Before turning on each other, Trump and Musk attacked country’s most vulnerable

This article was produced by Capital Main It is published here with permission The biggest breakup in newest political history between the world s the greater part powerful man and the world s richest person moved at hyper speed with new threats and gut punches piling up by the minute The fight touched on all manner of topics including tariffs Donald Trump s big beautiful bill and its slashing of EV mandates Elon Musk s administration contracts and subsidies a push for impeachment and even the formation of a third political party But missing from the feud and the media reaction was any sense of the massive impact Trump and Musk have had on the lives of millions of people here and abroad Since it launched in January the Department of Cabinet Efficiency has been tearing through executive laying off more than workers shutting down agencies like the U S Agency for International Expansion and cutting to the bone the budgets of agencies including the National Institutes of Soundness the Food and Drug Administration the Centers for Illness Control and Prevention the Occupational Safety and Soundness Administration and the Environmental Protection Agency in methods that undermine masses robustness scientific research food safety worker safety and vitality and environmental protection The swiftness of the cuts caught even Trump supporters by surprise Among them was veteran Chauncy James who voted for Trump and was laid off from his regime job a scarce months later despite having been promoted twice Now he worries about paying his mortgage and feeding his family telling Reuters They are pretty much just coming here chopping heads off without really doing their homework He got elected president and he s doing a lot of things that people never even imagined that he was going to do to us Overall the largest impacts have been to the lives of the poor and vulnerable including children seniors disabled people veterans and working families as documented in Capital Main s DOGE Impact Tracker since February The elimination of USAID the largest source of international assistance to more than countries through food programs clean water initiatives and infectious ailment outbreak response has already led to the deaths of more than people including children according to Brooke Nichols a mathematician and professor of infectious diseases at Boston University These are preventable deaths Nichols communicated The Times of London They all happened because of the abrupt halt in funding DOGE s cuts to the Department of Agriculture ended billion in funding for hundreds of food banks that feed a growing population of Americans who can t afford groceries They also hurt farmers who depend on federal reimbursements to stay afloat The termination of nearly million in funding for AmeriCorps a decades-long undertaking with strong bipartisan endorsement has had a negative impact on neighborhoods across the country where the project s participants performed locality facility and assisted with schooling tragedy response and environmental stewardship More than grants were cut in states with the highest poverty levels Louisiana Mississippi Arkansas Kentucky West Virginia New Mexico Oklahoma and Alabama according to CBS News The cuts were temporarily blocked on Thursday by a federal judge Veterans are universally praised by lawmakers but the Department of Veterans Affairs hasn t been spared the axe with DOGE planning to cut of the department s staff DOGE s firing of thousands of the agency s probationary employees in February was reversed when the VA was forced to rehire employees a month later but the disruptions caused longer waiting times for appointments and interrupted staffing for a suicide hotline And veterans say that the agency has slowed hiring of new staffers leaving it incapable of properly caring for veterans with physical and mental strength problems DOGE cuts at the Department of Medical and Human Services resulted in closures of Head Start offices and cuts at the Department of Mentoring resulted in the termination of programs for learning-disabled students Reduced staffing at the Social Precaution Administration has hurt seniors due to delays in processing benefits And a reduction in staff at the Administration for Public Living has impacted programs like Meals on Wheels and other services that help the disabled and poor The stunning breadth of the impacts on both the nation s and the world s most of vulnerable strikes home for Carolyn Woo the former CEO of Catholic Relief Services a humanitarian agency that was the biggest recipient of USAID funding and has been forced to lay off workers and halt programs I think about the power of healing the fact that we could make a malnourished child who at years old is only pounds and restore that person to healthcare Or we could administer therapy to allow people with AIDS which used to be a death sentence to live The power to have that much impact on life that is real power Power is not just in firing someone but the power to restore life to someone She says that the DOGE cuts to USAID and other programs remind her of real suffering and to not close our eyes to it All of us could be kinder could be more generous We could open our eyes and we could provide help The power to be decent to be trustworthy to be honest to take care of each other the people who make other people better that is real power Capital Main is an award-winning nonprofit publication that reports from California on the largest part pressing economic environmental and social issues of our time including economic inequality conditions change medical care threats to democracy hate and extremism and immigration Copyright Capital Main