Trump’s moves to undermine the federal bureaucracy raises fear and confusion
One of the employees of the Ministry of Education was attending the funeral this week when she received the call: it was placed on an administrative leave because it works in projects linking black students, among others, with federal government programs.
An old disabled warrior working in the Ministry of Affairs of the Veterans Affairs became emotionally when he heard about canceling the remote work options, and it was not sure whether that would mean the end of his job in caring for his soldiers.
One of the employees of the Federal Trade Committee was so worried that he had asked family members not to talk about politics through uneven lines. And throughout the government agencies, the workers looked at each other with tension, and wondering whether one of their colleagues would be informed of them, accusing them of resisting the movement of the new administration to end certain programs.
President Trump’s rapid efforts to reform the federal bureaucracy in his early days in his position with a mixture of fear, anger and confusion throughout the workforce.
Dozens of employees across the government, many of whom spoke on the condition that their identity is not disclosed due to fears of revenge, described agencies that suffer from uncertainty about how new policies are implemented and workers who are trying in a feverish to evaluate the impact on their careers and their families. As the largest employment in the country, the federal government turmoil can resonate in societies throughout the country.
Starting on the day of the inauguration, orders and notes were revealed one by one, and many of them were formulated with a quarrelsome tone of the election campaign: the closure of “radical and wasted” diversity programs in federal agencies; And stripping the protection of civil service from a share of the federal workforce; The completion of remote work, which one of the administration’s notes claimed that he left the buildings of the federal offices “often empty” and made the center of Washington “a national embarrassment.”
All new appointments were frozen, job offers, scientific meetings were canceled, and federal health officials were temporarily prevented from communicating with the public, the guidance that some understood as so wide that it extended to issuing external purchase orders for laboratory supplies.
For more than two million federal workers, approximately four fifths live outside the Washington region, change is inevitable when a new administration takes power. But a few are the ones who expected it to come so quickly and this range.
“They have been turned upside down in the most brutal and shocking way that can be imagined,” said Max Stir, head of the Public Service, a non -profit organization that enhances excellence and best practices in the federal government. Mr. Stir said he had deep concerns about the consequences of the rapid changes made by Mr. Trump to the country’s ability to face a set of threats, from terrorism to epidemics.
He said that ambition to change matters is reasonable. He added that “the speed is unnecessary and destroyed.”
Federal employees are looking for their supervisors to obtain guidance, but they said they have nothing often offered, as they try to explain orders and brief notes with a few details. For example, the return note to the office stated that employees with disabilities can be exempted, but it was not clear what kind of disability may be eligible. Some managers said that they know nothing but what was reported in the news. The statements of the president himself, who suggested on Friday, may consider the closure of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, which employs 20,000 workers across the country.
A spokesman for the Personnel Management Office defended these procedures in a statement, describing it as “exciting steps to build a federal labor force based on merit, excellence and achievement, so that we can obtain a government that serves the public effectively and efficiently.”
The statement said: “We have already saved millions of taxpayers that we got hard for the same and that are no longer directed to the Deia programs that wereted millions of dollars in the tax we got hard and distinguished against federal employees,” referring to the efforts of diversity, fairness, inclusion and accessibility . .
Donald F. said. Kittel, an honorary professor at the University of Maryland, who studies the civil service, is that there is a large -scale consensus among experts that the civil service needs changes.
“It is very difficult to employ, it is very difficult to dispense with service, and the congruence between the civil service system and the capabilities the government needs to deal with the challenges of the twenty -first century is very little.”
But he said that many of the changes suggested by the Trump administration would have counterproductive. He said: “They focus more on changing the balance of power more than their focus on improving the government’s results.”
Inside the federal offices, the mood was tense and anticipated. An employee of the Ministry of Internal Security said that the employees felt the risk of expulsion at any moment. One of the employees of the Ministry of Commerce said that the employees were terrifying whenever a meeting was called.
Some federal employees said that isolation was deepened because of the fact that most of their American colleagues See the federal government As the enlarged and ineffective. Some have said that the reform, if it is thought well, will be healthy and welcome. But many indicated that they accepted major wages to work in the government because they believe in public service, such as issuing social security checks, maintaining air travel safety, and inspecting food, among other roles.
“The truth is that the American economy needs a work and agency,” said Colin Samali, a geologist in the American Army’s engineers and head of the International Professional Engineers and Technicians. “We continue construction projects, open ports and waterways, work to operate electricity networks, protect societies from natural disasters and help the affected societies to recover. Harming our mission is harmful to the public.”
An anxiety increased the issuance of a directive from the Personnel Management Office orders the heads of agencies to hand over the names of those who are still in the test period by January 24, usually within a year or two of their appointment.
The guidance indicated that these employees “can end their service during that period without activating the appeal rights”, and that managers should determine whether they should be kept, according to a copy obtained by the New York Times.
Jacqueline Simon, the The director of policy in the American Federation of government employees, which includes about 300,000 active members in dozens of agencies, said that attempts to end the service of federal employees who are still in test periods may have harmful effects on government services.
For example, she said that the employees of the Food and Inspection Safety Department, who work in meat and poultry factories to prevent sick animals and other pollutants from entering food supplies, often leave within a year because the job is very depleted.
“It is not a job you can stay for a long time,” said Ms. Simon. She added that if the Trump administration removed every person in the service still under surveillance, there will be a severe shortage of inspectors in meat treatment factories.
A lawyer at a federal enforcement agency said he is working in a team of more than ten lawyers, more than half of them are still in the test period. The lawyer said that if the team lost all its members who are still under observation, it would be “catastrophic” for the team’s ability to assume its responsibilities in the field of law enforcement.
One of the most comprehensive changes made by Mr. Trump in his first week was the matter of federal employees to return to their fully -time offices by a later time next month, ending years of flexible remote work policy, whose history dates back to many offices to a long time before . For some who want to continue working for the government, this may mean selling homes, changing children’s schools, and moving hundreds of miles within weeks. New mothers discuss whether they can return from maternity leave, and husbands are forced to choose who will keep their current functions.
Many offices currently do not have enough space for all employees to return. Some believe that this is the poem. Shortly after the November elections, Elon Musk and Vivic Ramasuami, the two men appointed by Trump to reshape the government, did, books In an editorial of the Wall Street Journal: “The demand of federal employees to come to the office five days a week will lead to a wave of voluntary service ends that we welcome.”
“I think we know where he is trying to go, which is to force people to resign,” said Representative Glenn Fevi of Maryland, a democrat whose region includes tens of thousands of federal workers. “They will try to force many federal employees to leave their work, and then replace them with political loyalists.”
The efforts of the administration are already being stabbed in court by unions and other groups, which are arguing, among other things, that raising the protection measures of civil service contradicts the laws that govern federal workers.
Among the first to feel the direct influence of the new President’s policies, the employees working on the initiatives and programs of diversity, equality and inclusion. Mr. Trump ordered the immediate closure of all these offices, with their employees put on an administrative vacation by Wednesday at 5 pm. The agencies ordered plans to lay off them by January 31. The administration also threatened the employees with “severe consequences.” If they fail to report colleagues who unite orders within 10 days, prepare a special email account for such reports.
The employee of the Ministry of Education, who was granted a leave while attending a funeral, said that she worked in a famous program linking students with scholarships and industry leaders, and helped blacks to benefit from government programs that they often did not know about their existence. in Various communicationsThe Trump administration has described such efforts as “harmful” and “a waste”.
She said: “I think that if this is harmful, I am proud to cause this damage – and enable society to be better because we are wonderful.” “We do not have the ability to reach the wealth of generations and favoritism that they have, so we have to teach people how to achieve this for themselves.”
In a black force that constitutes approximately 20 percent, many employees said that there may be another result of these moves: making the federal government white more and less diverse.
By weekends, some employees said boldly that they do not know how long they can withstand. Many of them described the circumstances as reminding us of the Makarthy era, and they were desperate when they saw how quickly their office leaders responded.
In the Ministry of Labor, the employees witnessed a colleague who was recently appointed to a position in the civil service as it was accompanied by the abroad because it was a former political. One of the female employees said that her manager asked her to wipe the site not only from the words “diversity, equality and inclusion”, as it requires the executive order, but also from references to “disadvantaged societies” and “marginalized”. After that, she said, she went to the cabinet, called her mother and cried.
On Tuesday morning, Moria Li, an analyst at NASA, joined a virtual municipal hall to find out what all orders will mean to her small team, which monitors and checks projects in the space program. She said that the acting supervisors, who were the people who had known them for years, have made it clear to everyone that they were not tending to show flexibility.
The weekly chain of speakers that were organized within the framework of the diversity program, which collected the deaf, old warriors and others to exchange their experiences. She lost her ability to live in Nashville and go twice a month to a two -hour office in Huntville, Alaa.
After the meeting, she and her colleagues returned to their jobs. She said they were upset, but they were not afraid. And she said: “People who behave bigger are the ones who are in power.”
But the change to remote work, along with other directives, was too much for her. Thus, Mrs. Lee sent her notification: After nearly six years of starting work in the federal government, she was resigning.
Kate Kelly,, Hamed Al -Aziz and Sherrill Jay Stolberg Contribute to the preparation of reports from Washington.