Former U.S. Labor Secretary Robert Reich is sounding the alarm over what he sees as a dangerous shift in federal priorities under President Donald Trump.
In a sharply worded opinion piece on AlterNet, Reich said that the government “is no longer able to protect us from real hazards, such as flash floods, because it's shifting funds to fake hazards, such as a non-existent immigrant crime wave.”
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Staff Shortages, Emergency Failures
Reich pointed to recent devastating flooding in Texas and blamed federal understaffing and mismanagement. He said the National Weather Service’s office in San Angelo, Texas is missing critical personnel, including a senior hydrologist, staff forecaster and a meteorologist. The nearby San Antonio office is also short a warning coordination meteorologist and a science officer.
According to Reich, these positions are vital to planning emergency responses and issuing timely warnings. He noted that the warning coordination meteorologist in San Antonio left on April 30 after accepting an early retirement offer tied to Trump's Department of Government Efficiency initiative.
“At both offices, the vacancy rate is roughly double what it was when Trump returned to the White House in January,” Reich wrote.
He said the federal government is struggling more broadly, pointing to long wait times at Social Security offices, cutbacks at national parks, uninspected hazardous waste sites, and a shortage of air traffic controllers.
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Budget Cuts And A “Police State”
Reich criticized Trump's new spending package, calling it the “Big Ugly Bill.” He said the legislation cuts funding for Medicaid and food stamps in order to pay for “another giant tax cut for the rich, along with 10,000 more [Immigration and Customs Enforcement] agents and a gulag of detention camps.”
He referenced ther so-called Alligator Alcatraz, a newly constructed and opened immigration detention facility in the Florida Everglades, as one example of misplaced spending.
Reich said the dismantling of the civil service will force a national reckoning. “We will demand a democracy that works for the people,” he wrote, warning that as Americans lose protection from climate disasters, toxic chemicals, and corporate abuses, more will rise up.
He is urging Americans to choose between “a government that protects us from real dangers or a police state,” saying, “It may be our last best hope.”
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