“Terrified” federal workers are calming

Federal workers are afraid. They don’t know who to trust. As the Efficiency Department of the Government of President Donald Trump and Elon Musk has pirate federal agencies in recent weeks, I have spoken with more than a dozen workers who have outlined how the administration is pressing a new ideology and stealing the paranoia within the government. Remaining ranges. My sources work, or until recently they worked, in six different agencies, including the departments of State, Commerce and Defense and USAID; The majority requested anonymity because they were not authorized to speak or feared to be attacked. “People are terrified,” a worker told me, “not for losing his jobs but for losing democracy.”

The workers described a fundamental transformation in the Government character: Many workers say they live in a state of constant fear, unable to trust their colleagues, unable to speak freely, reflectively participating in self -censorship even in matters that consider crucial for national security. A team that works on issues related to climate change has reached stamp in a room completely sanitized by technology for meetings in person: without phones, watches, computers or other connected devices. (Representatives for the Departments of Commerce and Defense, USAID, Dux and the White House did not respond to my requests for comments).

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The generalized paralysis has been driven not only by the terminations and the paralyzing of entire agencies, which say that workers have not followed the apparent logic or process, but by executive orders and internal communications. Take the first diplomatic cable sent by Secretary of State Marco Rubio, on January 21, the day after the inauguration. The message, which was sent to all members of the State Department, and described several priorities, takes a “orwellian” tone, as described by an employee of the State Department. In addition to a priority labeled as “stop censorship and prioritize truth,” Rubio wrote that although the State Department has been “fighting the malignant propaganda of the hostile states” since the Cold War, the agency has also recently worked to promote ” Censorship, suppression and malinformation “aimed at Americans, perhaps motivated by” an excess of zeal or wrong attempts to control speech. ” The email, a copy of the one I obtained, continues:

My sources were disturbed by the idea that the administration would give “the truth” and would accuse the workers of censoring Americans. (What censorship does Rubio refer is not clear, and a spokesman for the State Department, who responded to my consultation by email without giving his name, said only: as a general matter, we do not comment on internal personnel matters. “) Those who work on behalf of Trump have already hidden the information and has been dedicated to censorship. Eliminate scientific data and incorporate researchers to scrub terms related to the gender and sexuality of your work, in addition to purging information related to Climate change and further. Because of this, said a worker, the colleagues from his agency have considered replacing the generic word including with as In the reports, given the proximity of the word to inclusionor remove terms such as vulnerable groupsthat are often used to refer to children, for concern that they could be marked under the sweeps of the administration to eradicate anything related to diversity.

Power transitions always lead to changes in priorities, but that is not what workers say they are witnessing. On the other hand, the new Trump administration is engineering of what some feel that it could only be described as ideological obedience.

The message of the Rubio Secretary is just an example of the many ways in which the Trump administration has made these red lines evident. Many Republicans have spoken against any group or agency that can be perceived as censoring conservative voices. Shortly after the elections, for example, the Global Commitment Center of the State Department, an operation to counteract foreign misinformation and propaganda established by President Barack Obama, close After a house controlled by the Republicans, he did not increase their financing. The federal workers with whom I spoke now say that neither their colleagues want create a serious national vulnerability, especially because IA offers operations backed by the State powerful updates. Some are even discussing whether they should review the existing technical documents to scrub references to “erroneous information” and “misinformation.” As a source told me: “If this administration is dictating the truth and dismantling the misinformation efforts, it can no longer mention it. You just don’t want to put a goal on your back. Whether or not, self -censorship arises. “

Federal workers told me that this self -censorship began with problems related to DEI. On the third day of the Trump Administration, the Office of Personnel Management instructed the heads of agencies to send a notice to their employees to ask them to be denounced for violations of the executive order of President Trump. Both the fear of being reported by colleagues and the fear of being punished for not informing colleagues quickly led to a generalized loss of trust and communication, my sources told me. Many employees stopped speaking openly in meetings against unknown co -workers. The pronouns were removed from emails; The pride flags were removed from the desks; The references to the month of black history and the promotion of women in Stem were extracted from the discussions of the office, they said. Several workers told me that they believed that this was the intention: “make people question what is certain,Where can I talk? Who can I talk to? How can I speak? You create a culture of chaos, fear and confusion, ”Stephie-Anne Duliepre, a former science partner for the development of Usaid, told me. “I think that was the strategy because it was effective: use people, eliminate the will or faith of people that if they ever speak, they would be safe.”

This feeling can be by design. Russell Vought, director of the Office of Management and Budget and Architect of Project 2025, said in private speeches obtained By propublic that “we want bureaucrats to be affected traumatically. When they wake up in the morning, we want them to not want to go to work, because they are more and more like villains. “

Some federal workers who collect medical and health data from Americans to support a wide range of downstream research, including the discovery of cancer-drug An employee. The absence of this information will limit the type of research that scientists can do, such as studying how a drug affects pregnant women or gender -based health disparities. But the workers are fighting with whether to have these data will put the Americans in danger of being attacked by their own government, the employee said. Although workers have often asked patients about illegal behavior in the past, including the use of illicit drugs, this time it feels different: “It is not only because it is illegal in some places,” said the employee, referring to abortions. “It’s because it’s political.”

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Climate change has become another perceived taboo, sources told me. In the Department of Defense, the management has been explicit. On January 27, several employees received an email from superior, according to a copy that I checked, stating that the army staff director was working to suspend any activity “associated, among others, the following areas: diversity, equity and inclusion, Critical theory of race, climate and climate change, transgender and abortion. The Trump administration. Executive order Agencies to order “special attention to oil, natural gas, coal, hydroelectric energy, biofuels, critical minerals and nuclear energy resources”, for example).

For any climate -related communication and other confidential issues, the team that has stopped carrying Internet connection devices to meetings in person has also changed email messages to signal, a group worker told me. “All I wanted to do was help the American people to be more resistant to climate change,” the worker told me. “Now I am being treated as a criminal.”

During my conversations, many workers referred to George Orwell’s 1984and his representation of a totalitarian regime through the eyes of a minor government bureaucrat, to explain the scope and scale of his experience. They referred to the Ministry of Truth, Doubleink and Newspeak while describing what was happening. Six workers finished in USAID transmitted me how the agency rapid dismantling He represented an example of the worst of what could happen in this environment: Doge extended, Trump froze practically all help spending, and Musk began to criticize USAID publicly as a “criminal organization. “The agency personnel took to understand the complete scope of what was happening and react, they told me that they would like They in large groups and stopped connecting their personal devices with the Government’s Wi-Fi for fear of being monitored. ” finished.