Living Among the DOGE Wreckage

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/05/27/opinion/do-gooders-washington-doge.html

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If you can look past the politicians and the pundits, past the Georgetown set, past the military and its myriad contractors, you’ll eventually get to my corner of Washington. It’s a place populated disproportionately, I’ve found, with smart, nerdy people who work in government because they want to do good. I’ve always felt lucky to have a circle of friends and neighbors who’ve devoted their careers to work that makes a meaningful difference in people’s lives, instead of following their better-paid peers to Wall Street or Silicon Valley.

This year, all that has changed. The Trump administration and the so-called Department of Government Efficiency came in, chain saws buzzing, determined to demoralize and displace these government do-gooders. As Russell Vought, the president’s Office of Management and Budget chief, explicitly proclaimed, “We want the bureaucrats to be traumatically affected.”

His approach appears to be working.

Elon Musk’s shock troops have left many of my admirable neighbors unemployed or completely miserable, just trying to get through their days without moral compromise. One friend, who spent the better part of a decade at U.S.A.I.D. managing programs that deliver food and medicine in places like the Gaza Strip and South Sudan, fell victim to DOGE cuts this year. Another still works at the Environmental Protection Agency, regulating PFAS, the forever chemicals that are likely to cause an array of cancers, but her future is, at best, uncertain. Another friend just took a buyout from the Department of Justice’s civil rights division, and yet another is soon to depart the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration.

Recently, at an outdoor neighborhood concert, I ran into a friend who works as an attorney at the I.R.S. I hadn’t seen her in months, and I asked her, as many of us Washingtonians do these days, “How are you holding up?”

She laughed bitterly. Her new boss is an Elon Musk lackey from DOGE. She gave me a dismal report, then asked me, just before we parted ways: “Why did I go into public service? Why did I do this to myself?”

Watching my D.C. community unravel over the last few months, I’ve needed an escape. I found one unexpectedly with “The Pitt,” a new show on Max about a fictional emergency room in Pittsburgh. Played by Noah Wyle of “E.R.” fame, Dr. Michael Robinavitch, known as Dr. Robby, and his team work heroically on the front lines of our health care system. Bingeing their stories from my D.C. couch, I realized how desperate I’d become for a story — even a fictional one — that valorized the helpers and health care workers who devote themselves to their communities. Our television habits suggest we love and admire public servants, whether it’s on “Abbott Elementary,” “Parks and Recreation” or the billionth season of “Grey’s Anatomy.” But now these shows’ celebration of good works feels to me like a strange nostalgia for a bygone era.