Trump’s Moves to Upend Federal Bureaucracy Touch Off Fear and Confusion

robosmith · January 29

Trump’s Moves to Upend Federal Bureaucracy Touch Off Fear and Confusion

A key element of JD Vance's mentor Curtis Yarvin known as Retire All Government Employees (RAGE) has been attempted by Trump this week.

Apparently all government employees have been offered a retirement package with full pension until Sept 2025.

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Starting on Inauguration Day, the orders and memos came down one after the other, many crafted in the pugnacious tone of a campaign speech: the shuttering of “Radical and Wasteful” diversity programs in federal agencies; the stripping of civil service protections from a share of the federal work force; the end to remote work, which, one administration memo claimed, had left federal office buildings “mostly empty” and rendered downtown Washington “a national embarrassment.”

All new hiring was frozen, job offers were rescinded, scientific meetings were canceled and federal health officials were temporarily barred from communicating with the public, a directive that some understood as so broad that it even extended to making outside purchase orders for lab supplies.

For the more than two million federal workers, roughly four-fifths of whom live outside the Washington area, change is inevitable whenever a new administration takes over. But few had expected it to come at this speed and scale.

“They are being upended in the most brutal and traumatic way imaginable,” said Max Stier, president of the Partnership for Public Service, a nonprofit that works to promote excellence and best practices in the federal government. Mr. Stier said he had deep concerns about the consequences of Mr. Trump’s swift changes on the ability of the country to face a range of threats, from terrorism to pandemics.

Federal employees looked to their supervisors for guidance, but said they often had none to give, as they tried to interpret brief orders and memos with few specifics. For example, the return-to-office memo said employees with a disability could be exempt, but it was unclear what kind of disability might qualify. Some managers said they knew nothing beyond what was in the news. Adding to the panic were remarks by the president himself, who suggested on Friday that he might consider shuttering the Federal Emergency Management Agency, which employs 20,000 workers around the country.

A spokesperson from the Office of Personnel Management defended the actions in a statement, calling them “exciting steps to build a federal work force based on merit, excellence and accomplishment, so we can have a government that serves the public effectively and efficiently.”

“We have already saved millions of hard-earned taxpayer dollars that are no longer directed to DEIA programs that wasted millions of hard-earned taxpayer dollars and discriminated against federal workers,” the statement said, referring toDonald F. Kettl, an emeritus professor at the University of Maryland who studies the civil service, said there was widespread consensus among experts that the civil service is in need of changes.

“It’s too hard to hire, it’s too tough to fire, and there’s too little match between the civil service system and the capacity government needs to handle 21st-century challenges,” Dr. Kettl said.

But he said that many of the Trump administration’s proposed changes would be counterproductive. “They’re focused much more on shifting the balance of power than they are on improving the results of government,” he said.

Inside federal offices, the mood has been tense and anticipatory. One employee at the Homeland Security Department said the staff felt at risk of being fired at any moment. At the Commerce Department, employees were terrified whenever a meeting was called, one worker said.

The isolation is deepened, some federal employees said, by the fact that most of their fellow Americans see the federal government as bloated and inefficient. Some said that reform, if it were well thought-out, would be healthy and welcome. But many noted that they had accepted significant pay cuts to work for the government because they believe in public service — issuing Social Security checks, keeping air travel safe and inspecting food, among other roles.