When the federal government eats it

The marble atrium in the Hart Senate office building near the Capitol felt unusually empty and nervous on a recent June morning. A few days ago in Minnesota, a man reported a hot list of forty-five elected officials Been killed State Senator and her husband, shot the state Senator and his wife. In Los Angeles, FBI agents tried to ask Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem about the immigration attacks that swept the city, he dealt with California Senator Alex Padilla. The mood was so much that the slightest hint of dissent – being squeezed by a group of young bureaucrats on a neon poster board in a corner of my atrium – was enough to arouse the police’s suspicion. He told them: “If you protest, I will have to arrest you.”

The members of the group dressed well, as if they were at work, except that they had no job to do. They called themselves “the fired Fed,” recycled a derogatory term that is often used to describe the agency of the FBI. Protests were not part of the agenda of the day. On the poster, they wrote an admirable message to Republican and Democratic senators who supported their cause. They have held press conferences over the past sixteen weeks and urged lawmakers to prevent plunder from federal agencies. They also run an Instagram account @fedsworkforyou with the tagline “Amplify the work and done by federal employees before Trump/Musk illegally fired them.”

The federal government snacks on a box that includes what they call “RFK sugar,” also known as donut holes. “Next week we’ll have No. 40 red dye,” said one organizer. Mack Schroeder, a regular at the party, worked for Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Health and Public Services Until he was placed on leave in February and later fired. On April 1, when his former colleague received a termination notice, Schroeder faced with Indiana Sen. Jim Banks, asking how the cuts could affect people with disabilities. The bank responded to Schroeder’s shooting. “You probably deserve it,” the Senator explain. “You look like a clown.” The other federal governments in the group come from the Ministry of Education, American International Development Agencyor USAID, which was the early casualties of federal bureaucracy clearance.

They walked to Senator Lisa Murkowski’s office. She is not available, but the mustached staff agreed to talk to them in the hallway. Several fired Feds told their stories, highlighting how their work has to do with Senators’ voters in Alaska. Colleen has served in the Food and Drug Administration: “Make sure that all the food we get from Mexico and Canada is safe, without salmonella, cyclosporine, all the annoying stuff.” She explained that without someone like her, Alaskas would not be able to trust what they buy at the grocery store. Colleen is 35 years old and is a single mother. She was fired after 13 years of service with the federal government and is now fighting for new sources of income and health insurance. She has applied for fifty-seven jobs – she has kept a spreadsheet, including retail positions at Trader Joe and Costco. So far, no luck. (Two weeks after we spoke, she was suddenly restored and asked to keep her last name because she had no right to talk to the press.)

During lunchtime, in the basement corridor connecting the Senate office, the group attempted to draw the attention of every lawmaker who died. Both parliamentary concentrators are focused on Donald Trump‘ A large bill billcut taxes and social services. Murkowski approached by another staff member but was taken away by an activist, wearing a shirt with a “peace with Iran” shirt. Someone spotted Josh Hawley, who was acting fast in Missouri, shouted, “Senator Hawley, we were fired from the Federal Reserve!” “I’m sorry to hear this,” he kept saying. Few lawmakers do this. Trump’s war in deep states to eliminate excuses for waste, fraud and abuse, despite leave His winger and so-called head of government efficiency Elon Musk. There were six months of shooting, suspension of the supervisory office, canceled contracts, invalid union, polygraph tests, pronoun bans, oath of loyalty. It’s hard to keep up.

In January and February, when the federal government set out to undermine the federal government, or what Musk calls “slutty tech support” and “lower trillions of dollars’ deficits,” I call signal chats, emails and calls from federal workers around the clock. Usually, there are tears. I heard Many accounts Suffering from weird abuse and widespread workplace destruction. In the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, the Independent Commissioner was fired, and cases related to transgender discrimination were functionally shelved. “I don’t even think we can use the word ‘trans’,” an EEOC lawyer told me. The entire program was immediately scrapped. Employees are fired, unannounced, and locked into their offices and computers; they work hard to get the paperwork they need to apply for unemployment benefits or expand health insurance.

Interviews with one worker often result in conversations with three or four other workers. Although many people ask for anonymity, they need to publicize what happened and simply vent their fear of revenge. I ended up talking to over a hundred current and former federal employees from twenty agencies. I feel hypnotized by the prism width of the regulated state.

Before Trump’s second term, the federal civil service was often stable (average working tenure of about twelve years), which, from a news perspective, was rather boring. Government employees are usually self-respecting and nonpartisans; they prefer to work behind the scenes. The U.S. government strives to be role models employers with clear rules and salaries, strong labor protection, and targeted veterans and people with disabilities. no longer. “The members we represent are in turmoil,” Everett Kelley, president of the U.S. Government Employees Federation, told me. “They will work every day regardless of the threat, but they can only do a lot of things. It will be a breakthrough point.”

Musk is a hype for layoffs and exaggerates all kinds of Doge The achievement on x; Doge He left a Will pose. Russell Vought, the author Project 2025 Trump’s Office of Management and Budget oversees the administration’s finances and personnel. Last year, speech He gave in an event hosted by his think tank, saying: “We want bureaucrats to be affected by trauma… When they wake up in the morning, we hope they don’t want to go to work because they are increasingly seen as villains.” Weeks ago, Woch told Congressman he intends to Doge To become “more institutionalized”, similar to “internal consultants” of individual institutions.

It’s August and signal chat has slowed down. Doge Responding to court rulings and public protests, ease their behavior. The indiscriminate termination has become a seemingly business-style “effective reduction”, with some departments (such as Veterans Affairs) already backed off and were fired. But, as Trump asserted, the lawsuit continues to play More and more power For what the executive branch and Congress abandoned, although polls show that most Americans disapprove Dogereduce. “We haven’t seen Congress represent the people yet,” Skye Perryman, a democratic striker, told me, a nonprofit that has filed dozens of cases against the government. “So the tool that the American people have is going to the court.”

The ups and downs of the lawsuit put many federal workers in a kind of purgatory: employed but banned from work; releasing wasted paid administrative leave rubber rooms. In the first half of 2025, the federal civilian labor force shrank by 60,000. Thousands of retired, quit or fired, but are still on salary for the time being. “Losing expertise is breathtaking,” a firing financial regulator told me. Two Supreme Court rulings starting in July would allow blanket cutting to move forward among institutions including education, state and environmental protection departments, meaning we are likely to see another big drop in federal employment – unless recently layoffs in the Office of Personnel Management, the Federal Reserve’s Human Resources Division, which makes it impossible to handle the necessary termination of paperwork.

Meanwhile, other parts of the federal government are growing. A large-scale Trump bill includes funding for the Department of Homeland Security to hire about 10,000 immigrant and customs law enforcement officers and three thousand border patrol personnel over the next four years. ice Offers up to $50,000 in signature bonuses.

In many parts of the country, masked ice Officials have become the new look of the federal government. I was in Southern California in early June, when homeland security accelerated the raids on courts and street corners. The National Guard and the Marines conducted complementary patrols. A massive interlocking security mechanism begins to feel like a tool of one’s desire. Policy is formulated through endless execution of orders and posts to the scroll of the Society of Truth.

On June 14, Trump Conduct military parades– This is the Army’s 250th birthday, his seventy-ninth session, and the cost is 30 million US dollars. Democratic groups have called for aligning with the activity under the banner of “No King” and are estimated to have appeared millions. It is one of the largest protests in American history. In Rancho Cucamonga, a desert town east of Los Angeles, a thousand people listed a major intersection, waving signs: “There is no king of man-made kings!”;ice Outside Los Angeles, Trump came out of the District of Columbia. “The organizers of “No King” cite the social movement theory developed by Harvard political scientist Erica Chenoweth: “Only 3.5% of the population, i.e., sustained, strategic protests against authoritarianism, are needed to achieve significant political change. “In the United States, that number will be about 12 million.

A few days after the “No Kings” protest, I flew to Washington to attend an awards party by the Public Service Partnership, a non-partisan organization that trains and supports federal workers. Samuel J. Heyman American Medal ServiceSince 9/11, it has been regarded as the “Oscar” government service for government services, with the goal of “emphasizing the extraordinary achievements of the government and the crucial role it plays in our daily lives”. Guests in tuxedo and evening gowns flocked to the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg Center, the university’s stylish new graduate building in downtown Washington. They drink sparkling wine and snack on global appetizers: Vietnamese summer rolls, Norrimaki, chicken cordon bleu.

Typically, the partnership respects dozens of civil servants and names federal employees of the year. Each winner receives a trophy and gives a speech. This year, the organization briefly considers skipping Sammies altogether so as not to make anyone a target. Partnership chairman Max Stier started his remarks on a somber note. “Today, I’m worried about Samis’s future and the future of the public service heroes that made it possible,” he said, adjusting the usual plans. Only one of the twenty-three winners appeared on the stage: David Lebryk, who won employee of the year for his tenure as finance minister rather than resignation Doge Access the payment system. The winners were introduced by Washington VIPs and former Treasury Secretary, including Judy Woodruff of PBS Janet Yellen. For Yellen, who is five feet tall, the remote organizer is uncomfortable. The pressure of her stretched neck seemed to fit the occasion. (In 2018, Trump told his aide that she was too short to run the Fed.)