When Will the Right Stop Bashing Government Workers?

When Will the Right Stop Bashing Government Workers?

When Will the Right Stop Bashing Government Workers?

We need to respect government workers’ vital service as being separate from the corruption and bureaucracy that have tarnished Washington’s reputation.

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In the hours and days after 9/11, there was a sudden respect and solidarity with the government workers—firefighters, police and other rescue workers—who risked their lives to reduce the devastating losses of the attack on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. This respect quickly dissipated once there were no more lives that needed to be saved, and the World Trade Center became a site for clean-up, rather than tragedy. Ten years later, government workers are actively bashed, rather than celebrated.

The Nation‘s Katrina vanden Heuvel explains on Morning Joe that currently, the government is stacked against the people. As Americans, vanden Heuvel argues, we need to not only recapture our government to once again make it of, by and for the people, but also respect government workers’ vital service as separate from the corruption and bureaucracy inside of Washington. Read her column on the topic here.

Anna Lekas Miller

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Even before February 28, the reasons for Donald Trump’s imploding approval rating were abundantly clear: untrammeled corruption and personal enrichment to the tune of billions of dollars during an affordability crisis, a foreign policy guided only by his own derelict sense of morality, and the deployment of a murderous campaign of occupation, detention, and deportation on American streets. 

Now an undeclared, unauthorized, unpopular, and unconstitutional war of aggression against Iran has spread like wildfire through the region and into Europe. A new “forever war”—with an ever-increasing likelihood of American troops on the ground—may very well be upon us.  

As we’ve seen over and over, this administration uses lies, misdirection, and attempts to flood the zone to justify its abuses of power at home and abroad. Just as Trump, Marco Rubio, and Pete Hegseth offer erratic and contradictory rationales for the attacks on Iran, the administration is also spreading the lie that the upcoming midterm elections are under threat from noncitizens on voter rolls. When these lies go unchecked, they become the basis for further authoritarian encroachment and war. 

In these dark times, independent journalism is uniquely able to uncover the falsehoods that threaten our republic—and civilians around the world—and shine a bright light on the truth. 

The Nation’s experienced team of writers, editors, and fact-checkers understands the scale of what we’re up against and the urgency with which we have to act. That’s why we’re publishing critical reporting and analysis of the war on Iran, ICE violence at home, new forms of voter suppression emerging in the courts, and much more. 

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