Source: Politics<\/p>\n
President Donald Trump\u2019s executive orders targeting the federal workforce have injected a fresh wave of anxiety among employees across the bureaucracy \u2014 stoking fears the president is coming for their jobs.<\/p>\n
Just a few days into Trump\u2019s second term, some federal workers are contemplating quitting. Others are preparing to file grievances with their unions or moving communications with each other to secure platforms like Signal. Some, fearing they\u2019ll be caught up in the White House\u2019s purge of diversity programs, are leaving their names off of memos and documents they worry could be labeled as DEI-adjacent.<\/p>\n
As federal employees searched this week for clues within the orders to see how they\u2019ll be affected, a staffer with the Environmental Protection Agency said they were cleaning out their inbox and waiting for information about early retirement and buyout programs.<\/p>\n
\u201cTrump version 1.0 was bad,\u201d said the EPA employee. \u201cI\u2019m already done with version 2.0.\u201d<\/p>\n
Trump, within hours of returning to power, issued a slew of executive orders seeking to overhaul how the federal government operates, from removing job protections to ending remote work to implementing a hiring freeze. The reception inside the federal government has been uneasy. But especially worrisome to some employees was the White House\u2019s decision on Tuesday to eliminate<\/a> diversity programs, subsequently placing those staffers on administrative leave.<\/p>\n At the State Department, the shutdown of those programs was something many saw coming. But some were startled by the directive that they report individual cases of people\u2019s job descriptions being changed to \u201cdisguise\u201d the DEI element to a special Office of Personnel Management email address. Some saw it as an order to snitch on colleagues. Others, who prepared for Trump\u2019s return to office, had begun working months ago with outside nonprofits to archive websites they feared would be taken down by the Trump administration \u2014 including information on ending gender-based violence around the world.<\/p>\n \u201cI would love to leave, but I don’t know where I’d go, and I am terrified of not being able to pay rent and not having healthcare,\u201d one State staffer said.<\/p>\n POLITICO spoke to almost two dozen federal workers for this article and granted anonymity to many in order to protect them from retribution for speaking out.<\/p>\n It\u2019s too early to tell if a mass exodus of federal workers will occur. The vagueness of the president\u2019s orders has many workers waiting to see how they will be implemented once political staff is in place. But what is clear is that the new administration intends to follow through on its threats to purge and dismantle the federal bureaucracy.<\/p>\n \u201cMost of us are watching cautiously and letting the dust settle,\u201d said an employee at the U.S. Agency for International Development. \u201cWe know that there is a range of possible outcomes, and some people are panicking, but most are taking a wait-and-see approach.\u201d<\/p>\n Adding to federal workers\u2019 distress, the acting head of the Office of Personnel Management, which is effectively the federal government\u2019s HR department, on Monday instructed agencies<\/a> to compile lists by the end of the week of all recent hires and \u201cpromptly determine whether those employees should be retained at the agency.\u201d<\/p>\n Career staffers who have been in the job for less than a year are on probationary status, meaning they can be fired without triggering civil service protections that insulate much of the federal workforce.<\/p>\n \u201cThe only reason you would do that is that he\u2019s going to fire them all,\u201d said Alan Lescht, a Washington-based employment lawyer who represents federal workers. \u201cIf you have these mass firings you can\u2019t accuse him of discriminating or anything. But then the question becomes who does [Trump] re-hire.\u201d<\/p>\n Lescht said his firm began getting a spike in calls from worried federal employees starting Monday evening after Trump began signing executive orders.<\/p>\n New hires who have yet to start are also seeing their jobs vanish. Employees whose start date was Feb. 8 or later had their job offers revoked with limited exceptions, under a different OPM memo<\/a> tied to the Trump administration\u2019s federal hiring freeze.<\/p>\n At NASA, in the weeks leading up to Trump\u2019s inauguration, union membership exploded as part of an effort to protect themselves as civil servants. The American Federation of Government Employees, which represents more than 800,000 employees throughout the government, \u201cwill be tracking how agencies implement the orders and will be prepared to file grievances if our contracts are violated,\u201d a spokesperson said.<\/p>\n An Environmental Protection Agency staffer said they plan to file a grievance with the union if their remote work arrangement is rescinded. In the meantime, they\u2019re preparing to find a job outside the government.<\/p>\n Another EPA employee predicted that no major changes would occur until March, when the short-term spending bill runs out. \u201cAfter that, it\u2019s a toss-up,\u201d they said.<\/p>\n Carmen Paun, Katherine Hapgood, Alfred Ng and Marcia Brown contributed to this report.<\/p>\n