Washington’s Scorched Earth Approach Makes News and People Disappear
Last week the Centers for Disease Control released some startling information about the bird flu virus, namely that it can be spread between cats and humans. The data appeared briefly online, then vanished.
The New York Times received a copy of the deleted data, which it says contained “crucial information about the risks of bird flu to people and pets,” including a documented case of a cat transmitting the virus to an adolescent boy and another man-to-cat transfer. In both cases the cats died.
The virus, called H5N1, has been circulating in dairy cattle since last year, but has also infected at least 67 people in the US, one who died from the infection. The report was part of the CDC’s Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, which had been publishing public health information regularly for decades until the Trump Administration stymied its content.
The new administration has also targeted the Environmental Protection Agency, the Department of Health and Human Services, and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, among other scientific bodies. The Times reported on February 2 that more than 8,000 pages had been scrubbed from at least a dozen government agencies, and many more are believed to have disappeared since then.
Beyond the data and research that’s being erased, thousands of federal workers have also gotten the ax. The so-called Department of Government Efficiency (which is not, in fact, a governmental department), spearheaded by Elon Musk, has applied a scorched-earth approach to trimming the federal workforce.
Last week DOGE unloaded on the National Nuclear Security Administration, firing 300 employees, some of them crucial to maintaining and safeguarding the nation’s nuclear arsenal. On Friday, the pseudo-department was attempting to hire back some of these essential workers, but was having difficulty reaching them as their emails and other contact information had been unceremoniously erased.
Meanwhile NOAA is also on the chopping block. The agency that oversees the nation’s fisheries, weather research, and a host of other environmental domains has been informed that half of its 12,000 employees could be let go while the agency’s budget is cut by 30 percent.
“Elon Musk and his DOGE tech bros are ransacking federal agencies, accessing Americans’ private data, and purporting to fire people and shut down entire programs,” fumed congressman Jared Huffman (D-California). “It appears that NOAA is next on the chopping block. Gutting NOAA the way DOGE is attempting to do with so many other agencies will literally put lives at risk.”
Harvard University, for one, has begun archiving important federal government data sets before they disappear. The archivists hope to “make available copies of public government data that is most valuable to researchers, scholars, civil society and the public at large across every field.”
Some Democratic congresspeople are attempting to attach watchdog amendments to the “119th Congress Authorization and Oversight Plan.” A number of proposed amendments to investigate the consequences of the mass layoffs – on fisheries, coastal environments, wildfire management, and other environmental and wildlife protection laws – were all shot down by the Republican majority.
But the scale and speed of the “ransacking” has made coherent opposition difficult, which may be the point. Environmental organizations are struggling to mount a defense against the wholesale removal of federal funding and workers.
“Every day that goes by with DOGE operating in the shadows should be a deep concern to ordinary Americans,” frets Kierán Suckling, executive director of the Center for Biological Diversity. “We’re going to uncover what’s really on their agenda and stop any attempt to make our air and water dirtier, weaken protections for our nation’s most imperiled wildlife and turn over our public lands to polluters and the fossil fuel industry.”
Photo credit: Center for Disease Control
