Why Team Trump should beware its job-slashing triumphalism

The work the Department of Government Efficiency and the overall Trump administration are doing to cut federal fat, make the executive branch more accountable to taxpayers and drive out woke ideology is crucial and welcome.Leftist ideologues have parasitized and mushroomed the federal bureaucracy, using their position and power to advance poisonous politics on race and gender and perilous policies on energy and economics.But those people are a loud and obnoxious minority; reformers from the president to Elon Musk on down must beware the perils of gleefully declaring how much they enjoy making tens of thousands unemployed.Yes, the government has grown too vast and byzantine, so some of these normie workers necessarily will face the chop. Especially given the mediocre results they deliver for the taxpayers on health, housing, education and everything else, year after year after year. But most of the federal workers clock on for the same reasons everyone else does: just to keep a roof over the family’s heads and food on the table — not to ram progressive ideology down our throats. Letting someone go — apart from the most obnoxious of ideologues — is no cause for celebration. It was ugly in 2019 when Joe Biden told coal miners losing their jobs they’d need to learn to code.Even progressives who hate hate hate fossil fuels agreed. If and when Musk and his DOGE crew lay waste to the federal workforce and shut down government-funded operations around the country, remember that these people have family and friends who will suffer the financial hit.It’s not just wrong for our leaders to overly relish what is necessary and solemn — it’ll come back to bite them when elections roll back ’round in districts across the country that bear the brunt of the hit.So, Mr.President, let’s leave the sophomoric triumphalism for cognitively impaired lib gerontocrats, social-media nobodies and the whole crowd of MAGA kibitzers.

(And tell Elon to knock it off, too.)...