The household of a Black federal employee who died at her job two months in the past believes her stress and uncertainty concerning the present White Home administration’s sweeping overhaul of federal companies contributed to their beloved one’s loss of life.
Monique Lockett died on Feb. 18 at her job on the Social Safety Administration’s campus simply exterior Baltimore.
She walked into the constructing, fell asleep at her desk, and by no means awoke, in response to a police report cited by CNN. She was laid to relaxation on March 14 in Randallstown, Maryland.
She labored for the SSA for 25 years and was simply 5 years from retirement.
Within the weeks main as much as her loss of life, Monique’s sister Ksha mentioned Monique was deeply troubled by how Elon Musk’s agenda as head of the Division of Authorities Effectivity to hold out main federal spending cuts and mass layoffs may impression her job.
“My sister had lots of nervousness across the modifications that had been occurring in different companies and, inevitably, what would occur to Social Safety,” Ksha informed CNN. “She was involved concerning the total well-being of all people that she labored with as a result of it was annoying for lots of people.”
In line with a spokesperson for the Workplace of the Chief Medical Examiner of Maryland, Lockett died of hypertensive atherosclerotic heart problems, which causes plaque buildup within the arteries. Monique’s sister mentioned that her sister additionally had hypertension and was overweight.
A 2019 medical journal cited by the Nationwide Institutes of Well being states that power psychological stress can improve the chance of atherosclerotic ailments in addition to strokes and coronary heart assaults.
It’s unclear what precisely triggered Lockett’s deadly well being problems on the day of her loss of life, however Ksha believes stress might need been an element. She famous that Monique was additionally feeling undervalued at her job in her last days.
“It was very upsetting to her to listen to that what they did wasn’t valued, what they did wasn’t essential and definitely that what they did was wasteful,” Ksha mentioned.
Co-workers informed police that Monique didn’t show “seen indicators of misery” earlier than she fell asleep at her desk. Paramedics spent about 40 minutes attempting to revive her, however had been unsuccessful of their life-saving makes an attempt. The 53-year-old was pronounced useless on the scene.
“What occurred to Monique was really unhappy and tragic, actually shook me to the core,” an SSA worker informed CNN.
A former SSA employee said that company workers have obtained a number of emails from the Trump administration inquiring about their productiveness ranges, which has had a “whiplash impact” on the workforce.
“It’s making a stage of hysteria that’s making it arduous to do their jobs. These are good people who find themselves being traumatized,” the previous worker mentioned.
Monique was an info know-how specialist within the SSA’s Workplace of Programs Structure, which creates databases for delicate knowledge maintained by the company. A former colleague mentioned she was “one among our greatest” and “very accustomed to the prevailing knowledge repositories that we now have on the company.”
Within the months since Donald Trump took energy within the White Home, administration officers have granted a number of DOGE representatives entry to delicate knowledge on hundreds of thousands of People to facilitate the quasi-agency’s purported goal of discovering whether or not fraud is occurring within the Social Safety fee system.
Final month, billionaire U.S. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick remarked that if SSA missed sending a fee to his 94-year-old mother-in-law she would merely wait till subsequent month and wouldn’t name in to complain, utilizing her instance to counsel that “a fraudster at all times makes the loudest noise” and solely somebody defrauding the system would complain a few missed fee as a substitute. (The Day by day Beast reviews that information point out Geri Lambert, Lutnick’s mother-in-law, lives with him and his spouse of their Higher East Aspect penthouse.)
Elon Musk voiced his disapproval of the SSA throughout a Feb. 28 interview with podcaster Joe Rogan, calling the company “the most important Ponzi scheme of all time.”
In an interview with Fox Enterprise, Musk mentioned “the waste and fraud in entitlement spending” is the “massive one to eradicate.”
Trump has said that he is not going to minimize Social Safety, Medicaid, or Medicare advantages, however in a March 11 “truth test” report from the White Home, the administration reported that the SSA has made an estimated $72 billion in improper funds between 2015 and 2022.
