We bought our first home in Arroyo Grande almost 50 years ago, and we usually had at least one cat. Life was good until we found that a feral cat had given birth to four equally feral kittens under our garden shed.
I have a soft spot for any cat, but these were wild, hostile creatures; in fact, one saber-tooth kitten bit right through my fingernail. (OK, I might have been trying to feed the pathetic creature.)
Sadly, we had to trap those cats and send them away in an Animal Services truck. They were a danger to our toddler, and quite frankly to civilized society. The passage of time had put this dreadful incident almost entirely out of my mind—until now.
It’s clear to me that the team of Donald Trump and Elon Musk has become feral. Like that wild kitten, they have returned to that kill-or-be-killed standard of raw nature. The federal government no longer operates as it has for almost 240 years, under that quaint standard of our Constitution.
What we have in Washington, D.C., now, at the very core of our government, is a “rough beast” completely untethered from the standards of civil society. That beast loosed within the White House has been misnamed the “Department of Government Efficiency.” It’s all claws and teeth, snarling, slashing, and biting at those public servants that it regards as a threat, as prey, or—worst of all—as mousy playthings to be humiliated in a public spectacle.
In the brief span of two months, Trump and his sidekick Musk have dispatched DOGE to dismember virtually every unit of the federal government. Tight-lipped gangs of 20-something “tech bros” break into offices and systematically abuse and belittle highly skilled professional employees as they throw them out the door.
In response, there are at least 127 court cases now proceeding before federal judges to challenge Trump’s clumsy efforts to undermine our Constitution. Two federal judges ruled that Trump must re-hire thousands of probationary employees, many of whom were senior but just-promoted federal civil service employees who enjoyed professional respect as well as legal protection.
Disregarding these court rulings, the Trump tomcats continue to lash out at their perceived “deep state enemies.” Thousands of long-serving federal employees, most with impeccable records of public service, have fallen victim to the DOGE clowder of sharp-clawed feral cats equipped with a bespoke authority that is, at best, questionable. Just this week, a federal judge has found that claim of authority not simply ambiguous but “likely unconstitutional.”
These public servants are responsible for the faithful execution of laws duly passed by Congress and signed by the president. The Musk/DOGE teams are engaged in a ceaseless campaign to cancel the solemn mission of agencies like the VA, national parks and forests, Social Security, Medicaid and Medicare, USAID, the Voice of America—even the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts. Cue the “culture warriors”: Expect to see a lot more of Kid Rock and Kanye, and a lot less of, well, anyone with real talent.
These federal agencies are national institutions whose employees are trained to apply the law, using regulations put in place only after extensive public engagement. Any first-year law student is taught that such a legal structure can be challenged, that statutes adopted by Congress can be repealed, amended, or overturned by the courts, but they cannot be summarily disregarded by the caustic kitties working for Musk’s DOGE. Every president since Washington has sworn an oath to “faithfully execute the office of president … and preserve, protect and defend the Constitution.”
For Trump and Musk, that solemn oath means nothing. It speaks volumes that Trump is now caterwauling that Congress must impeach any federal judge that stands in his way. This radical move drew a rebuke from none other than Chief Justice John Roberts, hardly the model of a “radical leftist lunatic.”
How do we put this pack of feral creatures with their insatiable appetite for destruction into a secure cage for good? How can we protect those sacred values of equality under the law and respect for “inalienable” rights, principles that inspired loyalty to this nation through nearly two-and-a-half centuries?
I take comfort in the fact that after every crisis in our nation’s history, we’ve emerged stronger: After the Civil War, the nation papered over our differences and experienced astonishing growth in our population and in our institutions: From the Pendleton Act of 1883, and especially during the Progressive Era and the New Deal, we built the nation’s civil service system—a system that has functioned generally very well throughout the 20th century and well into the 21st.
We expect and deserve professionalism and diligence from our federal employees, especially those who serve as scientists, park rangers, defense analysts, cyber security specialists, health care providers, nuclear engineers. That workforce will return to health once we purge our governing institutions of the decadence of Elon Musk and DOGE.
We must roll up our sleeves and toss these feral creatures now fouling the White House and Congress into the Animal Services paddy wagon, sent away with their well-used kitty litter. Wait, feral cats don’t bother with litter boxes. Δ
John Ashbaugh and his wife have almost always hosted a domesticated cat in their home. They have no intention of feeding any more feral kittens, especially ones wearing MAGA collars. Send comments for publication to letters@newtimesslo.com.
This article appears in Spring Arts Annual 2025.
“…during the Progressive Era and the New Deal, we built the nation’s civil service systema system that has functioned generally very well throughout the 20th century and well into the 21st.”
This system was built, in large part, to staff the new agencies administering FDRs newly created social safety net i.e. the Social Security Administration, Office of Workers Compensation. the Farm Security Administration, and numerous other three letter agencies.
These agencies were built to ameliorate the suffering of America’s masses of unemployed during the Great Depression and ensure that all workers, past and present, are treated with the dignity we deserve, having produced the wealth of business owners and now oligarchs. From its inception, the programs of FDRs New Deal have been under attack by the same radically conservative elements doing so now.
American labor is weak, production and the wealth associated with it, have been outsourced to developing countries with non-existent labor laws other than taking anyone demanding collective bargaining out behind the toolshed and shooting them.
Government doesn’t care about working Americans anymore, why should they? There are no factories to strike at or shut down. Whether it is Democratic or Republican administrations, our interests come last and those of campaign contributors come first. Their first concern is to eliminate corporate taxes. Second is to reduce government spending on things other than the opaque and bloated contracts they get. At present, this is being accomplished by a wrecking crew named DOGE. They are eliminating the administrative agencies providing what remains of FDRs New Deal.
Their intent is to eliminate the federal government’s need to tax them, along with us, to pay for the microscopic social security check a widow in Arizona, living in a beat down trailer, might receive. They will take the funding these agencies receive to pay for agency staff and the benefits working and tax paying Americans receive.
When that is over, in true neoliberal fashion, they will privatize everything. There will be nothing public.
My hope is that Musk gets ruined when no one will buy his Teslas, opting instead for inexpensive, high quality, Chinese electric cars.
This is it folks, American is collapsing and these people are robbing us. Do you really want your children to grow in this kind and of hellscape? It is for this reason I thank God I never had any biological kids.
Like Mr. Ashbaugh, I too have suffered painful injury from attempting to feed a feral cat. This one was a member of a herd of feral felines being cultivated by a crazy cat lady in my neighborhood, long before J.D. Vance had called out her group. My current cat has been instructed to avoid the company of such furry thugs.
But I took away a different lesson from my experience. It is that the recipients of kindness and generosity can often turn on you viciously, making you suffer for your well-intended naiveté. I hope that DOGE has a few of the humane traps available.
I like that you ask these valid questions in your letter:
“How do we put this pack of feral creatures with their insatiable appetite for destruction into a secure cage for good? How can we protect those sacred values of equality under the law and respect for “inalienable” rights, principles that inspired loyalty to this nation through nearly two-and-a-half centuries?”
I’m still waiting for someone, anyone, to actually answer those questions. Our elected officials certainly are not.
“How can we protect those sacred values of equality under the law and respect for “inalienable” rights, principles that inspired loyalty to this nation through nearly two-and-a-half centuries?
These “inalienable rights,” from its inception, have applied to property holding, Caucasian males. These “inalienable rights” are what have justified America’s imperialism, violence, and theft. This concept of European (Caucasian) culture as a “garden” and the rest of the world a “jungle,” and America as a “shining city upon a hill,” have all been shown, after centuries of wholesale slaughter, as nothing but jingoism and nationalism.
It’s time to redefine what these terms mean and, as our country collapses yet again, to perhaps imbue any new notion of these words with a little humility.
The “rules based order” is a western concept and only meant to secure trade relations that benefit those interests now pillaging our country from within.