I've spent much of the last week calling friends and family, spurred by the constant stream of news worse than I had dared to imagine. My biggest takeaway from these conversations is that few people are aware of the scale and urgency of what's happening to America - even my most politically active friends. The news is overwhelming, confusing, and hard to find.

Folks are already burned out and cynical, but it's important to affirm the value of paying attention in this moment. This is not just a continuation of 2017 - it's a whole new scale of theft, murder, and starvation. We don't have 8 years of Obama appointees to mire illegal orders in the courts. While we should ration our attention and energy to guard our mental health, now is not the time to mumble and wallow.

My goal here is to lessen the load of awareness. I'll be focusing on the issues I believe are useful to making sense of this catastrophe. I am not a journalist and I am unrepentant in my bias towards justice, peace, and humanity. I'll do my best to limit hyperbole and speculation, but this is, in my mind, the most catastrophic two weeks of the 21st century in America. Any shred of peace and prosperity in this country is under immediate, permanent threat.

Federal workforce elimination

There is a wide-ranging effort to slash much of the existing federal workforce and install people who are loyal to Trump and Musk.

• High-level admin and managers have been fired across most departments. In some cases, Trump's own appointees have been immediately removed because they were unwilling to follow illegal orders.
• Many newly installed employees are young (19-24 years old) white supremacists, with clearly stated views on eugenics and slavery.
• A variety of tactics are being used to push employees out, started with a memo from the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) that mirrors Elon Musk's letter to Twitter after his buyout.
• Some agencies are being required to cut their budget by 50%. Return-to-office has been instituted as a requirement across most departments. Employees are being reclassified as "Schedule F" which strips them of most employment protections. Employees across most departments have been offered "early retirement" through buyouts and severance. These buyouts are false promises; the White House doesn't actually have the money to pay anyone out.
• Positions are being eliminated entirely when employees leave. There is no intent to rehire.
• Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE), Customs and Border Patrol (CBP), and Department of Homeland Security (DHS) are largely exempt from these new policies.

This is part of a larger goal to privatize the entire federal government - eliminating nearly all restrictions on corporations and labor law, while eliminating all social services. Medicaid, Social Security, food stamps - everything. This sounds insane, but this is where tech billionaire politics has been pointing over the last few years. I'll write more about this in a future post.

This leads us to the centralization of decision-making power into Elon Musk's hands.

Elon Musk now controls most federal payment and tech systems

Elon Musk has asserted direct control over at least four agencies: The US Digital Service (USDS), the Office of Personnel Management (OPM), the General Services Admin (GSA), and the Treasury. Former employees and interns of SpaceX, Tesla, xAI, and Neuralink have been inserted at management positions in these agencies. Federal employees have reported individuals that refuse to name themselves while demanding access to sensitive systems and classified materials.

• USDS has become the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE). Formerly, the USDS was the internal technology service supporting most federal agencies in creating and maintaining their websites, software, and computers. This provides Musk access to the tech infrastructure of most other agencies.
• OPM provides HR and employment management services to other agencies. This provides Musk control over staffing, payroll, and communications across most agencies.
• GSA manages buildings, real estate, construction, and other logistical operations of other agencies. This provides Musk access and control over federal buildings and work sites.
• The Treasury writes every check the federal government pays, or $6 trillion yearly. This provides Musk control over every payment the government has made or will ever make.

Together, this gives Musk unilateral, direct control over nearly all federal operations. In the process of this takeover, Musk has revoked access to many existing employees, intercepted internal emails attempting to fight the coup, and begun downloading all federal data onto his own servers. Together, this makes him at least as powerful as Trump in his ability to alter the course of the entire government.

This brings us to how they were able to halt the funding of nearly all federal programs.

Federal grant funding frozen

The Office of Personnel Management (OPM) announced a freeze of all federal grants. Although one memo has been rescinded and blocked by two different courts, many federal organizations have continued halting all payments. The scope of impact here is enormous, as grants supply over $1 trillion to states and individual orgs. This includes:

• Most scientific research. The National Science Foundation and National Institute of Health fund the majority of labs and scientists in the country. They are complying with the order.
• Most poverty assistance programs, including housing and food aid. Health and Human Services (HHS) reports no funding since the first memo.
• Although OPM indicated Medicaid was not included in the freeze, Medicaid portals in all 50 states went down the day the freeze was announced. Access was restored, but it's unlikely this was an accident.
• Related but not part of the OPM freeze - the Department of Transportation (DOT) issued a memo prioritizing funding for areas with "higher than average marriage and birth rates" while stripping funding for sanctuary cities.

While the stated intent is to block funding for DEI and climate change programs, the guidance is so broad and vague that many programs will be defunded arbitrarily, or more likely to eliminate political opposition.

International aid halted

All funding for international aid and NGOs has been halted, despite the order being blocked by courts. Organizations that have already received federal money were told they could not spend it. This includes:

• $12 billion in medicine, or a third of all international medical aid across the world.
• $4 billion in food, including food service to countries in extreme famine like Sudan.
• Disease outbreak assistance, such as monitoring for an ongoing Ebola outbreak, as well as HIV and malaria programs.
• One exception was made: Israel.
• The US Agency for International Development (USAID) may be completely eliminated. There are active protests outside the USAID building today, but it may already be too late. Many US diplomats and foreign service employees have been left stranded in other countries.

Purge of DEI and trans rights

Across multiple executive orders, Trump has demanded all federal agencies eliminate policies and documents related to diversity, equity, inclusion, "gender ideology", and the "woke agenda". Several orders specifically target trans individuals and aim to strip any legal protections for trans people and restrict access to medical care.

• The Department of Defense declared "Identity Days are Dead", abolishing celebration of Black History Month, Juneteenth, MLK Jr. Day, Women's History Month, and dozens of other historical and cultural holidays. This applies to all branches of the military.
• Blanket removal of all documents, websites, and training materials that contain a list of banned keywords.

• Websites and software are being modified to eliminate demographic surveys and forms to report discrimination.
• The Center for Disease Control (CDC) is retracting ongoing and published research that contains restricted words, regardless of whether the research is actually concerned with race, gender, or DEI.
• Employees have been encouraged to report programs related to DEI and coworkers who may be involved in DEI.
• Passports, federal IDs, and other demographic forms can no longer accept non-binary as a gender option.
• Approximately 15,000 transgender service members have been banned from all branches of the military.
• Hospitals and clinics are forbidden from providing gender-affirming surgery to minors. Although this order is not legal, some hospitals have chosen to comply anyway.
• Funding cuts to schools that support "social transition" for transgender students - requiring schools to use deadnames, cease use of preferred pronouns, restrict bathroom access, and more.
• Bathroom ban across all federal facilities, as well as those receiving federal funding.
• Pronouns must be removed across all federal communications, including email signatures and employee profiles.

There are two motivations here. First, there are white supremacists who genuinely want to erase all minority identities - ideologues from Project 2025 eager to rewrite America as a white male tech-theocracy. Second, DEI and "gender ideology" is a blank check for Trump and Musk to eliminate any progressive policies or employees that might resist their agenda.

ICE targeting refugees and children

Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has dramatically changed their enforcement strategies, with a focus on deportations inside sanctuary cities.

• Children have been prioritized, leading to incidents across the country of ICE attempting to kidnap children from inside or nearby elementary schools.
• Refugees and victims of crimes are no longer exempt from deportation.
• Stays of removal have been largely revoked, These grant immigrants an extension before deportation.
• Some deportees are now being sent to Guantanamo Bay rather than their home countries.
• The military is being given jurisdiction over CBP, with the mandate to fortify the borders with soldiers.
• ICE began sending deportees to Colombia on military planes in subhuman conditions. When Colombia protested, Trump threatened tariffs, but backed down and agreed to return to sending deportees on civilian flights again. The media incorrectly reported this as Colombia backing down.

So...what now?

This, unfortunately, isn't even half of what's going on. We could talk about the plane crashes, FAA, and air traffic controllers. There's the tariffs with Canada, Mexico, and China. There's renaming the Gulf of Mexico to "Gulf of America". In a normal world, this stuff alone would merit weeks of study and discussion. But these are mere footnotes compared to everything else at stake. We're closer than ever to losing the whole country to weird racist oligarchs that will gladly see the whole world burn to further their own wealth.

Nobody has the answers about how to handle this, but I know one thing for sure: it starts with paying and attention and talking to other folks in our communities. I'll end this with some perennial advice from Jennifer Walter:

As a sociologist, I need to tell you: Your overwhelm is the goal.

- The flood of 200+ executive orders in Trump's first days exemplifies Naomi Klein's "shock doctrine" - using chaos and crisis to push through radical changes while people are too disoriented to effectively resist. This isn't just politics as usual - it's a strategic exploitation of cognitive limits.

- Media theorist McLuhan predicted this: When humans face information overload, they become passive and disengaged. The rapid-fire executive orders create a cognitive bottleneck, making it nearly impossible for citizens and media to thoroughly analyze any single policy.

- Agenda-setting theory explains the strategy: When multiple major policies compete for attention simultaneously, it fragments public discourse. Traditional media can't keep up with the pace, leading to superficial coverage.

The result? Weakened democratic oversight and reduced public engagement.

What now?

- Set boundaries: Pick 2-3 key issues you deeply care about and focus your attention there. You can't track everything - that's by design. Impact comes from sustained focus, not scattered awareness.

- Use aggregators & experts: Find trusted analysts who do the heavy lifting of synthesis. Look for those explaining patterns, not just events.

- Remember: Feeling overwhelmed is the point. When you recognize this, you regain some power. Take breaks. Process. This is a marathon.

- Practice going slow: Wait 48hrs before reacting to new policies. The urgent clouds the important. Initial reporting often misses context.

- Build community: Share the cognitive load. Different people track different issues. Network intelligence beats individual overload.

Remember: They want you scattered. Your focus is resistance.

Lastly, a quote from Ursula Franklin to remind us of the goal:

Peace is the absence of fear. Peace is the presence of justice. Because of the work that all of us have done, we are very clear that peace, in fact, is a consequence. Peace, as it was defined in 1936 by R.B. Gregg, “is a by-product of the persistent application of social truth and justice and the strong and intelligent application of love.”

P.S. I hope this summary has been helpful to you. I will continue adding more sources and correct details as I learn more - please let me know if you see any errors or omissions.