, former financial analyst, Office of Public and Indian Housing

The solar industry is used to policy-driven peaks and valleys. Industry veterans taught me that this trend is called the “solar coaster,” back when I started my career nearly a decade ago. Over the years, I've seen dips and climbs, but for the first time since 2016, I'm worried the ride is coming to an end.

The current draft of the “big, beautiful bill,” passed by the Senate and now back with the House, guts financial incentives that make solar projects buildable. The impacts would be felt immediately, as the incentives are what make these projects possible for developers, business owners, homeowners, and more. Imagine planning a wedding a year ahead of time but suddenly being told you have to buy all of your food, flowers, and garments in the next two months, before guests have even RSVP'd—and you have to store all of the materials up until the big day. These proposed new regulations do essentially this to an entire industry.

Solar energy has bipartisan support for its role in energy independence, economic growth, and resiliency. People are scared of the rising cost of energy. With limited residential incentives, with limited larger-scale development, we will all be exposed to the rising cost of energy and the risk of a market dependent on fossil fuels. Money will continue to leave communities to pay pricier and pricier electric bills. Then it will be felt nationally: Solar developers play a huge role in upgrading aging grid infrastructure with every new project. With a demand for energy rising, we are all at risk for more frequent blackouts without a reliable grid. The dismantling of the US solar industry will be felt globally, and it will reverberate across future generations with its dire implications to the planet too. —Mary Marshall, solar energy professional

Mitch Flanigan wasn't responsible for anything massive in his short-lived job as a National Park Service employee. His charge was simply 31 sled dogs, mostly Alaskan huskies, who worked in Denali National Park.

Flanigan had worked his way up to the role, having first spent two winters as an intern at the park and five summers as a seasonal ranger. Eventually, this past December, he was offered a permanent position in the kennels—as one of four staff supporting the only dog ​​kennel operated by the federal government.

Why does Denali have its own dogs? The national park boasts more than 2 million acres of federally designated wilderness, and due to the deep snows of the Alaskan winter, dogsledding is one of the only ways to get around. So Flanigan and the rest of the team used dogsleds to do their backcountry patrols into the park, sometimes assisting scientists doing research in the area, sometimes hauling supplies into and out of the park, and sometimes maintaining the routes in the park, to make sure the cabins in the wilderness weren't entirely cut off from civilization.

Flanigan was fired three months into his job; he was the only person in the kennels on probation, so he was the only one to go. But the team was already stretched thin, he said, and if the kennels couldn't hire interns or seasonal workers, it would be impossible to keep the entire park running. He thinks massive sections will have to be closed down.

Despite their utility in the winter, the cuts probably won't be noticed until this summer. That's when Denali receives most of its visitors, and when they'll see the problem parks all over the country are facing: longer bathroom lines, fewer rangers on hand to help, closed trails, roads, and visitors centers. It's also when the kennel team runs a “dog demo” three times a day, with a presentation on the history and importance of the dogs. At the end of the demonstration, the staff has the dogs haul a cart down the track in front of the audience stands. It requires three kennel staff members, plus a ranger; if they don't have the people, they'll still do the presentation, just without the dogs.

It's a small thing, Flanigan admits, but for people who have traveled all the way to Alaska, it will be a huge disappointment, something the park learned when it paused the demonstrations during COVID. The dog kennels, he said, are the main attraction of Denali. Visitors organize trips around seeing the kennels, which have become the hub of tourism in the park. “It kind of holds everything together,” he said. —Reported by Molly Olmstead

People in the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau's case aren't going to notice until something goes wrong with their household balance sheet. When someone submits a complaint, we have timeliness indicators—we give companies 15 days to submit a response. You don't have any of those enforcement mechanisms, and you don't have the consumer advocate in your corner. There's no auditing on quality, timeliness of responses. With student loans, you had people reviewing responses and following up on your behalf. On the student loan side, everyone either was fired or is not working right now. If you have student loans and are not getting the answers you need, the people who were actively monitoring that, none of us are there. —Anonymous, former financial analyst at the CFPB

Here is how the US disaster response system is supposed to work: Local responders act first. States step in with support. When the crisis exceeds their combined capacity, the federal government is always there—backed by deep pockets, national assets, and operational muscle. It's not always perfect, but the current system works to bring order to chaos. Now this administration is writing the federal government out of the script entirely—falling back on the discredited notion that “all disasters are local.” In March, President Trump signed Executive Order 14239, cutting the federal government out of disaster response and handing it to states. Days later, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem announced plans to eliminate the Federal Emergency Management Agency after this hurricane season.

Real disasters don't stop at state lines. They don't wait for resource requests. And they always overwhelm local systems—in past disasters, local and regional governments collapsed under the weight of response within hours.

We're hurtling toward a future with more than 50 state systems patched together with duct tape and wishful thinking. We have the people, the tools, and the stuff. But without federal leadership—without FEMA—there is no one to organize the chaos. This isn't reform. It's abandonment—and leaves it Americans dangerously exposed.

One day soon, Americans will wake to the sight of families packed inside stifling stadiums after a Category 5 hurricane drowns New Orleans. Or the sound of cries from beneath pancaked buildings after a magnitude 7.9 earthquake shatters the Bay Area. And no one will be there to help them. When this happens, the failure won't stem from a lack of resources, but from an absence of leadership. And that will be the catastrophe within the catastrophe. —Kelly McKinney, former deputy commissioner at the New York City Office of Emergency Management and former member of FEMA's National Advisory Council