1. United States
2. Ind.
3. Letter

I would like to know how it’s “curbing of government waste” to cripple government services vital to national health, safety, and security? When you undermine regulatory and oversight agencies, you undermine national security, worker and consumer safety, AND the ability of investors in this country or buyers of our goods to have any confidence in the quality and reliability of the products or financials we produce. This will be catastrophic for our economy and reputation.  These agencies are not a privatized profit machine. To assess them as such is misguided, and to make them so would impede their purpose and duty of public service. Regulation largely exists because we have seen time and again that the pursuit of profit overrides corporate consideration for the wellbeing of workers, consumers, communities, and investors, unless regulation and oversight intervenes. Right now, you’re letting the agencies meant to serve and protect us be gutted and taken over by the precise kind of bad actors they are designed to protect us from. The wolves are telling the little pigs to trust them, and you are welcoming them in. Stop selling us out! You want to talk about waste and corruption? Let’s talk about this administration freezing the CDC and gagging them from reporting disease outbreaks in tuberculosis, bird flu, and more - and then bringing them back not to do their actual jobs, but to work on scrubbing their data sets of DEI-related information. I’d like to know a remotely honorable reason for the destruction of those records? And why that is taking precedence over immediate public safety? Do you really think you can rewrite truth that easily? That by not reporting outbreaks you can make them vanish, and they won’t affect our lives, our markets, or our healthcare systems? That by censoring and destroying information you can change the reality of social inequities and injustices, and therefore be absolved of any humanity, compassion or moral conscience around them? Enough already with peddling this magical make-believe version of America that only serves a select few, while the rest of us deal with the ugly fallout. With great power comes great responsibility. This administration wants all the power, and none of the responsibility for the impacts of what you are doing. It’s extremely shortsighted to imagine that by erasing evidence of abuses or noncompliance, you can change reality or history, that by blocking oversight and silencing dissent you can earn trust in either your constituents or the global market. You absolutely won’t. That’s what people do who have things to hide, who want to enrich themselves with no rules and no accountability. No one will want to do business with that.  What is happening under this administration is undermining this country’s very respectability, honor, and safety. You’re letting our global reputation, security, and wellbeing be damaged in ways that will take YEARS to rebuild. Please, help stop this abuse of power.