Almost 3 million Americans are employed by the federal government, and more than 80 percent of those live outside the Washington, DC area. From park rangers to meat inspectors to land surveyors and law enforcement, civil servants keep America running. Over the past two weeks, Elon Musk and his DOGE cronies have launched a war against civil servants, summarily firing more than 10,000 federal employees who had been engaged in global humanitarian efforts, seizing Americans’ tax records at the Treasury Department, and now targeting the independent agency tasked with protecting Americans from corporate fraud and scams.
Protect Public Health Everywhere
The Trump administration has wasted no time in launching attacks on public health, both foreign and domestic. From pulling out of the World Health Organization to emboldening anti-vaccination campaigners, the Trump administration is operating under the ludicrous assumptions that science is the enemy and that diseases respect isolationist policies. Let’s push back on these attacks this week.
Turning a day off into a day on
It seems like a cruel joke of the calendar to have Trump sworn in on Martin Luther King, Jr., Day. It’s tempting to tune out the inauguration entirely, but Dr. King’s daughter, Bernice A. King, urges us to pay attention to what’s said and done in Washington today. “This is not the time for ignorance,” she writes.
Use today’s workouts to stay engaged and keep working toward equality and justice for all Americans.