DOGE fired my brother. Then they came for me.

The true human cost of Trump’s cuts.

By Emily from Home of the Brave

Elon Musk may be gone from Donald Trump’s inner circle, but the damage caused by his DOGE cuts will be with us for a long time to come. After getting in a school yard fight with Trump, Musk flamed out and went back to the private sector. In his wake, he left hundreds of thousands of government workers without jobs and eliminated or crippled critical government services that millions of Americans rely on.

I know because I’m one of them.

I first saw Musk’s destructive potential when his Department of Government Efficiency targeted my brother’s job at the Department of Energy. This was his dream job, something he had been working toward his entire career. After serving in the military, he joined the Department to help fulfill the agency’s critical national security mission.

So it was devastating to learn that he was among the people purged in DOGE’s chaotic mass layoffs. The Trump administration quickly realized it had made a mistake, and needed the expertise of people like my brother, so he was rehired. Then, without explanation, he was fired again. Rather than continue to play this game, he decided to step away for good.

This is a remarkable display of this administration’s callousness, incompetence, and blatant disregard for people’s lives and livelihoods. It’s one thing to say you’re for “government efficiency.” It’s another to play games with people’s jobs, their ability to provide for themselves and their families—and to do so with no stated rationale, process, or plan in place. My brother deserves better.

Then DOGE came for me. I worked for a re-forestation company, and we were working on three projects that were co-funded by the US Agency for International Development. The Trump administration seemed to harbor a special grudge against USAID, and in July it folded up the entire agency, after firing almost all of its workers. Needless to say, the funding for all three of our projects was scrapped.

As a result, for the first time in my life, I found myself unemployed and relying on unemployment insurance and Medicaid. This wasn’t because I didn’t work hard enough. I wasn’t because I was part of the “waste, fraud, and abuse” Trump likes to talk about. I was because an unelected billionaire was given unfettered authority to slash spending without Congressional approval, and without any real consideration of the consequences

Making things even worse, Trump rammed through his “Big Beautiful Bill”—a giveaway to rich people like Musk that also slashed Medicaid and other critical social services for tens of millions of Americans. That left me in a position where I was unable to even depend on the very programs that the DOGE cuts forced me onto—programs I’ve paid into my entire life—because the very same people decided they would rather line the pockets of their rich friends and campaign donors.

The administration has also singled out the Department of Education, effectively closing down the agency and firing half of its workforce. This affects me personally. My son has special needs and relies on certain federal programs just to get him through the day. At school, he faces bullying, and the one person he can always turn to is the school counselor. Now, with the Department in turmoil and changes to special education policies, we’re just not sure those resources are going to be there for him.

I didn’t ask for this. And the American people didn’t vote for any of this. In less than a year, the Trump administration has thrown my brother and me out of our jobs, jeopardized our access to health care, and forced me to contemplate a new and uncertain future for my child. It’s like something out of a bad dream—except that, for millions of people like me, it’s all too real. My family, and the American people, deserve better.

Emily is a former federal contractor and a mother. She is part of Home of the Brave, a new initiative highlighting the harms of Donald Trump’s second term.