On Jan. 28, the Gazette published an article headlined “Trump order sows confusion, fear across the Valley, beyond.” Journalism like this is crucial to understanding how this administration’s actions will impact all of us. But it’s important to look a little deeper.

If their aim is to reduce fraud, waste and corruption to save taxpayer money, the Trump/Musk administration’s first acts — the firing of 17 inspectors general across numerous federal agencies and vowing to eliminate the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) seems an odd way to go about that. The CFPB protects consumers from unfair financial practices. Just two months ago, it distributed $1.8 billion to 4.3 million consumers who had been charged illegal advance fees or subjected to deceptive bait-and-switch advertising by credit repair companies.

Those funds came from civil penalties paid by companies that have violated consumer protection laws.

The Offices of Inspectors General (OIGs) were created by an act of Congress almost 50 years ago as independent entities to eliminate fraud, waste, and corruption in government spending. In 2023, for example, the OIG of the Center for Medicaid and Medicare Services exposed that the for-profit insurer United Healthcare had gamed the Medicare “Advantage” system to extract $7.5 billion from the Medicare system while achieving exactly nothing for patients. Just last week, work by the OIG’s office of the National Science Foundation led to Northeastern University agreeing to refund over $600,000 to the federal government.

So why gut these federal jobs and programs? Could it be because Musk and Trump are billionaires working, not for you, but for themselves and other billionaires with cozy government deals that they do not want anyone to look at closely? The fact of the matter is that low-level government servants are not the ones defrauding taxpayers. It’s people like Musk and Trump and their cronies.

Musk, for example, owns Tesla and SpaceX, companies that have received $18 billion in government contracts over the last 10 years. Trump’s business interests that conflict with his role as president are too numerous to list but include his cryptocurrency and his real estate developments here and in foreign lands.

When Musk was asked by a reporter about his false claim that eliminating foreign aid was justified because the U.S. had planned to send $50 million in condoms for Gaza, Musk simply asserted that he could not be expected to be right all the time. The next time you hear Musk or Trump repeat that they are slashing federal jobs and agencies to get rid of fraud, waste and corruption ask yourself, “where’s the proof of that?” And, by all means, try to find it.

Others who have tried can report that the examples of so-called “waste” being cut are either expenditures that were already exposed as being wasteful (during the previous administration, by the inspectors general, who Musk and Trump have now fired) or are being eliminated on mindless ideological grounds. Like freezing U.S. aid to the program to compensate disabled Vietnamese victims of Agent Orange poison that the U.S. dropped on innocent civilians.

The reality is that the Musk/Trump teams’ dramatic and chaotic cuts are a smokescreen designed to appear as if they are doing something good while allowing the true corruption, by the wealthy and well-connected, to flourish.

The dramatic cuts and spending freezes being ordered are upending lives and destroying desperately needed programs while this administration silences the only truly independent watchdogs. Email Musk’s “Department of Governmental Efficiency” at DOGE@mail.house.gov and tell them to stop protecting billionaires and start protecting us. And then contact your representatives in Washington and ask them to protect the watchdogs.

Elaine Fronhofer of Amherst is an attorney in Amherst and a co-founder of Valley Action.