A Department of Education employee was attending a funeral this week when she got the call: She was being placed on administrative leave because she works on projects that exclude black students from, among others, federal government programs. Let’s connect.
A disabled veteran employed by the Department of Veterans Affairs became emotional when he heard about the elimination of telework options, unsure if it would mean the end of his job caring for fellow soldiers. .
A Federal Trade Commission employee was so upset that he asked family members not to discuss politics on non-confidential emails. Across government agencies, workers looked at each other nervously, wondering if a colleague would report them, accusing them of resisting the new administration’s move to cut some programs. .
President Trump’s rapid push to overhaul the federal bureaucracy in his first days in office has created a mix of fear, anger and confusion across the workforce.
More than two dozen employees across the government, many of whom spoke on the condition of anonymity out of fear of retaliation, described how the agencies will implement the new policies and the toll on workers’ careers and families. Uncertainty to assess impact. As the nation’s largest employer, upheaval in the federal government can reverberate in communities across the country.
Beginning on Inauguration Day, orders and memos followed, many framed in the derisive tone of campaign rhetoric: shutting down “radical and wasteful” diversity programs in federal agencies; eliminating civil service protections from part of the federal workforce; The end of remote work, an administration memo claimed, had left federal office buildings “mostly empty” and downtown Washington a “national embarrassment.”
All new hires were frozen, job offers were rescinded, scientific meetings were canceled and federal health officials were temporarily barred from communicating with the public, a directive that Some considered it so broad that it even extended to outside purchase orders for lab supplies.
For more than two million federal workers, nearly four-fifths of whom live outside the Washington area, change is inevitable whenever a new administration takes office. But few expected it to come at this speed and scale.
“They are being tolerated in the most brutal and painful way imaginable,” said Max Steyer, president of the Partnership for Public Service, a nonprofit that promotes excellence and best practices in the federal government. Works for Mr Steyer said he was deeply concerned about the consequences of Mr Trump’s rapid changes on the country’s ability to deal with a range of threats from terrorism to pandemics.
He said that the desire to change things is reasonable. But “the pace is unnecessary and destructive,” he added.
Federal employees looked to their supervisors for guidance, but said they often had nothing to give, as they tried to interpret brief orders and memos with few details. For example, the memo back from the office stated that employees with disabilities could be exempt, but it wasn’t clear what kind of disability might qualify. Some managers said they didn’t know much more than what was in the news. Adding to the panic were remarks from the president himself, who suggested Friday that he might consider closing the Federal Emergency Management Agency, which employs 20,000 workers nationwide.
The Trump administration defended the actions in a statement, calling them “exciting steps to build a federal workforce based on merit, excellence and achievement, so that we have a government that serves the public efficiently and effectively.” “
“We have already saved millions of hard-earned taxpayer dollars that are no longer directed toward DEIA programs that are hard-earned taxes,” the statement said, citing diversity, equity, inclusion and access efforts. Wastes millions of taxpayer dollars and discriminates against federal workers.” .
Donald F. Kettle, an emeritus professor at the University of Maryland who studies the civil service, said there is broad consensus among experts that the civil service needs changes.
“It is very difficult to hire, very difficult to fire, and there is little match between the civil service system and the ability of government to meet the challenges of the 21st century,” Dr Kettle said.
But he said many of the changes proposed by the Trump administration would be counterproductive. “They are more focused on changing the balance of power than improving the outcomes of government,” he said.
The mood inside federal offices remained tense and foreboding. An employee of the Department of Homeland Security said staff felt at risk of being fired at any time. An employee said that whenever a meeting was called in the commerce department, the employees panicked.
Some federal employees said the isolation is deepened by the fact that most of their colleagues are Americans See Federal Government As bloated and inefficient. Some said that reform would be healthy and welcome if done thoughtfully. But many noted that they have accepted significant pay cuts to work for the government because they believe in public service — issuing Social Security checks, securing air travel and inspecting food. , among other characters.
“The reality is that the American economy needs the work of my agency,” said Colin Smalley, a geologist with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and local president of the International Federation of Professional and Technical Engineers. “We keep construction projects going, ports and waterways open, power grids working, and we protect communities from natural disasters and help affected communities recover. Harming our mission hurts the public. It hurts.
Adding to the anxiety was a directive from the Office of Personnel Management directing agency heads by Jan. 24 to send the names of those still in their probationary periods, specifically one or two of their jobs. Within the year.
According to a copy obtained by The New York Times, the directive states that such employees “may be terminated during this period without triggering appeal rights,” and that managers must determine whether to retain them. Should be kept.
Jacqueline Simon, gave The policy director of the American Federation of Government Employees, which has about 300,000 active members in dozens of agencies, said efforts to terminate federal employees during their probationary period could have a detrimental effect on government services.
For example, he said, employees of the Food Safety and Inspection Service, who work in meat and poultry plants to prevent diseased animals and other contaminants from entering the food supply, often within a year. Leave because the work is getting less and less.
“It’s not a job you stay in long,” Ms. Simon said. “It’s a disgusting, horrible, horrible thing to do.” If the Trump administration were to remove everyone in the service who was still on probation, he added, there would be a severe shortage of inspectors at meat processing plants.
A lawyer for a federal enforcement agency said he employs a team of more than a dozen lawyers, more than half of whom are still in their probationary period. If the team loses all of its members still on probation, it would be “catastrophic” for the team’s ability to carry out its law enforcement responsibilities, the attorney said.
One of the biggest changes Mr. Trump made in his first week was to order federal workers to return to the office full-time by the end of next month, ending years of flexible telecommuting. End the policy, which in many offices predates the pandemic. For some who want to continue working for the government, this may mean selling their homes, changing their children’s schools and traveling hundreds of miles in a matter of weeks. New mothers are debating whether they will be able to return from maternity leave, and couples are forced to choose who to keep their current jobs.
Many offices currently do not have the capacity to accommodate all of the employees returning. This, some claim, is the whole point. Shortly after the November election, Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy, the men tapped to rebuild Mr. Trump’s administration, wrote In a Wall Street Journal op-ed: “Requiring federal employees to come to the office five days a week will result in a wave of voluntary layoffs that we welcome.”
“I think we know where it looks like he’s trying to go, which is to force people to leave,” said Rep. Glenn Ivey of Maryland, a Democrat whose district includes tens of thousands. It is home to federal workers. “They’re going to try to fire a lot of federal employees, and then replace them with political loyalists.”
The administration’s efforts are already being challenged in court by unions and other groups, which argue, among other things, that lifting civil service protections runs afoul of laws governing federal workers.
Among the first to feel the direct impact of the president’s new policies were employees working on diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives and programming. Mr. Trump ordered the immediate closure of all such offices, placing their staff on administrative leave until 5 p.m. Wednesday, and ordering agencies to plan to lay them off by Jan. 31. The management also threatened the employees with “negative consequences”. If they fail to report colleagues violating orders within 10 days, set up a special email account for such reports.
A Department of Education employee who was placed on leave while at a funeral said she worked on a popular program connecting students with scholarships and industry leaders, and black people getting involved in such government programs. had help which they often did not know about. i Different communicationsthe Trump administration has called such efforts “harmful” and “wasteful”.
“I think if it’s hurtful, I’m proud to provide that hurt — to empower the community to do better because we’re awesome,” he said. “We don’t have access to the racial wealth and kinship that they have, so we have to teach people how to make it for themselves.”
In a workforce that is about 20 percent black, many employees said the move could have another consequence: making the federal government whiter and less diverse.
By the end of the week, some employees wearily said they didn’t know how much longer they could hang on. Many described the situation as reminiscent of the McCarthy era, and were disappointed to see how quickly leaders in his office acquiesced.
At the Department of Labor, staff members noticed a colleague who had recently been recruited to a civil service position because she was a former political appointee. One employee said her manager asked her to scrub the website not only of the words “diversity, equity and inclusion” as required by the executive order, but also references to “underserved” and “disadvantaged communities.” Also from Afterward, she said, she went into a closet, called her mother and began to cry.
On Tuesday morning, Moriah Lee, a NASA analyst, joined a virtual town hall to learn what all the orders would mean for her small team, which oversees and audits projects in the space program. She said the acting supervisors, whom she had known personally for years, made it clear they were not inclined to show flexibility.
Gone was a weekly speaker series organized by the Diversity Program, which brought in deaf people, war veterans and others to share their experiences. He lost his ability to live in Nashville and commute to an office two hours away in Huntsville, Ala., twice a month.
After the meeting, he and his colleagues went back to work. They were flustered, he said, but not scared. “Those are the people who are operating in the most fear,” he said.
But the change to remote work combined with other instructions was too much for him. And so Ms. Lee sent in her notice: Nearly six years after starting work for the federal government, she was resigning.
Kate Kelly, Hamid Aliaziz And Sheryl Gay Stolberg Contributed reporting from Washington.
