Some people say DC is a company town, and I didn't write a whole bunch of books set in DC where no one worked for the federal government for no reason. But the last stats I saw were that about 1 in 4 people in DC (pre-DOGE) were employed by the federal government. Other cities in the US, Kansas City to pick one example have similar numbers. But I know more people in DC than I do Kansas City, so I have been checking in with folks.
And then museums and libraries got hit, and I checked in with my library friends and my museum friends.
And they came for higher ed, so I've been checking in with my higher ed friends.
And then public broadcasting got hit, so I was checking in with my journalist friends.
And then they started putting up signs at every federal park, which DC has a lot of. And then they did the thing where they made it cool for various federal agencies to comb the streets looking for local crime, even though in several cases they seemed to not know what local crime was in DC.
And sure, a judge now says that wasn't cool. But are they going to unarrest people?
So this year has been a lot. And I don't talk about it every week, because some days after I've checked in with all my people, I only want to talk about other things.
But I hope wherever you are, you've been checking in on your folks and that they've been checking in on you.
