In response to Donald Trump’s mass firings and funding cuts devastating millions of Americans, DNC Rapid Response Director Alex Floyd released the following statement:

“Trump’s reckless and disastrous agenda of mass firings and funding cuts is devastating millions of Americans across the country: veterans’ hard-earned benefits are in jeopardy, farmers are losing millions of dollars, and small businesses are being forced to lay off employees nationwide as critical programs for rural Americans are drying up. The only people benefiting from this disastrous agenda are Trump’s billionaire backers – not hardworking families.”

Trump’s disastrous agenda of mass firings and funding cuts is already hitting millions of Americans, devastating farmers’ livelihoods…  

Washington Post: “Farmers report missing millions of dollars of funding they were promised by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, despite promises from the Trump administration that a federal funding freeze would not apply to projects directly benefiting individuals. On his first day in office, President Donald Trump ordered the USDA to freeze funds for several programs designated by President Joe Biden’s signature clean-energy and health-care law, the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act.”

Washington Post: “Purchases and shipments of U.S. food aid worth over $340 million — including rice, wheat and soybeans — have been paused during Trump’s foreign-aid freeze, according to officials and an email obtained by The Post. That has left hundreds of tons of American-grown wheat stranded in Houston alone, Rep. Angie Craig of Minnesota, the highest-ranking Democrat on the House Agriculture Committee, said Tuesday.”

… gutting emergency disaster relief for poor, rural Americans… 

CNN: “Trump’s Monday order also took aim at ‘environmental justice’ — eliminating positions and assessing spending on projects, including those aimed at poor, rural communities.” 

Canary Media: “The Spokane, Washington-based consultancy has secured $3.7 million in grants from a nearly two-decade-old U.S. Department of Agriculture program meant to help rural businesses save energy and generate their own power. …The projects were expected to save the farmers, communities, and rural small businesses involved more than $20 million in long-term energy costs. But last week, USDA informed Funk that it was freezing all reimbursements from the program.”

… preventing thousands of health experts from improving care for Medicare and Medicaid beneficiaries and responding to disease outbreaks such as bird flu… 

Politico: “Those cuts included officials working on Medicare and Medicaid initiatives aimed at improving care for beneficiaries at the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Innovation and at the CMS office that oversees Obamacare, as well as officials at the FDA offices that regulate prescription drugs and medical devices.”

CBS: “Half of the Centers of Disease Control and Prevention’s Epidemic Intelligence Service officers — a group known as the CDC’s ‘disease detectives’ — were among the cuts made Friday by the Trump administration, multiple health officials tell CBS News.”

Politico: “HHS’ Administration for Strategic Preparedness and Response was also hit, prompting sharp criticism from public health experts who warned it would damage the government’s frontline response to threats like bird flu. The administration is already expected to eliminate most of the CDC’s public health fellows — some of whom received termination notices this weekend — including fellows at the Laboratory Leadership Service who do public health research, according to a former HHS official.”

New York Times: “The nation’s universities and academic medical centers were reeling on Saturday from a directive by the Trump administration to slash funding for medical research, a decision that doctors and scientists said would have a devastating effect on studies aimed at finding treatments for diseases such as cancer, diabetes and heart disease.”

… slashing veterans’ critical mental and physical health care services, putting their hard-earned benefits on the line, and freezing training programs for service members on preventing and reporting sexual assault… 

Washington Post: “Career staff and U.S. DOGE Service aides have clashed over efforts to freeze new hires. A backlog of unfilled positions is building even in critical agencies — such as the Department of Veterans Affairs, where badly needed doctors and nurses have been blocked from final approval to start work even though they are supposed to be exempt from a hiring freeze Trump ordered.” 

Federal News Network: “VA employees who work on the Veterans Crisis Line (VCL) say the hiring freeze has affected the hiring of support staff … 

“VCL handles about 60,000 calls a month. Alexander estimated that a crisis responder will take anywhere from five to 10 calls a shift. In some cases, VCL responders can be on the phone with a veteran in crisis for hours. Those crises include veterans feeling suicidal, having PTSD symptoms or anxiety, or experiencing homelessness and seeking VA resources.”

Los Angeles Times: “Military freezes sexual assault prevention training after Trump executive order on DEI” 

“The types of training now frozen include lessons focused on the nature of consent and sexual harassment, as well as instructions on how to safely report abuse within the military, according to the military official who spoke on the condition of anonymity.” 

… forcing small businesses across the country to lay off employees… 

Washington Post: “Layoffs hit contractors and small businesses as Trump cuts take effect”

“More than 7.5 million Americans work in jobs directly connected to the federal government, according to the Brookings Institution, as contractors or grant workers — some of whom are already out of a job. And there are millions more who work in positions indirectly connected to federal funding delays.

“So far, the fallout includes rescinded contracting jobs in Fayetteville, North Carolina, and Austin … in West Virginia … in Maine and … in Virginia.” 

… halting financial and medical assistance for Americans with disabilities… 

New York Times: “[I]n Vermont, another nonprofit was unable to distribute checks to families of children with disabilities.” 

CNN: “The delay in receiving its federal funds forced the Appalachian Center for Independent Living, which has operated in the Charleston, West Virginia, area for four decades, to lay off its employment training specialist – one of its five staffers – and halt its job placement services.” 

… and freezing onboarding of thousands of firefighters, placing communities vulnerable to wildfires at greater risk.  

New York Times: “The hiring of thousands of federal firefighters has stalled amid a governmentwide freeze ordered by President Trump, just as agencies were beginning to ramp up staffing for the summer wildfire season, according to a firefighters’ union.”

NBC News: “The U.S. Forest Service, the Bureau of Land Management and the National Park Service employ more than 15,000 career and temporary seasonal firefighters who perform fuel management, fight wildland fires and assist other jurisdictions in emergencies as part of the National Incident Management System. In at least one field office for the Bureau of Land Management, a division of the Interior Department, officials involved in annual hiring were instructed in an email reviewed by NBC News to ‘hold all offers related to fire positions’ because of the freeze.”

The only people Trump’s funding freeze is helping are billionaires like Elon Musk — who was just awarded a nearly $40 million federal contract. 

Daily Mail: “The federal government awarded Elon Musk’s company a $38.85 million contract on Monday as the billionaire works to slash other contracts.”

New York Times: “Mr. Musk’s companies secured $13 billion in contracts over the past five years, making SpaceX, which collects most of that money, one of the biggest government contractors. There is already talk during the Trump administration of expanding these deals, particularly at the Air Force.”