Hi John,

This week, we delivered an AFL-CIO Department of People Who Work for a Living report to lawmakers on Capitol Hill, detailing in workers’ own voices how Elon Musk’s DOGE is gutting essential services, putting lives at risk and triggering mass firings that threaten local economies.

DOGE is Project 2025 on steroids. From delayed veterans’ care to missing Social Security checks, the consequences of DOGE’s illegal mass firings go far beyond Washington. 

After holding field hearings across the country, here are just a few of the things we heard from working people:

• Since January, thousands of federal workers who we rely on for key services—such as processing Social Security checks, ensuring food gets inspected and providing veterans’ health care—have been illegally fired or pushed out.
• They’ve attacked workers’ rights to stand up to big corporations and organize and collectively bargain, shutting down the National Labor Relations Board and destroying its independence, and crushing the federal mediation agency.
• DOGE has attacked workers' health and safety, including gutting the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health, closing worker safety offices and gutting regulations that protect workers.
• DOGE has attacked health care, eliminating jobs at the VA, repealing programs to lower drug prices, directing Congress to gut Medicaid and ending health coverage for millions of people to pay for tax cuts for the wealthy.
• They’ve dismantled the Department of Education, tearing down public education and attacking our universities.
• DOGE has undermined investment and jobs in the next generation of American energy innovation and manufacturing, and undermined workers’ rights across the world.

With budget negotiations ongoing in Congress, this report puts a spotlight on what’s really at stake: the people who make government work and the communities that depend on them. Read it now. 

The people who work for a living want an agenda that works for them—not big corporations and billionaires. We are calling on lawmakers to fully restore the programs that make our country run. Make a call to say, “no cuts that hurt working families.” 

In solidarity, 

Team AFL-CIO

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