Image by Katelyn Perry.

The second administration of President Donald J. Trump has already started working its special magic across the Washington, D.C. capital region. Elon Musk and his Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) have fired tens of thousands of federal workers, with more to come. Those who have lost their jobs include people who find housing and other support for veterans struggling with mental illness. They include civil servants who maintained safeguards to prevent our nuclear weapons from becoming dirty bombs. They include healthcare researchers developing treatments for cancer and other killer diseases; workers who ensured that low-income, homeless, and rural students were able to get an education; agricultural researchers who opened up international markets to American farmers; and too many others to mention here.

My neighborhood, located on farmland about 40 miles outside Washington, D.C., is among those wracked by this administration’s shakeup of the government workforce. An estimated 20% of our country’s federal workers make their homes right here in Maryland and in nearby Virginia within reach of the capital. And that doesn’t count the tens of thousands of us who work in (or adjacent to) federal agencies as contractors. All those workers have also been subjected to the same back-to-work requirements, anti-DEI policies, and (depending on their roles) job insecurity, as their government colleagues.

President Trump, his unelected right-hand man and billionaire businessman Elon Musk, and the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) began wreaking havoc on government agencies in late January with a poorly formatted, emotionally worded PDF that some in the civil service initially mistook for a phishing email. That “fork in the road” document offered workers a chance to take eight months of severance pay, or else face the possibility of simply losing their jobs — a possibility that turned out to be all too real for those who risked staying and continuing to serve.

I hope that red state voters are happy.

My Own Deep State

Before all this started, life was pretty good for families like mine, who live here and depend on the federal government for work. Of course, I have to admit that, by many measures, we are privileged in so many ways: A White, upper-middle-class, dual-income (for now) family, with healthy kids, cats, and even a raucous flock of chickens. And as of yet, many families like mine are still fine. But for how long?

I think the wholesomeness of life in my area of Maryland owes much to the diverse cultures represented in our communities. You don’t need to look hard to find someone who can tell you about customs, food, norms, and rituals in places as far away as Afghanistan, China, El Salvador, Ukraine, and elsewhere. (Maryland has long offered broad protections to refugees and asylum seekers.) Until recently,........

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