Virginia Heffernan's opinion column in The Guardian this morning asserts:
The most ferocious response to Elon Musk’s coup in the US is also the most disciplined. It’s a sustained act of civil disobedience by the civil service.
(Heffernan has worked as a news editor, political correspondent, book author, columnist and cultural critic. She has described the internet as "a massive and collective work of art." She holds a Harvard Ph.D.)
Under seige since the Muskovites first started forcing their way into various agencies demanding IT access, and as Trump began ordering mass closures and firings, federal employees found effective ways to organize on social media, Heffernan writes.
Crucially, Heffernan writes,
Amid the malignant lies of the current regime, federal workers are steadily telling the truth.
To each other. To the media. And to Congress and the courts.
Federal employees were quick off the mark in warning colleagues against trusting the new administration's early, hard-sell promotion of dubiously legal buyouts.
Heffernan:
"On the subreddit for federal employees, they exhorted each other not to quit. Their rallying cry soon became: 'Hold the line, don’t resign.' Although 2 million workers were pressured to quit, only 75,000 of them took what looked like a sketchy 'buyout' deal."
And they were right.
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The 1883 Pendleton Act reformed federal hiring by requiring most federal positions to be awarded on the basis of merit instead of political patronage. It became illegal to fire some federal employees for political reasons.
— NFFE Local 34 (@nffe-local34.bsky.social) February 16, 2025 at 9:13 PM
One group fighting back that's been highly active and visible on BlueSky (I recommend following!) is:
Since then, the administration has begun covering began mass firings with claims of poor performance regardless of employees' sterling records.
The overreach is not being taken lying down.
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Letters went out to federal workers this morning stating they were fired due to poor performance. However, all employees had been rated as “exceptional” performers by their supervisors. Please keep these records and pursue wrongful termination claims. Let the lawsuits begin.
— Alt National Park Service (@altnps.bsky.social) February 16, 2025 at 4:28 PM
Heffernan compares the federal employees' grassroots resistance through information sharing, emplying Reddit and other media with a Reddit-mediated small-shareholder rebellion in 2021 that defeated a manipulated "short squeeze" on a company called GameStop. (Musk was somehow involved in that situation too, coincidentally or not.)
I'm not remotely qualified to evaluate that comparison, and equally, not one particle surprised that civil servants have been managing to organize thenselves with remarkable speed and solidarity in the face of this shocking, all-out assault. I worked for most of my career among or adjacent to federal employees. Under the non-partisan civil service rules--which Trump is trying to neuter via Schedule F -- you don't get hired into such responsible jobs by being unintelligent, lazy, or a mindless drone. These are, in general, whip-smart, motivated people, and it would surprise some to learn how many carry forward outside office hours with voluntary activity in the arts, charity, or other community services.
More shared protective advice:
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📌CDC EMPLOYEE RESOURCES📌
Thread organized by topic. Reply with resources/requests. Resources not fully vetted.
SAVE DOCS (eOPF, mypay, benefeds, PMAS, CV, telework agreement, contacts). Save/BCC termination email.
Opening a termination email triggers lockout countdown. DO NOT OPEN until ready.
— Alt CDC (they/them) (@altcdc.bsky.social) February 15, 2025 at 1:40 PM
Others are also responding, "See you in court." One union BlueSky account:
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#forestservice employees who were recently terminated. We are working on a legal action. Please dm us. (We removed the previous post due to concerns about the form being spammed by bad actors) #nffe #unionstrong #holdtheline
— NFFE-Forest Service Council (@nffe-fsc.bsky.social) February 16, 2025 at 1:13 PM
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Not a drill! Read the letter, add your story to it, use that as a script to call your representatives! Then personalize the email to them and include a reference to your vm so they connect the these are real ppl. Only have energy 2 write? That's OK too. #unionstrong actionnetwork.org/letters/tell...
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— NFFE-Forest Service Council (@nffe-fsc.bsky.social) February 15, 2025 at 10:32 PM
CIA:
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"51 employees at CIA and the Office of Director of National Intelligence received calls Friday from their human resources office telling them to report to the visitors center at CIA headquarters in Virginia at 8AM on Tuesday with their badges and without lawyers..."
www.nbcnews.com/politics/nat...
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— Rachel Maddow (@maddow.msnbc.com) February 19, 2025 at 1:36 PM
"without lawyers"
Evidently "they" were worried.
Not so smart of "them": THE SAME DAY,
WASHINGTON, Feb 18 (Reuters) - A U.S. judge on Tuesday put on hold for five days the firings of 11 CIA officers who were ordered to resign or face imminent termination over their temporary jobs with the spy agency's diversity, equity, inclusion and accessibility programs.
In an administrative stay issued after a hearing, U.S. District Court Judge Anthony Trenga gave the government until Thursday to file a response to the officers' request for a temporary restraining order, and set arguments for Monday.
These people are being fired just because of an assumption that's been made that they are leftists," the plaintiffs' lawyer, Kevin Carroll, himself a former CIA undercover officer, told Reuters....
Others are putting ethics before self-interest when forced to choose.
We all have heard--the whole world has heard by now--of the series of principled Department of Justice attorneys, stepping down rather than violate their oath and conscience by terminating a federal criminal case for no coherent reason, as ordered.
Now:
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Hundreds of former US Attorneys have signed an open letter showing solidarity with current DOJ staff.
"You have responded to ethical challenges of a type no public
servant should ever be forced to confront with principle and conviction."
www.thejusticeconnection.org/wp-content/u...
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— Marisa Kabas (@marisakabas.bsky.social) February 18, 2025 at 2:24 PM
While others, with far less prominence and publicity, have shown no less courage and principle. For instance:
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NEW: A government employee for Notify. gov, a system used by agencies to send mass texts to the public, has resigned in protest after an Elon Musk ally demanded root access to it. They said the system contains the public's phone numbers & private info:
www.404media.co/musk-ally-de...
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— Jason Koebler (@jasonkoebler.bsky.social) February 18, 2025 at 2:23 PM
And this:
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Last week, Michelle King, acting commissioner of the Social Security Administration, reassured the public about the presence of two of Elon Musk’s staffers at the agency, which holds sensitive data on 70 million Americans, including medical records and bank account numbers.
— Alt National Park Service (@altnps.bsky.social) February 19, 2025 at 9:43 AM
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Days later, Musk’s team sought access to agency data but refused to follow proper procedures, instead plugging in an external hard drive. Ms. King resisted the request. By Monday night, both she and her chief of staff, Tiffany Flick, were out of their jobs.
— Alt National Park Service (@altnps.bsky.social) February 19, 2025 at 9:43 AM
Kudos to these brave and principled civil servants.
They are also sharing stories to inform tbe public of the damage being done to government missions and individuals who have done nothing wrong.
..
Heffernan also compares these principled civil servants with the commitment to the truth as reflected in the life of Soviet dissident author Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn (1918-2008), who survived imprisonment, an 8-year sentence in a forced-labor camp, an attempted assassination by poison, and had been expelled from the Union of Soviet Writers at the time he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature. His smuggled novels telling the truth about conditions in Soviet Russia became best-sellers in the West.
This week federal workers have also learned that the administration plans to use polygraph tests on civil servsnts in an effort to identify federal workers who've been talking to the news media or public-interest organizations about the situation.
Polygraphs are not reliable, and can be manipulated; employees are advised to familiarize thenselves with their legal rights.
I can add from past training that anyone legally has the right to communicate with their Congress members, or others such as committee members involved with some matter of i terest. But whether those rights will be honored seems uncertain.
Finally, and this is of relevance to all of us: some union officials are advising that they anticipate another general federal shutdown next month, and it may be lengthy.
Temporary appropriations expire mid-March and, at the same time, the debt ceiling nerds to be raised--trad occasions for Republican grandstanding, at best.
My own-worst case scenario would involve extorting Democratic acceptance of rank illegalities, even unConstitutionalities, in exchange for minimal essentials.
Can we jointly defeat a "short-squeeze" on the United States of America?
Those of us who ever took that oath, civilian or military, and took it seriously, do not unsay it.
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And that is something anyone of us can do.
