Photo credit: Author illustration from AI-generated (Gemini) original image — A man made of oranges on a golf course

I’ve been fortunate to teach many terrific college students over the years, and I enjoy staying in touch with them as they move on to bigger & better things in life. Given the nature of my academic background, a huge percentage of my students work in the public or nonprofit arena. It brings me joy to see them doing what they can to change the world, whether it’s through a nonprofit organization, local government, elected office, state legislature, federal agencies, and more.

One such student has made a name for herself and has continued to grow and thrive. Back in the day, she was very active in student government organizations, then she went on to work at the state level, interned at the White House, and served on some high-profile campaigns. Not too long ago, she accepted a dream job with a federal agency and was excited about taking the next step in her extraordinary career path. All the while, she’s never lost that fire to make a difference. I’m so proud of her!

This week, she was let go in the purge of probationary federal employees across several agencies. Her announcement on social media broke my heart: “All I’ve ever wanted to do was work in public service.”

We haven’t even hit the one-month mark of this administration yet, and each day seems to reach a new level of chaos.

Not one iota of this nonsense is actually about waste & abuse of public resources. If it was, then instead of axing funding for programs and agencies that are working to advance medical research, support U.S. agriculture, and more, we’d have qualified auditors combing the books – starting with the Department of Defense (which has failed every annual audit since 2018 and didn’t have a good track record even prior to then).

Instead, we have:

dodgy DOGE hackers accessing offices & records without any sort of security clearance;
a sitting President attending the Super Bowl (conservative estimates put the total around $10M for that totally unnecessary outing … although, considering the $141 MILLION wasted in taxpayer dollars just on golfing trips during his first term, we shouldn’t really be surprised);
Chief Cheeto trying to eliminate birthright citizenship (to include Native Americans whose land was stolen, in the first place), make processes more difficult for voters, while also threatening to annex, purchase, or “take over” sovereign nations.

*The Safeguard American Voter Eligibility (SAVE) Act is allegedly aimed at keeping undocumented immigrants from voting – even though there continues to be no evidence of such. (Edited to remove concerns re: naming conventions mentioned in original post. The forms of identification required already preclude undocumented individuals from voting; additional hurdles only serve to suppress socio-economically disadvantaged persons.)

Oy vey. We were the laughingstock of our global peers from 2016-2020, and we still have 47-ish more months to go this time around.

I keep thinking of the quote attributed to Benjamin Franklin as he left the Constitutional Convention in 1787, when Elizabeth Willing Powel asked what type of government the delegates had settled on: “A republic, if you can keep it.”

I worry that we might not be able to.