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Undermining Federal Programs Depletes the Common Good | Opinion


As Americans worried over disruptions to SNAP benefits needed to feed their children, scientists who work on lifesaving research saw their work paused. Then, 2.3 million federal workers were encouraged to resign from their jobs. There is increasing chatter that we are in the midst of a constitutional crisis. In many ways, it is a crisis fed by our unique national disunity.

Public goods, and those who labor to provide them, can only be downsized as nonessential when citizens—and their leaders—no longer see themselves as part of a shared project, as beneficiaries of work that aids our common benefit.

Our sense of commonality has been split by a populace absorbing greatly disjointed sources of information with different “facts,” different realities.

This naturally pits groups against each other, especially when resources feel slim. For instance, DEI policies are widely misunderstood and in turn, have become a shorthand for disadvantage—rather than creating equitable opportunity—when people are not informed as to how protections for some protect us all.

President Donald Trump
President Donald Trump appears at a news conference in the Roosevelt Room of the White House on January 21, 2025, in Washington, D.C.

Andrew Harnik/Getty Images

Now, we find Donald Trump voters shocked over threats to their government-provided benefits—their media (and social media) made an enemy of their fellow Americans and blinded them to the stake they have in our shared success.

They didn’t see that in carving up what we share, they lose too.

I find myself thinking a lot about public goods—the pot of benefits people in a free society contribute to and have a chance to benefit from. These might include many things most are fortunate enough to take for granted, like basic rights, security provided by a sound national defense, safe roads and bridges, clean water, and education. They are the sorts of things, any of us would want to ensure if designing an ideal society.

If we want a thriving society for ourselves, we need to protect one for everyone. It’s as much a matter of good will as a personal insurance policy.

It is staggering how much our president was willing to scrap.

Facing legal pressure, the Trump administration is now walking back its freeze on federal assistance, although White House spokesperson Karoline Leavitt maintained just the memo about the freeze had been rescinded and work to “end the egregious waste of federal funding” would continue. Whatever that means. We appear to be getting jerked around by people set to destroy a governmental infrastructure they don’t seem to understand.

It’s been so strange seeing Americans who consider themselves good and fair ready to support blowing up a system that does benefit them to spite those they consider freeloaders. They can shovel snow for a neighbor but report another to ICE, intrigued by (false) rumors of $750 rewards for turning people in. How many people do you know who proudly adopt rescue dogs but have no heart for human refugees?

Many Americans have become convinced that what they have is a result of their own hard work, and too bad for the rest. Immigrants who generate $1.6 trillion in economic activity and pay over $579 billion in taxes without the opportunity to draw on American services? Undocumented immigrants who pay about $76 billion in taxes? Too bad. Politicians like Donald Trump and JD Vance have convinced them those people are criminals anyway.

There’s also a distrust of systems in general that feeds into our current predicament.

Already, Americans feel alienation from large institutions. It can turn dark, such as the glee expressed by many Americans over the killing of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson. Many people who celebrated (or joked about the murder) had been hurt by callus policies that made CEOs richer while their family members could not access decent health care.

Americans are disaffiliating with religion at historic rates, due in part to sex abuse and coverup, treatment of LGBTQ people, and for some women, the election of Donald Trump by other Christians.

What will happen to our biggest shared institution if already wobblily trust in government—which fell as low as 16 percent last year—when the VA gets cleared out of frontline health workers? People who process home and small business loans are gone? Food inspectors leave?

Government, like any large institution may have inefficiencies, but it’s difficult to imagine the work we all depend upon being done more effectively with fewer dedicated public servants. What if 2 million or so took the deal and walked?

President Trump’s executive solutions are the equivalent of doing precision surgery with heavy artillery. If allowed to do so, the patient will not survive.

A true land of opportunity and security depends on a baseline of public goods, which Trump’s recent actions are already undermining. When we cease to experience the benefit—the good—of coming together as a society, we are left with clashes and strife that already define so much of the American experience.

Donald Trump’s executive orders concerning how we deploy federal funds—for needed programs and to pay civil servants—are more than “disruptors” (as tech bros would say). They threaten to finally destroy what does still bind us.

Sarah Stankorb is the author of the national best-seller Disobedient Women: How a Small Group of Faithful Women Exposed Abuse, Brought Down Powerful Pastors, and Ignited an Evangelical Reckoning. Her work has appeared in The Washington Post, Slate, The Atlantic, Marie Claire, and many other publications.

The views expressed in this article are the writer’s own.



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