The national news has been overwhelming. Trump has been signing executive order after executive order, many of which are unenforceable. There are multiple reports that Musk (who is unelected and unconfirmed as any actual department head), has taken over the Office of Personnel Management. As of this writing, there is reporting that top officials at the US Agency for International Development have been put on leave after denying Musk and his team classified materials. If you're on social media, the sense of doom and despair can be overwhelming. There's tons of bad news, and it's unclear what, if anything, can be done about it. We were bombarded by bad news in the first Trump administration, but he was largely kept in check by his advisors. John Kelly, Trump's longest serving chief of staff, reported that Trump thinks that Hitler did some good things, to which Kelly responded with horror. Those "adults in the room" are now gone; instead, we have Musk throwing out Nazi salutes.

I received a message from someone I know who works at a federal agency, and it helped cut through the noise:

I don’t know how much you all are seeing in the news near you about how things have been going the last two weeks with the new President. It is pretty bleak. Perhaps you are hearing feds are sad about returning to the office? That would be wrong, a sad over simplification of the facts that is designed to encourage you to ignore us. Feds are worried that we are witnessing the dismantling of our federal government. We are not just scared for our jobs, we are scared for the programs we run. Those programs send dollars across the country, to your state, to your neighborhoods. They run health clinics, fund child care programs, and build roads. They also conduct research at universities and organizations across the country that benefits us all, protect the most vulnerable from what should be unthinkable harms, support safe air traffic, protect national security, and so much more. By callously, recklessly cutting off funding for or destabilizing these programs, our entire country’s economy is at risk. This isn’t just about our jobs - it’s about yours, or your neighbors, or your family members. And when the industries they work in crumble, like US involvement in international development has this week, they will flood the job market and jobs will rapidly become hard to come by. On top of this, there are highly concerning reports of what seem to be non federal employees accessing or taking control of federal data sets and financial payment systems for unknown purposes. They are firing anyone who gets in their way. You may have read in the news about the erasure of vast numbers of federal resources, webpages, data sets that has taken place - this is true. With the data now in the hands of these non-federal actors, it is unclear what will be done. It isn’t just about getting rid of DEI programs, there is a very real risk to marginalized populations about how their data may be used. Let us remember that the LGBT community was one of the populations persecuted in the Holocaust. I am deeply concerned we are witnessing a moment in history that would have made us cringe when we were in school.

So… the part everyone who sees what is happening is struggling with. What can you do about it? Unfortunately, there are limited checks and balances in place right now. The Republican Party controls all arms of government and has chosen to fall in line behind Trump - and Elon Musk, who is more present in DC than Trump and is pulling a lot of strings right now. One of the last standing checks were the IGs, Inspector Generals, at each federal agency - and they have all been fired. You can call your members of Congress, especially if they are Republicans, and you can tell them you are deeply concerned by what you are hearing out of our nations Capitol. You can ask them to vote against OMB Director nominee Russell Vought, who authored much of Project 2025 and is a Christian nationalist - he may be the greatest threat to the fall of the federal government and impact on our economy at this point. There are many other nominees you may ask them to vote against - for instance, the HHS Secretary who stands to financially benefit from lawsuits and has stocks that support his anti-vaccine stance which threatens us all. You can look for, show up at, or organize protests. You can donate to the ACLU. Perhaps most importantly, you can talk to your family members and friends about what is going on. For those that voted for him, you may try to bring them around to the grave economic consequences and threat to democracy that we now face. Legal recourse to these issues will not be fast, even if I anticipate a large number of lawsuits - and the Supreme Court has been stacked to favor conservative viewpoints in recent years. We must change public opinion if we are to get through this.

Please do not tune out. If you allow yourself to become numb to this, I fear we will soon live in a dictatorship.

This message has pushed me to do whatever I can. Will any of my actions make a difference? Maybe a small one. But, it will certainly make a lot more impact than doomscrolling for hours on BlueSky or Reddit, which will rob me of the time and energy to actually respond to anything going on. I plan to timebox my ingestion of news and document the actions I'm planning to take, in the hopes that you will join me and pass the message on to your friends and neighbors. Let me know what you're doing, and I can write it up here as well.

What I'm doing this week:

• Setting up a recurring donation to the ACLU.
• Contacting my representative and senators to tell them I want an investigation into Musk's overreach and interference in multiple government agencies and databases. I want to know, does he have security clearances? Do his team? Why does he have access to multiple agencies and why is he able to make personnel decisions, as he's not a Senate-confirmed appointee?
• Starting a disaster preparedness kit for my family.
• Check in on and spend time with my friends and community members, and talk to them about what's going on.

Some good news: Senator Ron Wyden has issued a letter to Scott Bessent, Secretary for the Department of the Treasury asking some of these questions.