For the past year, I’ve been volunteering as a pro bono attorney for Lawyers for Good Government’s Fund Protection Clinic. In that role, I advised organizations that had been devastated by the Trump administration’s heavy handed chainsaw cuts to federal grants. I saw amazing organizations wiped out of existence because they dared to care about reducing maternal mortality, mitigate the effects of pollution on communities of color, or perform any climate science at all. 

DOGE didn’t just decimate grants to outside agencies–it annihilated government research targeting weather, disease, and space exploration. Even CISA, the Cybersecurity and Information Security Agency (and my husband’s former employer), saw massive reductions in personnel in 2025, at a time when our international adversaries are actively arming up.

Those government research positions are gone, and it’s not like we can just easily bring those people back. What was once considered a stable, fulfilling career is now known to be a job that can easily be eliminated based on the whims of the current President, a member of his Cabinet, or even a very weird flunky.

I don’t know about you, but watching decades of work and research being gleefully wiped away has infuriated me. When I’m elected to Congress, I will not only work to restore funding to these very important institutions, but I’ll spearhead investigation into how and why DOGE was allowed to cut funding that Congress had authorized. Furthermore, I’ll seek additional protections for federal workers against these kinds of cuts. 

We can be good stewards of the taxpayers’ money without taking a chainsaw to vitally important programs.