Nick Begich was two weeks into his first term when he signed up to help Elon Musk's cost-cutting team. When the firings reached Alaska, he told the state he wanted to make sure its interests were protected.

Alaska's own Department of Labor has now counted what happened. At the end of 2025, Alaska had 1,607 fewer federal jobs than at the end of 2024. That is a drop of 10.5%. For the year as a whole, federal employment in Alaska fell to its lowest level in more than 35 years.

The Alaska Current put the two stories side by side this week. We checked Begich's words and the job numbers against the original sources.

What Begich said in 2025

On January 16, 2025, Begich announced he had joined the Congressional DOGE Caucus. His office said he "expressed enthusiasm" about it.

"It is time for the American people to have an efficient government that serves them and not the bureaucracy. We can no longer afford to sit by as taxpayers fund an ever-expanding bureaucracy that fails to deliver results."

The caucus platform his office published with the announcement said government agencies, programs "and employees must demonstrate effectiveness," and that agencies and programs "that do not provide value to taxpayers must be reformed or eliminated." (We've written before about what became of that caucus and the debt it was founded to fight.)

Then he cheered DOGE on from his campaign account on X. Popular Information collected the posts:

• February 2, 2025: Musk bragged that "DOGE is working 120 hour a week" while its "bureaucratic opponents optimistically work 40 hours a week." Begich quoted it with one word: "Grindset."
• February 11, 2025: "DOGE finding fraud in your department?" — over a Better Call Saul GIF.
• February 17, 2025: Begich amplified Musk's Social Security database numbers, writing that "According to the Social Security Administration there are over 20 MILLION" people over 100. The new head of Social Security said days later that people listed that way are "not necessarily receiving benefits." They are just old records with no date of death.

That same week, Begich went to Juneau and gave speeches to the Alaska Legislature, the Alaska Municipal League and the Juneau Chamber of Commerce. The Alaska Beacon reported that he "will not seek to stop" the firings, though he said he would try to roll some of them back through the federal budget. Asked who was in charge, he defended Musk:

"Elon Musk may be running that effort, but everything that gets done has to be approved and signed off by the President."

And he asked Alaskans to be patient:

"The process for government reductions in spending is not going to be a perfect one, and I'm not here to represent to you that it will be, but we want to make sure that Alaska's interests are protected."

Asked at the Juneau Chamber about DOGE firing local residents, he said, "There's a lot of waste in government. There's a lot of things that need to be cut." Asked whether Congress should step in to stop DOGE, the Beacon reported, he said he doesn't think so.

What he told the people who lost their jobs

A few days earlier, at an open house in Fairbanks, Begich came face to face with Alaskans who had already been fired. One told him, "I was fired," and said they would probably have to leave Alaska.

According to audio obtained by Popular Information, Begich said he was "not in a position to approve or deny the cuts" — a strange thing for a member of the branch that controls federal spending to say. He said he'd found out about cuts hitting Alaska "on Twitter." When a constituent asked him to publicly denounce the cuts, he refused:

"I'm not going to denounce all cuts. We have to cut."

What the cuts actually cost Alaska

In August 2026, the state Department of Labor and Workforce Development published a full year of federal job data in its Alaska Economic Trends magazine. Karinne Wiebold, a state economist in Juneau, opened by explaining that Trump created DOGE "to drastically reduce the federal workforce." Here is what she found:

• The losses picked up all year. Early in 2025, federal jobs were actually up a little. By the second quarter they were down 454. By the third quarter, down 762. By the fourth quarter, down 1,607 — from 15,374 federal jobs to 13,767.
• Why the number jumped late: federal workers who took the "Fork in the Road" resignation offer stayed on the payroll until September 30, 2025, even though most were no longer working. Their jobs didn't show up as losses until October.
• Over the whole year, Alaska lost about 4.5% of its federal jobs, nearly 700. That put Alaska third among the hardest-hit states. The national drop was 2.9%.
• Alaska lost $36.5 million in federal wages in 2025.
• Federal employment fell to its lowest level in more than 35 years.

The report is honest about what muddies the count. Some fired workers were rehired or put back by court order, and a hiring freeze, early retirements and a long government shutdown all played a part. But none of that changes where Alaska ended up.

Where the jobs went

Alaska's military bases did not protect it. The state's report says nearly half of Alaska's losses came from the Department of Defense — 755 civilian jobs by the end of the year, including 293 at Pacific Air Forces, 168 in Army installation management and 107 in the Army Corps of Engineers.

The other big losses, comparing the end of 2025 to the end of 2024:

• Forest Service: down 180 jobs, 27%
• Bureau of Land Management, whose work includes fighting wildfires: down 133
• NOAA, which manages commercial fisheries and forecasts the weather: down 101, including 50 in Juneau alone
• Fish and Wildlife Service: down 85
• National Park Service: down 65
• Veterans Affairs: down 53
• Housing and Urban Development: 35 jobs in Alaska at the end of 2024, and almost none a year later

Measured over the year as a whole, sixty percent of the job losses came out of Anchorage. Fairbanks, home to Fort Wainwright and Eielson Air Force Base, lost 130 federal jobs, and Juneau lost 51.

What it meant on the ground

At Fort Greely, the missile-defense base near Delta Junction, the dining hall had to cut its hours in October 2025. The disruption lasted almost four months. Alaska Public Media reported that Army contracting documents blamed the lapse on the loss of essential civilian jobs to DOGE's federal workforce cuts, and warned the lapse risked "jeopardizing the readiness" of the people stationed there. An Army spokesperson said the base's mission readiness was never affected.

Begich did not respond to Alaska Public Media's multiple requests for comment about it.

At the National Weather Service, Alaska lost at least 23 employees by March 2025 — more than 10% of the region's workforce — according to KTOO. The agency suspended weather balloon launches from Kotzebue indefinitely because of staffing. Republican Sen. Lisa Murkowski said the cuts "will have real consequences for Alaskans." Begich said weather data was "essential," then said the Weather Service's "staffing and budget challenges" highlighted the need to use third-party data.

In Alaska's fisheries, NOAA officials said the firings and cuts would reduce the services used to manage them. We laid out more of what federal cuts have cost the state in What Alaska's Republicans in Congress Are Costing You.

What the record shows

In January 2025, Nick Begich joined the DOGE Caucus. In February he praised DOGE's "grindset" on X, told Alaskans in Juneau he wanted to make sure the state's interests were protected, and refused when constituents in Fairbanks asked him to denounce the cuts. By the end of 2025, Alaska had 1,607 fewer federal jobs than a year earlier — a 10.5% drop that included 755 Defense Department jobs, 180 in the Forest Service and 101 at NOAA — and $36.5 million less in federal wages.

Source

After Nick Begich sang its praises, DOGE slashed 1,600 Alaska jobs — Matt Acuña Buxton, The Alaska Current, September 15, 2026. Photo: Begich addresses the Alaska Legislature on March 10, 2026 (AP Photo/Becky Bohrer).