2026-03-10T09:00:36.742Z / 美国有线电视新闻网（CNN）
唐纳德·特朗普总统在第二任期开始时承诺削减“数十亿美元”的政府开支，授权埃隆·马斯克的“政府效率部”（DOGE）削减项目并解雇其认为浪费的员工。
现任和前任政府官员告诉CNN，一年后，几个月前还被宣布为不必要的联邦机构项目和人员削减，已严重阻碍了美国政府应对国内紧急情况、监测恐怖威胁、防范网络攻击、向伊朗传播美国信息以及迅速帮助滞留海外的美国公民的能力。
民主党人和少数共和党人长期以来一直批评DOGE和特朗普政府削减政府项目的方式，警告这对美国国内外都造成了损害。现在，即使马斯克去年春天离开政府后削减仍在继续，随着美国对伊朗发动的打击引发了波及中东的战争，这些削减再次受到审视。
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“我认为这做得太过分了。我觉得太激进、太快、太早了。”宾夕法尼亚州共和党众议员布莱恩·菲茨帕特里克谈到DOGE削减时表示。
菲茨帕特里克曾是联邦调查局（FBI）特别探员和联邦检察官，他告诉CNN，他反对DOGE用“大锤”打击机构的方式，并表示立法者应该审视“这一过程中是否有任何负面影响（以及）是否对政府的任何方面，包括国家安全和国防，造成了负面影响。”
资金削减似乎并未影响军方在战争中的资金分配——尽管DOGE确实提议削减五角大楼的一些项目。尽管如此，立法者已经在讨论需要通过补充资金法案，为国防部提供数百亿美元用于这场战争。
特朗普政府和共和党人则辩称，是民主党人没有资助国土安全部，导致政府对威胁的准备工作受损，而国土安全部因两党互相指责责任而关闭。
“尽管民主党决定关闭国土安全部，但特朗普政府正在努力确保政府安全机构继续以最高效率运作——而且他们确实做到了。”白宫发言人阿比盖尔·杰克逊在一份声明中表示。
一些共和党人也表示，DOGE削减对政府战争应对的影响被夸大了。众议院监督国务院及相关国家安全预算的小组委员会主席马里奥·迪亚斯-巴拉特众议员坚持认为，DOGE削减只消除了浪费，并未影响美国对伊朗开战的能力。
他补充说，他帮助通过国会的支出法案向美国盟友提供了更多资金以对抗中国和伊朗。
“我们投入了更多资金，实实在在的资金，来帮助我们的盟友对抗对手。”迪亚斯-巴拉特告诉CNN，“我们所做的是清除了所有这些垃圾。”
随着战争爆发，滞留在中东的美国人的困惑和沮丧，暴露了前国务院官员所说的，在去年削减和人员流失后，该机构应对危机的能力下降。
打击开始当天，国务院启动了一个24小时待命的工作组来协助中东地区的美国人。然而，直到上周二，国务院紧急呼叫热线的留言仍要求来电者：“此时请勿依赖美国政府提供协助撤离或疏散服务。”该录音随后被更新。
而上周一，国务院领事事务最高官员在X平台（原推特）上发文，敦促滞留公民“立即从中东14个国家撤离”——此时美国政府撤离航班尚未开始，而大多数商业航班已经停飞，这引发了滞留公民的疑问和恐慌。
周四下午，首架载有数百名美国公民的包机抵达美国——距离打击开始已过去五天。国务院一位高级官员表示，此后已从中东组织了二十多架次航班运送数千名美国人。
“最初的信息传达极其糟糕。”一位前官员表示，质疑有多少有危机处理经验的员工被解雇，本可以帮助滞留美国人的工作组。
“政府轻率地解雇了有危机处理经验的人员，现在在一场规模扩大且不断升级的危机中，他们缺乏有经验的后备力量。”另一位有超过十年撤离行动经验的前官员表示。
去年7月的裁员影响了华盛顿特区1,107名文官和246名外交官员，而美国外交关系协会（AFSA）的一份12月报告显示，四分之一的外交官员“辞职、退休、目睹机构解散或被调离岗位”。
国务院驳斥了去年裁员（RIFs）影响其协助中东滞留美国公民或领事行动的说法。
“没有因裁员影响海外协助美国公民的一线工作人员。”国务院一位高级官员表示。
AFSA上周辩称，国务院因失去了拥有“关键地区、危机管理、领事和语言专业知识（包括波斯语和阿拉伯语专家）的资深人员”而实力削弱——这些技能在此时至关重要。
众议院外交事务委员会高级民主党人格雷戈里·米克斯告诉CNN：“对国务院的短视‘掏空’总是有代价的，现在我们正明显看到后果。”
据分享给CNN的电子邮件显示，战争爆发后，几名前国务院官员主动提出协助领事事务，但要么未得到回应，要么被告知“目前没有为去年被解雇人员提供的职位”。
国务院代理发言人汤米·皮戈特周一表示，“数百名经验丰富的人员正在协助工作组”，并且“目前美国人求助的等待时间已大幅减少”。
国务院工作组已直接协助“超过23,000名美国人，并组织了二十多架次包机”，皮戈特补充道。助理国务卿迪伦·约翰逊周一表示，“目前部门包机的可用座位远大于该地区美国人的需求。”
此外，国务院反恐部门内负责反伊朗相关恐怖主义等项目的一个办公室在去年机构重组中被裁撤，其文职人员被解雇。
据前国务院官员透露，该办公室的工作已被转移到一个新部门，现在由承包商和经验有限的员工负责直接处理对伊朗事务。
但除了人员流失外，DOGE削减还凸显了美国本土应对伊朗或其代理人潜在报复性攻击的准备不足。
据现任和前任美国官员及行业高管称，国土安全部网络人员和资源的削减，导致与关键基础设施公司分享潜在伊朗黑客威胁信息的数量较往年同期大幅下降。
在职官员仍在努力弥补缺口——最近几天已向私营公司分享了伊朗黑客技术信息。但行业团体高管注意到，与去年DOGE推动的国土安全部网络安全和基础设施安全局（CISA）及其他部门削减相比，政府网络官员的参与度大幅下降。
“（这）简直无法相比。我的意思是，我们国家正处于战争中，整个中东都面临风险，包括美国公民、美国商业利益和关键依赖领域，但我们没有国土安全部部长或CISA局长。”网络安全公司Gate 15首席执行官安迪·贾博尔表示，他参与了多个与政府交换网络威胁信息的行业团体。
“与私营部门的情报共享速度已‘危险地放缓’。”健康信息共享与分析中心（Health-ISAC）首席安全官埃罗尔·魏斯表示，该中心是另一个行业威胁共享组织。
“要真正保护国土安全，政府必须提供独特、可执行的情报。”魏斯告诉CNN，“否则，美国关键基础设施将面临危险暴露。”
特朗普政府网络安全官员上周与多个行业团体进行了简短通话。官员们称目前没有来自伊朗的重大网络威胁——但一位行业消息人士形容这是“浪费时间”。
在联邦紧急事务管理局（FEMA）——另一个由国土安全部监督、负责联邦灾害应对和紧急状态下政府运作的机构，现任和前任官员表示，过去一年的全面改革已严重削弱了FEMA应对潜在美国本土攻击的能力。
FEMA失去了许多经验丰富的领导层，带走了数十年无法外包或快速替换的专业知识。同时，关键合同、培训、设备、维护和差旅的削减，正在降低国家准备状态并打击机构士气，现任和前任官员警告。
几位消息人士表示，2022年俄罗斯入侵乌克兰时，拜登政府成立了由CISA和FEMA领导的工作组，以监测情报和威胁指标并为潜在的国内攻击做准备。“有人可能会说我们现在也应该这么做。”一位FEMA高级官员告诉CNN。
但资金问题和缩减的运营规模给该机构带来了更大压力。
“我们花了大量时间填补人员空缺、撰写合同备忘录，并应对资金中断问题。”这位高级官员表示，“因为一切都变得更复杂，我们无法将100%的精力投入到潜在事件的准备和就绪状态，而只能投入约50%。”
国土安全部未回复CNN就CISA和FEMA削减对准备工作影响的置评请求。
不止DOGE削减受到审视。据CNN此前报道，就在美国开始军事行动前几天，联邦调查局（FBI）局长卡什·帕特尔解雇了12名负责监测伊朗威胁的反间谍部门特工和工作人员。
这些官员被解雇是因为他们参与了调查特朗普据称在海湖庄园保留机密文件的事件。
解雇削弱了总部位于华盛顿特区的FBI反间谍部门（CI-12）的能力，该部门负责追踪在美国境内活动的外国间谍。
在特朗普第一任期内，CI-12在2020年无人机袭击杀死伊朗伊斯兰革命卫队圣城旅指挥官卡西姆·苏莱曼尼将军后，追踪了伊朗的潜在威胁。
最新的解雇引发了司法部和FBI内部对反恐和情报调查可能因国家安全专家流失而受阻的担忧。
FBI发言人表示，该局“维持着强大的反间谍行动，在全国范围内部署了人员”。
除了军队在战争中的直接作战能力外，政府其他有助于战争成功的工具也已被削弱，现任和前任官员表示。
据一位资深员工称，政府资助的美国之音（VOA）已“沦为昔日的空壳”。该媒体长期被视为美国软实力的重要工具，旨在向封闭社会传播自由信息。
去年被任命为监督VOA的机构代理首席执行官的卡里·莱克试图解雇该政府运营广播公司的大部分员工。上周，一名法官裁定莱克去年非法管理该机构数月并取消了她对VOA大规模裁员的决定，但莱克表示将提起上诉。
尽管VOA在战争开始前召回了一些被休假的员工，但员工告诉CNN，过去一年试图瓦解VOA的努力严重损害了该机构向伊朗快速成功广播的能力——以及在特朗普呼吁伊朗民众“接管政府”时与伊朗民众建立联系的能力。
除了人力流失外，VOA还削减了广播基础设施，去年取消了与卫星提供商的合同，以向中东国家广播。这导致美国对伊朗发动军事行动前一天，VOA的卫星提供商出现中断，造成伊朗广播中断。
“我们曾经拥有一个非常有效的信息战工具，而现在它消失了。”一名VOA员工表示，“你不能在第二天就把它重新启用……更困难的是受众信任，因为我们消失了近一年。”
前国务院官员迈克尔·达芬表示，美国理解伊朗国内局势的能力也下降了。达芬被解雇后目前作为民主党候选人竞选国会席位。
国务院一个负责追踪人权、民主和劳工问题的办公室，其职责已从这些问题转向，这“使我们对中东和伊朗局势的了解受到限制”。
“当你与伊朗血统的人权活动家、公民社会领袖交谈时，他们的信息会被整理成电报。”他表示，“这些信息会被情报界、国务院及其他部门的分析师审查，从而影响我们的外交政策。”
CNN的劳伦·肯特、汉娜·拉宾诺维茨和霍尔姆斯·莱布兰德对此报道有贡献。
‘A shell of our former self’: How Trump and Musk’s spending cuts are hampering US government readiness amid the Iran war
2026-03-10T09:00:36.742Z / CNN
President Donald Trump began his second term with a promise to cut “billions and billions of dollars” in government spending,empowering Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency to eliminate programs and fire workers it deemed wasteful.
One year later, cuts to programs and personnel at federal agencies that had been declared unneeded mere months ago have hampered the US government’s abilities to prepare for domestic emergencies; monitor terror threats; guard against cyber-attacks; broadcast US information into Iran; and quickly help US citizens stranded abroad, current and former government officials told CNN.
Democrats and a handful of Republicans have long criticized the way that DOGE and the Trump administration slashed government programs, warning it harmed the US domestically and abroad. Now the cuts, which continued even after Musk left government last spring, are again being scrutinized as US strikes on Iran have sparked a war that’s spilled out across the Middle East.
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“I think it went overboard. I thought it was too aggressive, too fast, too soon,” GOP Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick of Pennsylvania said of the DOGE cuts.
A former FBI special agent and federal prosecutor, Fitzpatrick told CNN he was against the way DOGE took a “sledgehammer” to agencies, and that lawmakers should look at whether there are “any negative implications from what was done through that process (and) if it’s having any negative impact on any aspect of our government, including our national security and national defense.”
The funding cuts did not appear to have affected the military’s funding for the war — though DOGEdid propose nixing some programs at the Pentagon. Still, lawmakers are already talking about the need to pass supplemental funding to give the Defense Department tens of billions more for the war.
The Trump administration and Republicans argue that it’s Democrats who have harmed government preparedness to threats by not funding the Department of Homeland Security, which is shut down as the two parties point fingers over who’s to blame.
“Despite the Democrats’ decision to shut down the Department of Homeland Security, the Trump Administration is working diligently to ensure government security apparatuses continue to operate at the highest levels – and they are,” White House spokeswoman Abigail Jackson said in a statement.
Some Republicans also say the impact of the DOGE cuts to the government’s war response is overstated. GOP Rep. Mario Diaz-Balart, who chairs the House subcommittee that oversees the State Department and related national security budgets, maintained that the DOGE cuts only eliminated waste and did not impact the country’s ability to go to war with Iran.
The spending legislation he helped pass through Congress gave more money to US allies to confront China and Iran, he argued.
“We put more money, actual real hard money, into helping our allies confronting our adversaries” Diaz-Balart told CNN. “What we did is we got rid of all this trash that was there.”
The confusion and frustration from Americans who were stranded in the Middle East as the war began laid bare what former State Department officials said was the agency’s diminished ability to quickly and clearly respond to the crisis following last year’s cuts and loss of personnel.
The State Department launched a 24/7 task force to assist Americans in the Middle East on the day the strikes began. However, until last Tuesday, the message on a State Department emergency call line told callers: “Please do not rely on the US government for assisted departure or evacuation at this time.” The recording has since been updated.
And last Monday, a post on X from the top official for consular affairs sparked questions and fear among stranded citizens as she urged them to “depart now” from 14 countries in the Middle East — before US government evacuation flights had begun and while the majority of commercial flights were suspended.
The first chartered evacuation flight carrying hundreds of American citizens arrived in the US last Thursday afternoon — five days after strikes began. The Department has since organized more than two dozen flights from the Middle East for thousands of Americans, a top official said.
The initial messaging was abysmal, one former official said, questioning how many people were laid off who could have helped the task force for stranded Americans.
“The administration thoughtlessly terminated people with crisis experience, and now they’re left without depth in the bench in the middle of a wide scale and broadening crisis,” said another former official with more than a decade experience in evacuation operations.
Terminationslast July affected 1,107 civil service and 246 foreign service officers in Washington, DC, and a quarter of the foreign service “resigned, retired, (have)seen their agencies dismantled, or been removed from their posts” since last January, according to a December report from the American Foreign Service Association (AFSA), the union representing foreign service officers.
The State Department rejected the assertion that last year’s reductions in force (RIFs) impacted their assistance to US citizens stranded in the Middle East or to State’s consular operations.
“There were no RIFs that affected our overseas operations that are working in the field to assist Americans,” a senior State Department official said.
The AFSA argued last week State has been weakened by losing experienced personnel with “critical regional, crisis management, consular, and language expertise, including specialists in Farsi and Arabic — skills that are indispensable in moments like this,” the association argued last week.
Rep. Gregory Meeks, the top Democrat on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, told CNN: “There was always going to be a cost to the shortsighted gutting of the State Department, and now we’re plainly seeing the consequences.”
Several former State officials reached out offering to help with consular affairs after the war started, but either received no response or were told there were “no opportunities” for those who were laid off last year, according to emails shared with CNN.
State Department principal deputy spokesperson Tommy Pigott said Monday that “hundreds of experienced personnel are working on the task force” and that “there is currently no wait time for Americans reaching out for assistance.”
The State Department task force has directly assisted “over 23,000 Americans and organized two dozen charter flights,” Pigott said. Assistant Secretary of State Dylan Johnson said Monday that “at this time, seats available on the Department’s charter options are significantly greater than the demand from Americans in the region.”
Separately, a State Department office within its counterterrorism division that oversaw initiatives including countering Iran-linked terrorism was eliminated during last year’s agency reorganization and its civil servants laid off.
Work the office was doing was transferred to a new one now staffed with contractors and employees with limited experience working directly on counter-Iran initiatives, according to a former State Department official.
But beyond just the loss of personnel, the DOGE-led cuts at the State Department created a culture in which career staff are afraid to push back against political leadership for fear of retaliation, former officials told CNN.
“When you have people who are only politically oriented and want to appear like they’re following the Trump administration, they’re less likely to speak up when there’s lack of preparation,” another former State official said.
The DOGE cuts have also put a spotlight on domestic preparedness for potential retaliatory attacks from Iran or its proxies on the US homeland.
Cuts to cyber personnel and resources at the Department of Homeland Security have meant less information-sharing with critical infrastructure firms on potential Iranian hacking threats than in similar situations in years past, according to current and former US officials and industry executives.
Officials still on the job are trying to pick up the slack — and have shared information on Iranian hacking techniques with private companies in recent days. But executives at industry groups have noticed a sharp drop in the level of engagement from government cyber officials compared to before last year’s DOGE-driven cuts at DHS’s Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) and other disruptions at the department.
“[T]here’s no comparison. I mean, our nation’s at war, the entire Middle East is being exposed to risk, including Americans and American business interests and critical dependencies, and we don’t have a DHS secretary or CISA director,” said Andy Jabbour, CEO at cybersecurity firm Gate 15, who is involved with multiple industry groups that trade cyberthreat information with the government.
The pace of intelligence sharing with the private sector has “dangerously slowed,” said Errol Weiss, chief security officer of the Health Information Sharing and Analysis Center (Health-ISAC), another industry threat-sharing group.
“To truly secure the homeland, the government must bring its unique, actionable intelligence to the table,” Weiss told CNN. “Otherwise, the US critical infrastructures are dangerously exposed.”
Trump administration cybersecurity officials held a short call last week with multiple industry groups. Officials relayed that there were no major cyber threats from Iran for the time being — but an industry source on the call described it as “a waste of time.”
At the Federal Emergency Management Agency — another agency overseen by DHS, charged with federal disaster response and keeping the government operational during emergencies — current and former officials say an overhaul during the last year has significantly weakened FEMA’s ability to respond to potential attacks on US soil.
FEMA has lost many of its most seasoned leaders, taking with them decades of expertise that can’t be outsourced or quickly replaced. At the same time, cuts to key contracts, trainings, equipment, maintenance and travel are reducing national preparedness and tanking morale at the agency, the current and former officials warned.
When Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022, the Biden administration formed a CISA and FEMA-led task force to monitor intelligence and threat indicators and prepare for a possible domestic attack, several sources said. “One could make the argument that we should be doing the same thing now,” one senior FEMA official told CNN.
But funding problems and scaled-back operations are putting pressure on the agency more broadly.
“We’re spending a tremendous amount of time on filling staffing gaps, writing contract memos, and dealing with the fact we’re in a lapse,” the senior official said. “Because everything is more complicated, rather than being able to put 100% of our effort on preparedness and readiness for a potential incident, we’re maybe able to put 50% of our attention on that.”
DHS did not reply to CNN’s request for comment about preparedness and the effect of cuts at CISA and FEMA.
It’s not just DOGE cuts that are under scrutiny. Just days before the US began military operations, FBI Director Kash Patel fired a dozen agents and staff members from a counterintelligence unit tasked with monitoring threats from Iran, CNN previously reported.
The officials were removed because they were involved in the investigation into Trump’s alleged retention of classified documents at Mar-a-Lago.
The dismissals hamstrung the Washington, DC-based FBI counterintelligence unit, known as CI-12, that tracks foreign spies operating on US soil.
In Trump’s first term, CI-12 tracked potential threats from Iran following the 2020 drone strike that killed Gen. Qasem Soleimani, then-leader of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps Quds Force.
The latest firings only added to concerns inside the Justice Department and FBI that counterterrorism and intelligence investigations could become hampered by a loss of national security experts, multiple sources familiar with the matter said.
An FBI spokesperson said the bureau “maintains a robust counterintelligence operation, with personnel all over the country.”
Beyond the military’s kinetic ability to fight a war, other tools in the government’s arsenal that help determine success have been diminished, current and former officials say.
Voice of America, the government-funded US broadcaster, has become, according to one veteran VOA employee, “a shell of our former self.” The media outlet has long been seen as an important tool of American soft power and bringing the free flow of information to closed societies.
Kari Lake, who was named acting-CEO of the agency that oversees VOA last year, tried to fire most of the government-run broadcaster’s staff. Last week, a judge ruled Lake unlawfully ran the agency for several months last year and voided mass layoffs she carried out at VOA, but Lake says the agency will appeal.
While VOA brought back some furloughed employees before the war began, employees told CNN the efforts over the past year to dismantle Voice of America significantly harmed the agency’s ability to quickly and successfully broadcast in Iran — and to connect with Iranians as Trump was calling on them to “take over your government.”
In addition to the loss of manpower, VOA cut its broadcast infrastructure, canceling contracts with satellite providers last year to broadcast into Middle Eastern countries, according to VOA employees. That contributed to a broadcast outage in Iran the day before US military operations began when the agency’s satellite provider faced disruptions.
“We had a really good tool in the information war, and now it’s gone,” said the VOA employee. “You can’t just flip it on the next day. … And then I think even more difficult is the audience trust, because we disappeared for almost a year.”
The US ability to understand what is happening on the ground inside Iran has fallen, too, argued Michael Duffin, a former State Department official who was laid off and is now running for Congress as a Democrat.
An office within the State Department that tracked human rights, democracy and labor had its mandate shifted away from those issues, which “has made us limited in our view into what’s happening in the Middle East and Iran,” he said.
“When you’re talking to a human rights activist, a civil society leader of Iranian descent, who’s living in the UAE or Oman or elsewhere, that information goes into a cable,” he said. “That information is reviewed, seen by analysts in the intelligence community, analysts at the State Department and elsewhere, and it informs our foreign policy.”
CNN’s Lauren Kent, Hannah Rabinowitz and Holmes Lybrand contributed to this report.