Employees locked out of computer systems. Managers avoiding written communications. Long-standing councils shut down without notice.
Only three weeks into the second Trump administration, widespread disruption across the federal government has thrown the lives of thousands of workers into disarray. Many of them — career civil servants who serve under any political party — don’t know how long they’ll be able to keep their jobs.
“It’s a total dismantling of our agencies, and to start over again at some point, it’s pretty scary to me,” said Gay Henson, secretary-treasurer of the International Federation of Professional and Technical Engineers, which represents NASA, NOAA, the U.S. Navy and the U.S. Government Accountability Office, along with employers that contract with the government, like Boeing.