When you work for the federal government, there are certain expectations that apply – a good job, fair compensation with benefits, employment security – the same things that employees across the decades have sought, and which have enjoyed Civil Service protection from partisan political hacks.  Until now.  In their effort to dismantle government, (it seems that dismantling the sturdy structure of government, under the guise of efficiency, is the goal of the Trump/Musk administration) common sense and constitutional protections are tossed out like yesterday’s garbage.  Ironically, any semblance of efficiency is lost as the broadaxe approach of the DOGE team fires thousands of federal employees responsible for providing basic services, like revenue collection and veterans’ programs.  Federal judges, whom Trump and DOGE want to fire or impeach, have stepped in to order reinstatement of those same employees. The DOGE team doesn’t understand, or care, that its actions are not saving taxpayer dollars, but wasting them with absurd decisions that create chaos, garner headlines, and pander to Trump and his Project 2025 buddies.

For the past couple of months, I’ve tried to give some of Trump’s cabinet selections the benefit of time.  Many appointees have few or no redeeming characteristics for their jobs, but others seemed to have some sense, or at least background, for their new jobs. That limited optimism is gone now.  Last week, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick cavalierly posited that his mother-in-law wouldn’t call anyone if her Social Security check was late or missing and the only people who would complain were “the fraudsters.”  His comments clearly demonstrated how out of touch Trump and his cronies are from Americans who rely on a regular paycheck or Social Security payments they earned through a lifetime of work.  Surely Secretary Lutnick wouldn’t tell his mother-in-law to “suck it up,” but that’s pretty much what he said to more than 300 million Americans. In the same interview, he advised viewers to buy Tesla stock, an ethical breach, one of many that Trump appointees have incurred during the past 60 days.

As the list of ethical breaches continues to grow, another kind of breach has the potential to destroy the financial security and personal identity of more than 100 former Senate staffers who worked on the Senate Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities fifty years ago.  Commonly known as the Church Committee, its staffers were subject to strict confidentiality during its highly sensitive investigations. One potential staffer learned a tough lesson when he disclosed to friends and colleagues that he had been hired even though Senator Church cautioned that confidentiality was a bedrock principle of the committee.  When Church found out, he fired him on the spot; the loose-lipped fellow never made it onto the committee payroll. 

That breach may have protected him from another breach last week when Social Security numbers and other personal information of Church Committee staff were released by the Trump White House as part of the Kennedy assassination papers. Previous releases had redacted personal information, but the Trump Administration crowed that these releases would be “unredacted” so sensitive details were posted publicly on the Internet.  Oops!  The Administration’s solution to the breach is to offer new Social Security numbers and credit monitoring for the affected staffers, many of whom went on to significant careers in government, business, and higher education. The public has a right to know what its government is doing, who is doing it, and even their salaries, but the public does not have the right to know personal and sensitive information, such as Social Security numbers and dates of birth.  Indeed, with the rise of social media, users are warned daily about sharing personal information with people you do not know or trust. It will take weeks or months to calculate the damage done to now private citizens who worked on the Church Committee 50 years ago, but chaos and fear have already taken a toll.  Who, or what, is next?