Like many Americans this week, my Facebook and text messages have been filled with sadness, stress and uncertainty as friends and neighbors express their disbelief at what is happening to public servants everywhere. These shared posts are filled with once-smiling Park Service employees and others whose employment has been unjustifiably and suddenly terminated. Their lives have been shattered. The long dedication to their jobs ignored. How could this happen in our country, they are asking.

Since Inauguration Day, the daily barrage of executive orders signed with an oversized black Sharpie and conflicting communication from the federal government has put the country into a spiral of uncertainty. Even before Trump took office, West Virginia’s own Senator Shelley Moore Capito suggested that under the previous administration, “wasteful government spending spiraled out of control, harming hardworking Americans and their livelihoods.”  

After Trump came into office, Sen. Capito supported Elon Musk’s DOGE, adding, “People wanted things to be disrupted and looked at in a different way.”

It is obvious life in the U.S. is way beyond “disrupted.” Let’s use destroyed. As for her suggestion that the previous administration harmed hardworking Americans, consider what’s going on now under the Trump administration. Thousands of government workers and civilians are losing their jobs at NIH, National Park Service, US Forest Service, Homeland Security, Veteran’s Affairs, National Nuclear Security Administration and other institutions.

If anyone believes that this “disruption” is for the best, understand how this full-throttle destruction is affecting fellow Americans. Think about how these DOGE decisions are impacting your state, town and neighbors. Right now. In human terms. Facebook is full of their anguish.

Somehow, many are able put themselves in a rose-tinted bubble. They are in a different FB world and only follow pro-administration media. Perhaps they have not listened to a friend distraught about whether their own job is threatened, not because of some inadequacy on their part, but due to institutional targeting. Maybe they don’t know someone working with humanitarian agencies agonizing about how funding cuts will impact those less fortunate.

They haven’t heard others express feelings of powerlessness, even suicide. Or had a small business owner share how the loss of grants will impact his business and employees. Make no mistake, these DOGE decisions will eventually negatively impact everyone.

Those in that distorted bubble have probably not shed a tear in the last month, but many of us have. Many who work in the federal agencies scattered throughout West Virginia feel lost and demoralized. So do teachers, social workers, and anyone whose salary is dependent on federal grants.

This is certainly a “different way” for America, Sen. Capito. Public servants passionate about their work have been demonized, and those who have cared for our national parks, protected our forests, and assisted those in need, have been handed pink slips via email and told to leave their office immediately. The family photos and hand-drawn thank-you pictures from school children, the seed pods and feathers, guidebooks and coffee mugs, all thrown quickly into a box.

For each of those workers, there’s a story: a dream of moving into your neighborhood and wanting to be a part of your community, a feeling of making a difference, and a sense of pride associated with working for the United States.

To be clear, these DOGE decisions are not based on eliminating wasteful spending or balancing the budget. If it were, consider the millions of dollars it cost for the President to appear at the Super Bowl and Daytona 500 and the price tag for bringing back the name of Fort Bragg (over $6 million). Imagine the estimate for paving Jackie Kennedy’s White House Rose Garden area and, for that matter, taking over the Kennedy Center.

No, these decisions are based on retribution and revenge. There are no indications that this administration intends to balance the budget by raising taxes for the wealthy or stop providing subsidies and contracts to companies that align with Trump.

Inexcusably, our nation’s leaders are allowing this to happen, despite their power granted by the Constitution. The United States’ moral compass, once set on compassion, is now set on callousness.

It is time for Americans to demand a reset before this penchant for destruction permanently permeates every state, town and neighborhood. Sadly, for many, it is too late.

Nanci Bross-Fregonara represents Fourth Ward on Elkins City Council.