1. United States
2. S.D.
3. Letter

The sweeping DOGE job cuts across federal agencies are having severe negative impacts in South Dakota. These cuts are crippling vital services, eroding public safety, damaging conservation efforts, disrupting crucial assistance for farmers and tribes, and undermining the state's thriving tourism industry reliant on national parks. The hasty terminations have put many dedicated public servants out of work, robbing these agencies of skilled professionals and decades of institutional knowledge. South Dakotans have directly felt the effects through reduced disease monitoring from the CDC, stalled USDA farm innovation programs, canceled tribal contracts, frozen refugee resettlement funding, understaffed national parks during peak season, and slashed Fish & Wildlife conservation projects. Federal employees who lost their "dream jobs" in unjustified terminations have shared their disillusionment publicly. These reckless cuts defy logic and undermine government's role in protecting citizens and resources. Robust federal agencies are essential to support South Dakota's agriculture, tribal nations, tourism economy, public lands, and public health infrastructure. The indiscriminate staff purges will only serve to create more problems than solutions. Reinstating these terminated federal personnel and restoring funding to vital programs is crucial. Continuing down this path of cost-cutting austerity will only lead to further degradation of government services that South Dakota communities depend upon. A course correction allowing federal agencies to be properly staffed and funded is urgently needed.