Workers are reeling from chaos at federal agencies

As the third week of Donald Trump’s presidency begins, workers across federal agencies are scrambling to find their footing among the chaos.

From the US Agency for International Development and the Department of Agriculture, to the Environmental Protection Agency and the Department of Labor, federal workers are facing an onslaught of changes that threaten to upend their work and the systems that keep the country running. Sweeping orders from the White House threatened to freeze funding for basic grants and programs, before being blocked by a judge and walked back by Trump. Using a made up meme agency, unelected billionaire Elon Musk is attempting to stage a takeover reminiscent of his remaking of Twitter, now X, except this time hollowing out the US government.

“A lot of us are scared and feel betrayed,” a person who works for USAID told The Verge. “When [people] get hired, they take an oath to protect the constitution.” And with Musk actively dismantling the humanitarian agency, which Secretary of State Marco Rubio said Monday he now runs, workers at other agencies are wondering if the same could happen to their workplaces. “I think everyone is really scared about what happened at USAID, because I don’t think anyone thought that was possible,” says one Department of Labor employee.

Through conversations with half a dozen federal workers, all but one of whom were granted anonymity because they feared retaliation for speaking out about the Trump administration’s actions, it’s clear that the hostile takeover of federal agencies is putting employees and contractors on edge, uncertain if they’ll have a job the next day.

It’s long been a strategy in Trump world to “flood the zone” with information, making it hard for the media and the public to know where to look, or where to concentrate their opposition. That feeling of disorientation is magnified for federal workers in the past couple weeks, as they wade through the eye of the storm. “These executive orders are flying fast and furious. I think that’s on purpose,” says one federal worker. “They’re giving agencies very little time to comply and even decide if they want to or not because there’s so much.”

One example is how agencies were forced to respond to Trump’s executive order on “defending women,” which mandated official documents not include the term “gender” to refer to “sex-based distinctions.” But because of how quickly agencies needed to get into compliance, at least one opted to remove references to many gender resources altogether because there wasn’t enough time to change the wording in every instance.

Federal employees know that if they choose not to comply or leave their jobs, someone else will do it, and things may get even worse. Managers seem to be asking themselves, “is this worth losing my job and putting my team in peril?” observes the federal worker. “Or if this doesn’t completely go against my principles, should I accept it, tell my team to accept it, and live to fight another day?”

Department of Labor employees who work on grants were instructed to email grantees saying their funding would be cut off if it was in support of DEI initiatives. “No one wanted to send it, but basically [it felt like] if I don’t send it, my boss is going to send it,“ one employee who works on grants said. Their grantees who received the message were “freaking out,” since many nonprofits that rely on such funds can’t afford to fight back in a protracted battle. “It made my heart hurt to send it,” the employee said.

An earlier email from the Office of Personnel Management that encouraged federal employees to resign from their jobs received widespread anger and resistance from labor unions, and follow-up emails purporting to answer questions have been cold comfort. Another email from OPM sent this weekend — along with an FAQ page online — addresses questions from the workforce but has not put federal employees at ease.

“People are angry at being accused of cheating the government by working from home,” one person who received the email said. “We’re feeling not valued by the administration.”

Many federal employees are trying to figure out what would push them over the edge to leave. It’s one thing to undo programs, especially when they might have suspected they’d lose funding under a Trump administration anyway, but it may be another to actively install new policies that violate their morals. “This stuff sucks right now, it’s so horrible, but we haven’t even gotten to the real bad part yet where they start weaponizing us against the people we serve,” says the DOL worker.

“Nobody knows if they’ll have a job tomorrow, especially if your agency works on something that the Trump administration seems to be targeting,” says one federal worker. That might include anything from education to gender to climate-related issues. But even if they are fired, some workers are questioning if it would even be worth fighting for their jobs back. “This isn’t the job I loved and wanted,” says the DOL employee. “This is like some evil demon took it over.”

Trump’s agenda has seeped into even the most innocuous of places like email signatures. Multiple people working for the federal government told The Verge staff were instructed to remove pronouns from email signatures, citing Trump’s anti-trans executive order, “Defending Women from Gender Ideology Extremism and Restoring Biological Truth to the Federal Government.” After receiving a deadline of end of day Monday, a person working for USDA told The Verge that all staff members’ signatures were wiped regardless of whether they had pronouns listed.

With so much boundary-pushing change, being asked to remove pronouns from signatures might have felt exhausting to some federal employees — but it was also just another norm being chipped away. “I literally thought to myself, is this the line I die on?” the DOL employee says.

The crackdown on things like work from home or acknowledging gender has created an atmosphere of paranoia and hyper vigilance. Many federal employees have moved work-related conversations to encrypted messaging app Signal. And the tech industry’s embrace of right wing politics and politicians has created a sense of distrust, a federal contractor says, with people fearing that communication on other platforms could be leaked by pro-Trump companies.

A lack of clarity internally has prompted alternative channels for federal workers to share information with one another. The subreddit r/fednews has become a central space for federal workers to share goings on in their agencies, compare notes with one another, and boost morale. Other grassroots accounts like the Alt National Parks Service account serve as an updates feed for federal employees and concerns members of the public.

Public response by Democratic lawmakers has also been scattered, with some in the party attributing it to a lack of a coherent message.

“I personally am pretty disgusted at the lack of any fire in their bellies,” a person who works with the Coast Guard told The Verge. Another federal worker says that many lawmakers are “absolutely failing to meet the moment,” and questions why Democrats aren’t doing more to throw sand in the gears, like refusing to confirm Trump’s nominees or speaking in stronger terms against the demolition of government agencies and norms. “If not now, when?”

The pressure from elected officials ramped up on Monday, when a group of Democratic lawmakers held a press conference outside the USAID headquarters, calling Trump and Musk’s attempts to shut down USAID illegal.

“We don’t have a fourth branch of government called Elon Musk,” Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-MD), said. The group then attempted to enter the building but were blocked by law enforcement.

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is reeling from a “notice” employees received by email last week telling them the agency “has the right to immediately terminate you.” The email, a copy of which was obtained by The Verge, was sent to employees on a probationary/trial period who were hired within the past year. The warning was sent to 1,100 people at the agency, according to Nicole Cantello, legislative and political coordinator for Council 238 of the American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE), the federal employee union representing EPA employees.

New hires that are still in a probationary period have fewer protections than other employees, says Cantello. “That’s why I think the Trump administration is preying on them because they know it’s easier to get rid of them.”

The email says “the process for probationary removal is that you receive a notice of termination, and your employment is ended immediately,” but doesn’t say when that process will begin.

“All that waiting on pins and needles is just destroying morale,” Cantello says. “My probationary employees are just devastated.”

The agency is at risk of losing 10 percent of its workforce when taking into account probationary employees and those who choose to take the deferred resignation, according to Cantello.

“Losing this amount of staff would really hurt EPA’s ability to protect human health and the environment,” Cantello says, including recovery efforts following devastating wildfires around Los Angeles this month. The agency employs about 15,000 people and has spent the last four years trying to build back its ranks after an exodus of scientists from federal agencies during the first Trump administration.

The EPA’s intranet service was also down for most of the work day on Monday, keeping employees from accessing their personnel records. Those kinds of documents are important for workers to keep in case they choose to take legal action against the agency in the future if they believe they’ve been fired illegally. The intranet service is also vital to the agency’s enforcement of environmental regulation. It’s where employees record complaints, for example. The EPA didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment from The Verge.

As nonpartisan staffers used to the changing whims of different administrations, federal civil servants are often not the quintessential activists. But every morning this week at 7:30 AM, demonstrations of solidarity with federal workers are planned in front of the Office of Personnel Management in a show of peaceful protest. Another rally is planned in front of the Treasury Department Tuesday afternoon, and a third near the Senate on Wednesday.

Many workers still worry that outside the government, people don’t realize how unprecedented this situation is — or how much is at stake. And while many are trying to hold on as long as they can, they’re not sure how much they’ll be able to take. “There’s a climate of fear,” one federal worker says, “but also of solidarity, or resilience.”