Inside Trump's sick orders on American health

"It's like they're trying to wipe out the middle class or something"

Welcome to a Tuesday night edition of Progress Report.

I’m just going to come out and say it: there is too much news happening and the world really ought to take it down a few notches. I was going to send out this newsletter last night, but then word broke that Donald Trump instructed his Department of Justice to delay the slam dunk corruption charges against NYC Mayor Eric Adams.

As I’ve mentioned, I’m helping state Sen. Jessica Ramos on her mayoral primary campaign, so I pivoted to responding to what is a pretty blatantly rotten deal between two of the most embarrassing New Yorkers in modern memory. I’m not sure how much this will change the dynamic of the race, but what really matters is how it’s going to hurt immigrant communities here in the city.

Tonight we’ve got a deep dive with a federal worker on the chaos happening in government, as well as some quick headlines from around the country. We’ll go deeper into state and local news later this week.

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Seattle: It’ll take a few days to get the full results, but the returns thus far indicate that voters in Seattle have elected to fund a new social housing program with tax increases on the city’s wealthiest residents. This would be a tremendous triumph over a well-financed attempt by the Chamber of Commerce to sandbag the campaign. I’ve been in touch with organizers behind the city’s social housing movement and plan on having an interview on it for you soon.

Michigan: House Republicans and Senate Democrats are still far apart in their negotiations over just how much to water down a court-ordered boost to the pay and benefits owed to working class residents.

Why are some Democrats voting to lower the minimum wage?

There are now nine days until the minimum wage jumps up to $12.58 and gets on track for $15 by 2028, the tipped wage begins to be phased out, and businesses are required to provide paid leave to their workers. Some Democratic legislators, like Rep. Dylan Wegela, are busting out of the defensive crouch and demanding more.

Nevada: With Trump and Elon Musk taking a wrecking ball to the federal regulatory state, it’s up to states to pick up the slack. Nevada AG Aaron Ford introduced a bill this week that would make it illegal for businesses to use algorithmic, anti-competitive price-setting to gouge consumers, especially in housing. More details to come.

Ohio: It’s going down in Columbus, where students, parents, teachers, and other advocates overwhelmed the State House in opposition to HB 1, a gigantic “anti-woke” bill that would radically limit what could be taught in Ohio’s colleges. It’s really bad, but the opposition has been consistently great.

Useless: OK, this isn’t state or local, but want something to seethe at? Several prominent of Democrats in Congress openly complained to the press en masse about the tens of thousands of constituents who have been calling their offices and begging them to do more to oppose Trump.

Democrats are failing to Trump test. It's primary time.

Of course, those Democrats — Hakeem Jeffries included — wouldn’t have to deal with so many angry calls if they showed any real fight. Continuously insisting that they have no leverage (very untrue) and promising to work with Trump on a bi-partisan basis is the opposite of confidence -inducing. As I’ve said, it’s Primary Time.

CDC worker reveals the impact of Trump’s sick orders on health

For nearly a month, millions of normally productive American workers have been sitting at desks, standing around in labs, memorizing stains on their office carpets, parsing emails, and just sitting on their couches, waiting for some indication of what the hell is going on.

The federal government is the single largest employer in the United States, with two million direct employees and nearly seven million contractors working for the state. For a huge number of them, the nine-to-five has become 24/7 chaos and uncertainty thanks to President Donald Trump’s various decrees. Among other things, these frequently illegal orders have frozen funding, shuttered agencies, and banned everything from words to programs to ideas.

Civil servants are not in it for the money — the gulf in pay at some agencies and the private sector is enormous. In places like the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and National Institute of Health (NIH), they do the work out of a commitment to helping people around the world, making this stasis even more interminable. Even under judges’ orders to preserve some funding temporarily, Trump and Elon Musk’s onslaught has left them paralyzed. To add insult to injury, they’re now learning that Musk’s racist interns have accessed their personal data.

Over the weekend, I spoke with a research scientist at the CDC for a view from inside the crisis, to understand how federal workers are handling the chaos, and how it’s impacting public health. With so much fear and uncertainty, I agreed to allow the interviewee to remain anonymous to avoid reprisal.

Progress Report: First, what do you do at the CDC?

I'm a research scientist. I work on big health surveys for children in both the US and globally. We’re trying to figure out the magnitude of problems and about protective factors and risk factors and health outcomes, and then try to use that information to make recommendations on what might be the most effective way to prevent those problems for kids.

In some of the countries where we've worked, we've been able to go back after a certain amount of time and ask the same questions of a different cohort of kids, but because they’re population studies, you can look and see what's happened over time. We’ve seen significant declines in some of the key things that we're looking at. This stuff matters and makes a difference, so for it to be dismissed and vilified, it's really horrifying.

What’s happened since the executive orders began? How much have they impacted your work?

It’s come to a crashing halt. I think the freezing of foreign aid, stopping all outside communications and then the stopping of disbursement of funds from the Treasury, the three things all hit us in different ways.

In my division, there's very little happening because we have to be so careful about what we work on. I don't work in this part of the of the agency, but there's a Marburg outbreak in Tanzania right now, and to my understanding, have very little presence there, where in the past, when there were hemorrhagic fever outbreaks, we would have a huge team of scientists there.

Are there things you know that you, or the agency, can do on a daily basis?

The executive orders are kind of broad and sweeping, and then each agency has to put out guidance to help us interpret what it means. And then within each center, there's leadership saying, “Okay, here's what we think this means for our work.” We do very little in isolation, we work closely with partners across all disease topics, so if you can't talk to your partners it just really slows things down.

And then the executive order on “defending women,” not being able to say certain words means, well, if I was working on a paper and it said those words, then I either have to stop or completely reframe that paper. [Note: a judge on Tuesday ordered the administration to restore CDC websites that contain words banned by the order, but the rest still stands.]

It is super scary. We have fairly clear guidance about what we can and can't work on, so we're trying to keep some things moving. I’ll start working on something, and then I'll call and check, like, “Are you sure I can work on this?” just wanting to get that coverage.

People must be afraid of Elon’s child soldiers spotting them using one verboten term with AI and that leading to some grave consequences. It’s happened with federal spending already.

We were hearing stories from USAID folks who were put on leave, and then all of their meetings were being analyzed, all of their calendars and their emails, and if they were supposedly working on anything that they weren't supposed to be, then they were fired. I don't know if that's true. That's just what we're hearing through the rumor mill.

Like what?

There are a lot of rumors that AI patches have been installed and that all of our meetings are being transcribed. And it's kind of funny, because to me, we're always really careful because of FOIA and because of the Hatch Act. We take our jobs really seriously, we're professionals. But still, it's very disconcerting to think that some group that wasn't elected and doesn't have the people's blessing is potentially listening in on us and making decisions about us, if it's truly happening,

Does this feel like a pause and you’ll be back at work soon enough, or is it more the beginning of the end?

I feel like it's the beginning of the end. Nobody has told me that in any official capacity, but just kind of having watched what's happening in other parts of the government, particularly USAID, I feel like there's a pretty good chance that we may never go back to work. If we do go back, I think it's going to be in a really different and limited capacity.

Studies show that losing a job is immensely traumatic, and my experience confirms that. But waiting for a young racist to run some AI that decides your fate, that’s got to piss you off. How are you and co-workers coping?

I checked in on one friend and she said that she’d just started a prescription for anti-anxiety medicine. I feel like people are not doing well, because it's just really devastating.

I don't think people understand that you can't just wipe out the federal government and those people will go find jobs in their field, because all the NGOs that work around us are funded by grants from the federal government and presumably they're all folding right now because of the pause in money distribution. And then universities have just been hit with a 15% overhead cap, which is devastating.

So where do you go? For every job, there's going to be thousands of applicants. Then there's just going to be so few jobs. It's really just going to be state and local health departments, who also get a lot of money from the federal government. So who knows how they'll fare. Maybe the philanthropic foundations, like the Gates Foundation [will have jobs], but that’s it.

I’ve been thinking about that and trying to assess the potential economic damage of these funding cuts. Between federal employees, direct contractors, states, hospitals, businesses built around federal funding… I don’t think Trump has any idea what this will set off if all or even some of the cuts stick.

The ripple effect is huge. If this all really happens, I feel like I don't know what the end game is, but if it feels pretty existential, like they're trying to wipe out the middle class or something.

I wonder about, for example, Delta Airlines. They have big contracts with the government for us to do our work, to fly to places where we work, and all of that will go away, not to mention, if they really wipe out the government, air traffic controllers go away. The impact is just up and down throughout communities, all the way to the big corporations. And this is why I am surprised there's not more outrage.

I guess corporations will get their tax breaks and have no regulations, though chaos isn’t really good for business. And you’d think pharmaceutical companies would be pretty pissed about funding cut to university research.

My understanding is that there's going to be a real limit on basic science research and on new drug development. So that impacts everyone. And again, I don’t know what the end game is. Maybe AI is going to solve everything. But really important research happens through funding from the federal government. If that goes away you're gonna see a real halt in progress and in medicine.

Do you know anybody who said screw it and took the “Fork in the Road” buyout?

I don’t know anybody who is doing that. I think people just don't trust it. Based on the fact that this is clearly coming directly from Elon Musk, we know that what happened at Twitter is that he never paid anybody. And people are saying that [the offer] is not legal, that the government is only funded through March anyways, so it's not even actually possible for them to do it.

I don't know anybody who's doing it — maybe there's a stigma around it and maybe people are doing it and just aren't saying it. I think OPM is saying 40,000 people have taken the offer, but I don't know that I trust that information.

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