Donald Trump promised to unleash American energy. But in the first month of his presidency, the Department of Energy’s staff has been overwhelmed with very different work: deleting web pages from the department’s site, removing phrases like “diversity, equity and inclusion” from reports and fighting to keep employees who perform critical work.
If the goal is efficiency, eight current and former department staff who asked for anonymity to protect their jobs told NOTUS the Trump administration has failed. But if the goal is to paralyze the regular function of the federal government, then it’s working. In all the tumult, the agency is unable to prioritize the actual policies the Trump administration has said it wants, staffers said.
“There’s a power struggle for the heart of the agency,” one longtime staffer still at the agency said.