Federal workers will suffer under Donald Trump, through hiring and pay freezes, being called on to do terrible and questionably legal things, and being targeted for abuse and repression. But many of them are ready to fight—as professionals committed to making the government work, even if that just means preventing the worst abuses of the Trump regime:
At a church in Columbia Heights last weekend, dozens of federal workers attended a support group for civil servants seeking a forum to discuss their opposition to the Trump administration. And 180 federal employees have signed up for a workshop next weekend, where experts will offer advice on workers’ rights and how they can express civil disobedience.
At the Justice Department, an employee in the division that administers grants to nonprofits fighting domestic violence and researching sex crimes said the office has been planning to slow its work and to file complaints with the inspector general’s office if asked to shift grants away from their mission.
“You’re going to see the bureaucrats using time to their advantage,” said the employee, who spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of retaliation. Through leaks to news organizations and internal complaints, he said, “people here will resist and push back against orders they find unconscionable.”
The State Department has a preexisting way for workers to register dissent, allegedly without fear of retaliation, and Trump’s Muslim ban has lit up the dissent channel:
By 4 p.m. on Tuesday, the letter had attracted around 1,000 signatures, State Department officials said, far more than any dissent cable in recent years. It was being delivered to management, and department officials said more diplomats wanted to add their names to it.
Names continued being added even after White House press secretary Sean Spicer threatened the workers signing it, saying they should “get with the program or they can go.” Who knows what four years of Donald Trump will do to the ranks of federal workers, but they’re not going down without a fight—a fight not for partisan objectives but for competence and the rule of law.