{"id":15375,"date":"2025-03-06T16:27:29","date_gmt":"2025-03-06T16:27:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/wordpress.thetruthtoledo.com\/?p=15375"},"modified":"2025-03-06T16:27:59","modified_gmt":"2025-03-06T16:27:59","slug":"from-elon-with-love-youre-fired","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wordpress.thetruthtoledo.com\/index.php\/2025\/03\/06\/from-elon-with-love-youre-fired\/","title":{"rendered":"From Elon, With Love: You\u2019re Fired."},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"
Ben Jealous<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

By Ben Jealous
\n<\/strong>Guest Column<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

It was February 14. But what nearly 400 Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) employees got that day were not Valentines. They were pink slips.<\/p>\n

The firings touched critical roles in EPA offices across the country, including dozens of scientists at\u00a0the agency\u2019s Chicago office<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The American people did not vote for toxic air and poisoned water. But that will be the consequence as Donald Trump and Elon Musk move not only to dismantle the programs that keep our families healthy and safe but to fire, recklessly, the dedicated civil servants who have devoted their careers to doing the same.<\/p>\n

That same wave of\u00a0civil servant layoffs ensnared<\/a>\u00a0about 3,400 US Forest Service employees and roughly 1,000 employees of the National Park Service (NPS). You might be struggling to make sense of a decision to institute big cuts at an agency tasked with managing forests and preventing and fighting wildfires immediately following some of the most destructive wildfires this country\u2019s ever seen. But an examination of these mass firings also shows that senselessness and sloppiness \u2013 and utter inefficiency \u2013 are hallmarks of Trump and Musk\u2019s so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE). Further illustrating that sloppiness: across agencies, some of the most egregious terminations of vital workers had to be rescinded days later.<\/p>\n

Imagine vacationing with your family at one of America\u2019s beloved national parks and getting stuck in a bathroom for hours because something is wrong with the lock but the park doesn\u2019t have a locksmith.<\/p>\n

Nate Vince, Yosemite National Park\u2019s locksmith, was also fired on Valentine\u2019s Day. He explained\u00a0in a post on Instagram<\/a>\u00a0that he was just three weeks shy of the end of his one-year probationary period, after apprenticing for four years under the park\u2019s previous locksmith. He also noted Yosemite is the size of Rhode Island with \u201cmore locks than a small city,\u201d for everything from a federal court to administrative buildings, gun safes, and more. \u201cWithout a locksmith I\u2019m deeply concerned for the safety and security of the park and people in it,\u201d Vince said. \u201cThe people that fired me don\u2019t know who I am, or what I do. They simply don\u2019t understand this park and how big and complex it is.\u201d<\/p>\n

Park Ranger Alex Wild, also fired on Valentines Day, was the\u00a0only emergency medical technician<\/a>\u00a0at Devils Postpile National Monument, a rock formation and waterfall along California\u2019s Pacific Crest Trail.<\/p>\n

And the layoffs hit other popular sites like\u00a0Grand Canyon National Park<\/a>, which prompted the Association of National Park Rangers to warn of slower rescue efforts, as well as reduced programs and more litter. Following layoffs that gutted the team managing rentals within Gettysburg National Military Park in Pennsylvania, visitors received notice their reservations had been indefinitely canceled.\u201d<\/p>\n

The list of examples goes on. And again, this is not what the American people voted for. Three quarters of Americans see the National Park Service\u00a0in a positive light<\/a>\u00a0and 88% of Americans (including 85% of Republicans) want\u00a0National Park wildlife better protected<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The financial wrongheadedness of the Trump-Musk slash-and-burn project also jumps out. Their supposed efforts to save taxpayers money by laying off thousands of hardworking civil servants and cutting\u00a0food aid<\/a>, science, education,\u00a0medical research<\/a>\u00a0and more are going to end up costing Americans more out of their own pockets. In some cases, the programs and agencies being gutted will cost taxpayers far more in economic growth and direct government revenue than the amount of the \u201ccuts.\u201d<\/p>\n

For\u00a02025<\/a>\u00a0and the\u00a0past few years<\/a>, the National Parks Services budget hovers at just over $3 billion per year. In 2023 alone, that budget (a relatively high $3.75 billion that year) supported 415,000 jobs and $55.6 billion\u00a0in economic output<\/a>. To put it another way, for every $1 invested, American taxpayers see a nearly $15 boost to our national economy.<\/p>\n

This is part-in-parcel with the sloppiness \u2013 and\u00a0also dishonesty<\/a>\u00a0\u2013 with which DOGE is operating. The total personnel costs for the federal civilian workforce are\u00a0 percent\u00a0of our federal budget. Foreign aid \u2013 which has been at the top of the headlines since Trump and Musk decided to decimate USAID \u2013 has only ranged\u00a0between 0.7 percent and 1.4 percent of the budget<\/a>\u00a0since 2001.<\/p>\n

As they gut key agencies and the federal workforce, what are some examples of where this administration is focusing our tax dollars? Well, there is the $200 million international ad campaign by the Homeland Security Department,\u00a0personally requested by Trump<\/a>, \u201cthanking\u201d the president for his immigration and border policies. And, of course, there are the massive\u00a0tax cuts for America\u2019s very wealthiest<\/a>\u00a0that are really the crown jewel of the Trump-Musk agenda.<\/p>\n

The great John Lewis, who would have turned 85 this past Friday,\u00a0wrote<\/a>\u00a0“When you see something that is not right, you must say something. You must do something. Democracy is not a state. It is an act, and each generation must do its part to help build what we called the Beloved Community, a nation and world society at peace with itself.”<\/p>\n

That act of democracy must not happen only in election years. It is up to all of us to hold power accountable, keep sounding the alarm, and keep speaking out for justice for all. Because, as Rep. Lewis\u00a0also reminded us<\/a>, “A democracy cannot thrive where power remains unchecked and justice is reserved for a select few.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ben Jealous is the Executive Director of the Sierra Club, former president of the NAACP \u00a0and a Professor of Practice at the University of Pennsylvania.<\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Ben Jealous Guest Column It was February 14. But what nearly 400 Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) employees got that day were not Valentines. They were pink slips. The firings touched critical roles in EPA offices across the country, including dozens of scientists at\u00a0the agency\u2019s Chicago office. The American people did not vote for toxic […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[55,252],"tags":[],"wf_post_folders":[283],"class_list":["post-15375","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-editorial-opinion","category-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.thetruthtoledo.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15375","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.thetruthtoledo.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.thetruthtoledo.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.thetruthtoledo.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.thetruthtoledo.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15375"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.thetruthtoledo.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15375\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15376,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.thetruthtoledo.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15375\/revisions\/15376"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.thetruthtoledo.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15375"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.thetruthtoledo.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15375"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.thetruthtoledo.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15375"},{"taxonomy":"wf_post_folders","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.thetruthtoledo.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/wf_post_folders?post=15375"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}