I was reaching into a bag of Hill’s Science Diet dog food to scoop out Frankie’s breakfast when I noticed a brown foreign object the size of my palm inside.

It looked like a large piece of bark made of dough nestled inside the kibble. The discovery startled me. In all the years of feeding Frankie, I’d never found an unidentified object inside a bag of commercial dog food.

Frankie had been gassier than usual and didn’t want to eat anything that morning. I wondered if something in his food was making him sick.

I took a picture of it, then called the company to report it. They took all the information from the bag of food and asked me to email them the photo. I also filed a pet food safety report online with the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.

I wanted to alert the federal agency that is responsible for assuring the safety of our nation’s food supply, drugs, pet food, medical devices and cosmetics -- just in case this was part of a larger problem that could affect other pets.

Just two days before this incident, the Trump administration announced that it is seeking to close the FDA office in St. Louis as part of the slashing of jobs and government agencies by the Department of Government Efficiency task force run by billionaire Elon Musk. Since then, the decision was abruptly reversed.

No word yet on how many FDA workers might be fired. Musk and his DOGE accomplices have cut more than 100,000 probationary employees nationwide from the federal workforce -- mostly new or recently promoted employees. Trump and Musk will begin firing permanent employees later this month. The cuts have hit agencies across the country: the Federal Aviation Administration, the National Park Service, the Department of Agriculture, Veterans Affairs, the Internal Revenue Service, the National Institutes of Health and others.

As Sen. Elissa Slotkin pointed out in her response to Trump’s televised address to Congress, Musk and Trump have fired workers who protect our nuclear weapons (many had to be quickly hired back), people in critical safety positions that keep our planes from crashing and researchers trying to find cures and treatments for cancer.

In addition to the concerns about what so many job losses and the Trump trade wars will do to an economy that has already started to weaken under this administration, I’m worried about what these haphazard mass firings mean for our public safety. Think about all the ways we rely on the government to function: for instance, the elderly who depend on Social Security payments and anyone who uses the U.S. Postal Service to deliver payments and bills.

On Joe Rogan’s podcast earlier this month, Musk declared: “Social Security is the biggest Ponzi scheme of all time.” That’s a slap in the face to workers who have spent their careers paying into it. Musk and his team have also started meddling with key payment and contracting systems for Medicare and Medicaid, which insure the elderly and lower-income people. He has said “big money fraud is happening” with these programs. We have no idea what kinds of cuts he’s planning.

I’ve thought about the small ways I’ve interacted with government agencies just in the past week. After an inexplicable experience with American Airlines in January, I filed a complaint, with documentation, to the Department of Transportation. The airline had already reimbursed us for unfounded extra charges, but this week, after receiving the DOT complaint, American sent a letter of apology and a flight credit, admitting our experience had been due to agent error. Prior to this, during weeks of calls and emails, I had been unable to get a single customer service agent to explain what had happened.

Also this week, a Russian cybercrime group, Qilin, claimed responsibility for a ransomware cyberattack on my employer’s parent company, Lee Enterprises. The appropriate federal agencies have been notified. However, the Trump administration also announced that it was rolling back efforts, at the FBI and other agencies, related to countering Russian-based digital and cyber threats. I have no idea how this will affect the ongoing investigation at our parent company. But when your company is threatened by foreign-based criminals, you realize the importance of government agencies that investigate these crimes.

Closer to home, I received a quick reply from the makers of Hill’s Science Diet after I sent the photo. The manufacturer said the object was a clump of crumbs, which may have been coated with fat during the production process. They said these kinds of clumps are typically removed by screening the kibble before packaging.

I hope it’s as harmless as a mass of congealed crumbs, and that the FDA will inform me, and other consumers, if it finds otherwise. But what if we had no independent agency to look into these kinds of problems?

What if we were out of luck and on our own?

We might soon find out.

I struggled with a sensitive stomach decades before reducing inflammation became the buzzy way to improve one’s health.

I believed I was simply prone to gastrointestinal upset. It got significantly worse after the birth of my second child. The recurrent pain got to a point that it forced me to pay attention and figure out what was going on inside my body. A gastroenterologist told me there was inflammation in my gut and prescribed medication -- lots of medication.

I was in the trenches of caring for a toddler and a baby: exhausted, sleep-deprived and stressed. I didn’t have the bandwidth to do much more than simply listen to what the doctors told me to do in order to function. I still didn’t feel great, though.

Over the years, I wanted to find a way out of dependency on prescription drugs. I started consuming more turmeric, known for its anti-inflammatory properties, exercising consistently and incorporating yoga into my schedule. I wasn’t ready to cut out foods that are known to cause more inflammation in our bodies -- sugar, heavily processed and fried foods -- because I love things like fries, doughnuts and samosas.

As the years progressed, I started noticing signs of wear and tear elsewhere. My joints hurt more. My sleep worsened. I felt tired in the afternoons in a way I hadn’t ever before.

Last year, I signed up for a challenge through my gym that required cutting out dairy, eggs, gluten, soy, peanuts, corn and added sugar for two weeks. To my surprise, my joints felt much better. These foods can provoke varying degrees of inflammatory responses, even in people who are not allergic to them. But it was simply not sustainable for me to eliminate all these things from my diet forever. I wasn’t sure how to find out which foods were my personal inflammatory culprits.

Another flare-up of stomach problems led me to a new GI doctor, whose approach radically changed my understanding of gut health. Dr. Faiza Bhatti, with the Mercy IBD and Gastroenterology Center in St. Louis, ran a gamut of tests, including a colonoscopy. Once she ruled out chronic diseases and considered my continued symptoms, she advised me to take some fairly simple steps.

First, she instructed me to remove dairy from my diet for two weeks, keeping everything else the same. Lactose intolerance increases with age. I was also told to keep a journal of what I ate and my symptoms. After two weeks, she said to add the dairy back and eliminate gluten for two weeks -- still tracking my food intake and symptoms. While only 1% of Americans have celiac disease, an actual allergy to gluten, up to 10% can be sensitive to gluten.

Two weeks feels like a manageable amount of time to make a single change to see if it helps you feel better. In my case, the changes helped ease my symptoms, and I now eat far less dairy and gluten than before.

Bhatti also advised me to start a prebiotic and a probiotic to reestablish a healthy gut microbiome -- the ecosystem of microbes that live in your intestines. Reducing dairy and gluten and adding these two supplements has been transformative for my gut health.

It takes a shift in mindset to accept that some of the foods we love may not love us back. But rather than feeling like I can never enjoy another slice of pizza or cake, I know I can -- just far less often and in smaller quantities.

In recent years, there’s been so much research in gut microbiota and their connection to our overall health. These organisms affect everything from IBS symptoms and metabolism to the risks of obesity, certain cancers and depression.

Bhatti told me that not everyone benefits from probiotics, and that it’s important for doctors to first rule out other underlying conditions before recommending supplements. However, most people will benefit from adding more fiber to their diets, she said.

Bhatti taught me that sleep is more critical in maintaining gut health than most people realize. I should have been prioritizing sleep in the same way I did exercise for so many years.

I wish I had made some of these changes many years ago.

But it’s never too late to feel better.

Call it a premonition or a traumatic flashback, but Ryan Cusick knew he would have to leave his country on July 24, 2024 -- the day Donald Trump secured the Republican nomination for president.

Cusick, 42, born and raised in Missouri, identifies as nonbinary and transmasculine. That day in July took him back to when he was a teenager. When Cusick was 14, he lived with his mother and an abusive stepfather. The stepfather eventually ended up in jail.

“When he got out, he walked back into our lives, and I had no say in it,” Cusick said. He left home at 17.

Last summer, he watched political attacks on the trans community ramp up. He feared Trump’s campaign promises to restrict trans rights even more.

“This felt so much like an abuser coming back,” Cusick said. “And I thought, ‘Never again will I sit back and let an abuser come back.’”

Still, it was an extremely painful decision to leave the U.S. He loved St. Louis and his life there. He had a remote job and a great apartment next to a park. He'd worked in medical records for a health care system for nearly a decade. He had found a supportive friend group and had been dating his partner for several years.

But he knew he could not feel safe under a Trump presidency. He worried that federal laws would override protections passed in any state.

So he set his sights on Mexico. In preparation for the move, Cusick used the site Numbeo.com to compare the cost of living, climate and public transit options in hundreds of cities in Mexico. He joined Facebook groups for expats and looked for a place where he could become part of the local community. He picked up daily lessons on Duolingo to supplement the Spanish he remembered from high school.

He wasn’t able to continue his job remotely from another country due to network security issues, so he saved a few paychecks and cashed out his remaining PTO. He hoped it would be enough to live on until he found another job.

He secured an Airbnb in the northern Mexican state of Durango to rent long-term. He packed a carry-on and a backpack.

Cusick boarded a plane to leave on Nov. 4 -- the day before the election. From Durango, he watched the returns come in with a growing sense of dread.

“It was like watching a car wreck that you know is going to happen,” he said.

The early actions of the administration have reaffirmed his decision to leave. On his first day back in the White House, Trump signed an executive order recognizing only two unchangeable sexes -- basically stating people like Cusick did not exist. About 1.6% of U.S. adults identify as transgender or nonbinary, according to a 2022 Pew Research Center survey. Information about transgender people has been removed from government websites. Requests for gender change markers on passports are now being denied. Transgender women are being moved into men’s prisons. Trump wants to remove transgender troops from the military.

“That kind of erasure will never be OK with me,” Cusick said.

He expects he can live frugally off his retirement savings for a couple of years, if needed, and he continues to look for remote work. While he’s befriended a neighbor and gotten to know local shop owners, starting a new life in a country where he knows no one is very difficult.

“At the end of the day, you are 1,500 miles from everyone you know and love,” he said. “It hits me every day.”

It hits hardest on the days when the president signs another anti-trans executive order: “I feel the loneliest when I can’t hug my friends and tell them they do exist, no matter what the government says.”

Mexico has granted him temporary residence to stay for four years. He hired an immigration facilitator to help with visa issues. He can work, access health care and eventually have his status made permanent, if he chooses.

He cried when he got his identification card. It represented safety.

“It was such an emotional day. It means a lot that Mexico is willing to be so open with their immigration practices,” Cusick said.

Still, he hopes that one day he can return home.