It is clear that the federal layoffs and budget cuts are indiscriminate, made without regard to the content of the jobs and programs being eliminated. Some of it is made at targets of opportunity, firing people hired in the last year because they are nominally in a probationary period. Some of it is illegal, done on the assumption that the courts can’t stop all the malfeasance— if courts can stop any of it.
The problem is that the federal government funds lots of small but crucial things. Some examples—
There are lots of environmental projects which don’t cost much, but which are time sensitive. Like keeping sea lampreys out of the Great Lakes. Once the lampreys are endemic and lake trout go extinct, there’s nothing to be done.
Even though corporate pharma makes flu vaccines, the federal government coordinates planning for what goes into them. With the FDA cancelling those meetings, it’s unclear whether those decisions will be made in time— and if there is a vaccine, whether it will be as efficacious as it could have been.
I’m not trying to do a round-up of time-sensitive dangers. The cuts will result in other damage to the environment, to public health, to consumer safety, and to other critical things— in more ways than I could list, and in more ways than I can know in advance. We’ll be seeing fallout from this shit for a long time.