By Issa for News from the Other Side

While you were making breakfast, 10,000 people just lost their jobs.

Not in a tech company meltdown or Wall Street bloodletting—but at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services: the agency responsible for infectious disease control, food and hospital inspections, mental health resources, and healthcare programs that touch nearly half the country.

That’s not trimming fat. That’s not “restructuring.”
That’s a targeted dismantling of public service.
And they’re doing it with silence. No real explanation. No national debate. No accountability.

The layoffs are just one half—another 10,000 are disappearing through early retirement and buyouts encouraged under Trump-era federal cuts. That’s 20,000 positions. Gone. Like they never mattered. Like the people who depended on those services never mattered.

Let’s be clear:

This isn’t about saving money. It’s about shifting values.
From care to control. From people to power.

You don’t amputate a leg and call it a weight loss strategy.
You don’t demolish the fire station and promise faster response times.
But somehow, they can gut healthcare oversight and food inspections and still spin it as “efficiency.”

This isn’t governance. It’s governance-by-grenade.

When the Dominoes Fall

Behind every cut, there’s a person.
Behind every person, a family.
Behind every family, a community.

And when you fire 10,000 people in one blow, you don’t just create unemployment—you create aftershocks. Like dominoes.

The pharmacist who doesn’t get her federal grant.
The school that loses its nutrition program.
The hospital that’s suddenly short on staff because the pipeline of federally trained workers just dried up.

This isn’t an isolated “policy decision.” It’s a chain reaction.

The ripple effect becomes a wave. And that wave?
It’s not just institutional collapse.
It’s an economic tsunami.

The Economic Tsunami No One Is Preparing For

These firings don’t happen in a vacuum.
They’re happening at the same time we’re watching:

  • Reckless tariff wars with global consequences
  • The cost of living spike
  • Quiet deregulation of corporate protections
  • Record corporate profits without trickle-down results
  • And a shrinking job market for everyday Americans

This is a dangerous game:
Cut support services + destabilize the economy = national disaster.

When those two forces meet—when the layoffs hit Main Street and the tariffs choke off trade—you get a storm that doesn’t just ruin budgets.

It ruins lives.

It ruins hope.

Because who do you turn to when you lose your job—if the agency that was supposed to help is now gone?

This is how a country collapses quietly.
Not with a bang, but with a series of “reforms” designed to look boring, necessary, even responsible—until it’s too late.

And what do they tell us?

“Don’t worry, we’ll recover in a few months.”

No, we won’t.
You don’t destroy lifelines and expect miracles.
You don’t turn survival systems into scrap metal and call it progress.

This is a War—on the Public

Let’s stop pretending this is about budgets.
Let’s stop pretending this is about cutting waste.

This is about carpet bombing the structures that care for people—so the powerful can consolidate more power.

It’s not just HHS. It’s education. Housing. Mental health. The environment. Everything that might give working people a fighting chance is being chipped away with surgical precision.

They don’t need to drop bombs.
They’re doing it with budget lines.
And every cut is a quiet detonation.

So let’s say it out loud:

This is sabotage.
This is a slow war.
This is not normal.

And we will not sit silently while they burn the village and call it governance.