Much of the news media clearly opposes President Donald Trump’s efforts to cut the federal budget, but a new poll shows strong support from taxpayers.
Climbers hang upside-down flag at Yosemite in protest of layoffs
Protesters hung an upside-down American flag at Yosemite National Park over the weekend after the Trump administration’s layoffs.
Straight Arrow News
Most writers are familiar with three words made famous by novelist Stephen King: “Kill your darlings.”
Why am I telling you this? Because it directly relates to what Tesla CEO Elon Musk and President Donald Trump are trying to do with the federal government.
King’s writing advice isn’t as violent as it sounds. He’s speaking of the well-known concept that when it comes to words, less is more. Brevity is better. Yet, that forces writers to take a hard look at their own creation. Once something is on paper (or the computer screen) it becomes hard to “kill” it. It’s yours, after all.
The same holds true of the federal government, which Musk and Trump are working to downsize and make more efficient through DOGE (the Department of Government Efficiency). The government employs more than 2 million civilians and has operated roughly the same way for decades.
Change is hard. Losing your job is very hard. So it’s understandable why many federal workers are feeling attacked. About 30,000 employees have lost their jobs so far.
However, it’s you and I who pay their salaries, and it’s past time to ensure that our tax dollars are used in the best possible way.
Only 1 worker at Yosemite to ‘rescue visitors from locked restrooms’?
There’s plenty of evidence that’s not the case.
For instance, The Washington Post reported the following: “At California’s Yosemite National Park, the Trump administration fired the only locksmith on staff on Friday. He was the sole employee with the keys and the institutional knowledge needed to rescue visitors from locked restrooms.”
The newspaper, like many media outlets since Trump took office, was clearly trying to offer an example of how awful and harmful Trump and Musk’s cuts are, but it served another purpose.
It showed just how inefficiently the national park operates. Why in the world would you have only one person who has access to the park’s keys? That’s absurd.
Rather than come to that conclusion, The Post observed that Trump’s “purge of federal employees” was “not only upending the lives of National Park Service workers, but also threatening to harm the visitor experience at national parks across the country.”
From NPR to CNN, the legacy news media has searched for “threatened” federal employees, telling their sob stories as if no one has ever faced uncertain employment before.
Meanwhile, they ignore that the majority of Americans support what DOGE is doing. A new Harvard CAPS/Harris poll found Trump’s approval rating is at 52%, with voters most pleased with his actions on immigration and reducing government costs.
The survey found “67% of voters say the current level of U.S. federal government debt is unsustainable”; “83% of voters favor reducing government expenditures over increasing taxes”; and “77% say a full examination of all government expenditures is necessary.”
Plus, 60% of voters think DOGE is helping to make this happen.
CEOs get it, too. This week, JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon told CNBC that he supports making the government more efficient.
“Why are we spending the money on these things? Are we getting what we deserve? What should we change?” Dimon said. “It’s not just about the deficit, it’s about building the right policies and procedures and the government we deserve.”
Federal employees freak out when asked what they did last week
Over the weekend, Musk caused a stir by issuing a governmentwide email asking employees to offer five bullet points of what they did the previous week. Sure, it could have been handled better. Employees got conflicting guidance from Trump-appointed agency heads, especially those in defense and intelligence jobs, who told them to ignore the directive.
Yet, given the reaction from both federal employees and the media, you’d have thought Musk and Trump asked for something truly extreme.
The uproar is quite telling. The email should have taken about five minutes to respond to (assuming the employee actually did work in the preceding days), and regardless of whether a worker wanted to do it, it’s not too much to ask. Those of us in the private sector routinely have to justify our contributions to our employer.
The largest union representing federal employees didn’t appreciate it, however.
“It is cruel and disrespectful to hundreds of thousands of veterans who are wearing their second uniform in the civil service to be forced to justify their job duties to this out-of-touch, privileged, unelected billionaire who has never performed one single hour of honest public service in his life,” Everett Kelley, president of the American Federation of Government Employees, said in a statement.
Cruel? Come on now.
Argentine President Javier Milei recently gave Musk a chainsaw at CPAC, the annual gathering of conservatives. Milei has used a metaphorical chainsaw of his own in recent years to cut his country out of economic ruin through tough government downsizing.
His efforts have worked. Musk and Trump are right to try the same in the United States.
Just get ready for a lot of hysteria in the meantime.
Ingrid Jacques is a columnist at USA TODAY. Contact her at ijacques@usatoday.com or on X: @Ingrid_Jacques