For federal workers besieged, the government’s closure of this week was just a blow in what many describe as the most difficult year they have ever had at work.
Since President Donald Trump created the Ministry of Government Effectiveness by executive decree on the day of the inauguration, federal workforce has undergone license and mass resignations, financing reductions and the outbreak of entire agencies. There were prosecution and workforce, while the exhausted agencies were denying themselves to finish the essential work. And now, after the Democrats of Congress and the Republicans could not accept a temporary budget to keep the government open, comes a closure which led to more than a million federal workers is on leave (prohibited from working and not remunerated) or forced to work without salary.
“I worked under a few administrations, and it was the absolute worst that I never felt,” said an employee of the Ministry of Housing and Urban Development of almost 15 years who was on leave. In her work, she helps to deliver subsidies intended to make cities safer and more accessible, through things such as ramps for disabled and resurfacing of streets, and to provide housing to some of the most vulnerable populations in America. But now, she wonders how she will pay her own mortgage if the closure lights up – and think about how to make food last in her pantry a little longer.
Why we wrote this
Federal workers who have experienced previous government closures say that uncertainty is always stressful. But it already feels worse, several federal employees say it to the instructor, coming after months of upheavals interinstitutions and layoffs of the Trump administration. Many feel uncomfortable not only not only on the immediate deadlock – but what will happen at the end.
Federal workers who have experienced previous closures say that uncertainty is always stressful, whether for two days or 35, as the last in 2018-2019, which was longest in American history. But this closure already feels worse, several federal employees say it to the instructor, coming after months of upheavals interinstitutions and contempt for the president and his administration. Many feel uncomfortable not only not only on the immediate deadlock, but what will happen at the end.
“Even if the closure is lifted today, we always have the same concerns tomorrow, because it will be the same rhetoric and the same emails,” explains an employee of veterans who always works with Pay and who, like all the workers interviewed for this story, has obtained anonymity to speak freely. “Over the past nine months, it’s like a psychological war.”
Workers on leave and those who work without payroll are supposed to be paid “as soon as possible” after the end of the closure, according to a law of 2019. But some say that they do not rely on the reception of the remuneration, given the way in which the Trump administration has already thwarted a large part of the Constitutional Authority of the Congress. And they wonder if they will even have jobs to come back.
Threat of “substantial” layoffs
Russell Vought, director of the management and budget office, who has spent years adapting to a considerably narrowing objective of federal bureaucracy and was one of the main architects of the 2025 project of the Heritage Foundation, promised “substantial” layoffs during the closure. So far, the only reductions announced have been transport and energy projects in states and cities that have not voted for President Trump: Mr. Vought said that around $ 18 billion in New York infrastructure funding had been interrupted, as well as $ 2.1 billion in Chicago infrastructure funding, and that nearly 8 billion dollars in “green scams” been canceled in the Ministry of Energy.
But the White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said that future layoffs could be “thousands”. President Trump posted on social networks that he met Mr. Vought on Thursday “to determine which of the many Democratic agencies, most of which are a political scam, he recommends being cut” during the closure. He added: “I cannot believe that the Radical Democrats on the left gave me this unprecedented opportunity.”
Us Department of Defense, Us Department of Veterans Affairs, US Department of Homeland Security, US Department of Justice, US Department of Agriculture, US Department of the Treasury, US Department of Health & Human Services, US Department of the Interior, US Department of Transportation, US Social Security Administration, US Department of Commerce, US Department of State, US Environmental Protection Agency, US Department of Energy, US Department of Labor, US Small Business Administration, US Department of Housing and Urban Development, US Department of Education
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Jacob Turcotte / Staff
Some federal workers also see this moment as an opportunity – a rare chance to push the administration. While not adopting exactly the closure and its impact on them and their colleagues, after the year they had, some support its politics.
“This battle is important enough if they cannot reach an agreement that will work for the American people, this is where we must be before [Republicans] will come to the table, ”explains the workers’ employee.
Others, however, have the impression of being used in a political game that is likely to end badly. Some even feel betrayed by the Democrats of the Congress, whom they thought they were fighting for them.
“The Democrats seemed to me to be the people who supported federal employees, but that is something they seem to put aside,” said a civilian employee of the Ministry of Defense. Democrats use federal workers as a leverage for their own political ends, according to this employee. “It frustrates me.”
Federal workers, who represent less than 2% of the American civil workforce, are often stereotypical as bureaucrats making six-digit wages in the Washington region. In reality, federal employees live and work in states across the country; Less than 20% of workers from the US office management office database live in the District of Columbia, Virginia or Maryland. And more than a third earn between $ 50,000 and $ 89,000 per year – comparable to American median salary. Some say they will have to save their savings until the government is reopening.
As it is typical, the Republicans and Democrats of the Congress blame themselves for the closure. The bill on short -term expenditure adopted by the Republicans of the Chamber, known as continuous resolution, would simply extend the current expenses for seven weeks, keeping the government open while the two parties continue to negotiate the budget. But the bill needs bipartite support to adopt the Senate, and the Democrats refused to support it unless the Republicans accept to cancel the Medicaid cuts in the major bill and to extend the subsidies expired to the Act respecting affordable care.
Websites and emails of the agency blame the Democrats
What is not typical, however, is how agencies seem to be involved in politics.
An employee of the Office of US patents and brands said that the email that arrived in his reception box Tuesday afternoon in preparation for the closure was “more political” than the similar emails he received concerning the previous closures during his almost two decades with the agency. “President Trump is opposed to a government closure,” said the Missive for the employees of the Commerce Department, according to a copy shared with the instructor. “Unfortunately, the Democrats block this continuous resolution in the American Senate due to unrelated policy demands.”
Similar blows have arisen on the agency’s websites this week. “The radical left to the congress has closed the government,” reads a banner on the website of the Ministry of Housing and Urban Development. “The Democrats have closed the government,” said another on the website of the Ministry of Justice. Several employees of the Department of Education told NBC News that their responses by e-mail out of service had been modified without their authorization of explicitly supported partisan messages. Democrats say that all of this is in clear violation of the Hatch law, which prohibits federal employees from engaging in a foreign political activity.
“Why should I be a pawn in all this budget?” Ask the patent office employee. “It’s just a drama after another. It’s exhausting.”
The personnel management office projects that the federal government will have lost 300,000 employees by the end of the year, including the 150,000 that took the voluntary buyout option in the “Fork in the Road” email and of which the last day was September 30. If these figures prove to be correct, this would mean that the Trump administration would have extinguished 12.5% of the federal civil workforce. But the exact figures were difficult to identify, as some relaxed employees were rehired later due to needs or prosecution. The administration said its objective was greater efficiency, but federal workers claim that the bustle of the last months has not been effective. The 150,000 federal employees who have taken the buyout have been paid for months not to work, and hundreds of thousands of people who have been slowed down until the government will reopen the salary for the time spent not working. Rather than eliminating waste and fraud, some federal employees tell the instructor that blind layoffs have caused a “brain flight” of some of the best government employees.
“The morale is not good,” said the employee of the Ministry of Defense, who began to seek jobs outside the government due to the “latent threat” of the opinions of reduction of force. “People are resigned to the fact that this is the new standard.”
For some, like the employee of the Patent Bureau, the closure was the final straw of this new standard. He had already thought of leaving the government; Thursday, he accepted a new job in the private sector.
Simon Montlake and Linda Feldmann staff editors contributed to this report.
