Politics
Trump’s Moves to Upend Federal Bureaucracy Touch Off Fear and Confusion
An Education Department employee was attending a funeral this week when she got the call: She was being placed on administrative leave because she works on projects that connect Black students, among others, to federal government programs.
A disabled veteran employed at the Department of Veterans Affairs grew emotional when he heard about the rescinding of telework options, unsure whether it would mean the end of his job taking care of fellow soldiers.
A Federal Trade Commission employee was so anxious that he told family members not to talk about politics on unencrypted lines. Across government agencies, workers eyed one another nervously, wondering whether a colleague would report them, accusing them of resisting the new administration’s move to end certain programs.
President Trump’s rapid push to overhaul the federal bureaucracy in his first days in office has been met with a mix of fear, fury and confusion throughout the work force.
Dozens of employees across the government, many of whom spoke on the condition of anonymity because of worries of retribution, described agencies gripped with uncertainty about how to implement the new policies and workers frantically trying to assess the impact on their careers and families. As the nation’s largest employer, the upheaval in the federal government could reverberate in communities throughout the country.
Starting on Inauguration Day, the orders and memos came down one after the other, many crafted in the pugnacious tone of a campaign speech: the shuttering of “Radical and Wasteful” diversity programs in federal agencies; the stripping of civil service protections from a share of the federal work force; the end to remote work, which, one administration memo claimed, had left federal office buildings “mostly empty” and rendered downtown Washington “a national embarrassment.”
All new hiring was frozen, job offers were rescinded, scientific meetings were canceled and federal health officials were temporarily barred from communicating with the public, a directive that some understood as so broad that it even extended to making outside purchase orders for lab supplies.
For the more than two million federal workers, roughly four-fifths of whom live outside the Washington area, change is inevitable whenever a new administration takes over. But few had expected it to come at this speed and scale.
“They are being upended in the most brutal and traumatic way imaginable,” said Max Stier, president of the Partnership for Public Service, a nonprofit that works to promote excellence and best practices in the federal government. Mr. Stier said he had deep concerns about the consequences of Mr. Trump’s swift changes on the ability of the country to face a range of threats, from terrorism to pandemics.
An ambition to change things is reasonable, he said. But “the speed is unnecessary and destructive,” he added.
Federal employees looked to their supervisors for guidance, but said they often had none to give, as they tried to interpret brief orders and memos with few specifics. For example, the return-to-office memo said employees with a disability could be exempt, but it was unclear what kind of disability might qualify. Some managers said they knew nothing beyond what was in the news. Adding to the panic were remarks by the president himself, who suggested on Friday that he might consider shuttering the Federal Emergency Management Agency, which employs 20,000 workers around the country.
A spokesperson from the Office of Personnel Management defended the actions in a statement, calling them “exciting steps to build a federal work force based on merit, excellence and accomplishment, so we can have a government that serves the public effectively and efficiently.”
“We have already saved millions of hard-earned taxpayer dollars that are no longer directed to DEIA programs that wasted millions of hard-earned taxpayer dollars and discriminated against federal workers,” the statement said, referring to diversity, equity, inclusion and accessibility efforts.
Donald F. Kettl, an emeritus professor at the University of Maryland who studies the civil service, said there was widespread consensus among experts that the civil service is in need of changes.
“It’s too hard to hire, it’s too tough to fire, and there’s too little match between the civil service system and the capacity government needs to handle 21st-century challenges,” Dr. Kettl said.
But he said that many of the Trump administration’s proposed changes would be counterproductive. “They’re focused much more on shifting the balance of power than they are on improving the results of government,” he said.
Inside federal offices, the mood has been tense and anticipatory. One employee at the Homeland Security Department said the staff felt at risk of being fired at any moment. At the Commerce Department, employees were terrified whenever a meeting was called, one worker said.
The isolation is deepened, some federal employees said, by the fact that most of their fellow Americans see the federal government as bloated and inefficient. Some said that reform, if it were well thought-out, would be healthy and welcome. But many noted that they had accepted significant pay cuts to work for the government because they believe in public service — issuing Social Security checks, keeping air travel safe and inspecting food, among other roles.
“The reality is that the American economy needs my agency’s work,” said Colin Smalley, a geologist with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and the president of his local of the International Federation of Professional and Technical Engineers. “We keep construction projects going, ports and waterways open, power grids functioning, and we protect communities from natural disasters and help affected communities recover. Hurting our mission hurts the public.”
Compounding the anxiety was a directive from the Office of Personnel Management instructing agency heads to turn over by Jan. 24 names of those who were still in their probationary period, typically within one or two years of their hiring.
The directive noted that such employees “can be terminated during that period without triggering appeal rights,” and that managers should determine whether they should be retained, according to a copy obtained by The New York Times.
Jacqueline Simon, the policy director for the American Federation of Government Employees, which has about 300,000 active members across dozens of agencies, said that attempts to terminate federal employees still in their probationary periods could have damaging effects on government services.
For example, she said, employees of the Food Safety and Inspection Service, who work in meat and poultry plants to prevent diseased animals and other contaminants from entering the food supply, frequently leave within a year because the job is so depleting.
“It’s not a job you stay in long,” Ms. Simon said, calling the work “dirty and dangerous.” If the Trump administration were to remove everyone in the service who was still on probation, she added, there would be a severe shortage of inspectors at meat processing plants.
An attorney at a federal enforcement agency said he works on a team of more than a dozen lawyers, more than half of whom are still in their probationary period. If the team were to lose all of its members still on probation, the attorney said, it would be “catastrophic” for the team’s ability to shoulder its law enforcement responsibilities.
One of the most sweeping changes made by Mr. Trump in his first week was to order federal workers back to the office full time by later next month, ending years of a flexible telecommuting policy, which in many offices dated to well before the pandemic. For some who want to keep working for the government, this could mean selling homes, changing children’s schools and moving hundreds of miles in a matter of weeks. New mothers are debating whether they will be able to return from maternity leave, and couples have been forced to choose who gets to keep their current jobs.
Many offices do not currently have enough room for all of the employees to come back. This, some contend, is the whole point. Shortly after the November election, Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy, the men tapped by Mr. Trump to remake the government, wrote in a Wall Street Journal op-ed: “Requiring federal employees to come to the office five days a week would result in a wave of voluntary terminations that we welcome.”
“I think we know where it looks like he’s trying to go, which is to force people to quit,” said Representative Glenn F. Ivey of Maryland, a Democrat whose district is home to tens of thousands of federal workers. “They’re going to try and force a lot of federal employees out of work, and then replace them with political loyalists.”
The administration’s efforts are already being challenged in court by unions and other groups, who argue, among other things, that the lifting of civil service protections runs afoul of laws governing federal workers.
Among the first to feel the direct impact of the president’s new policies were employees working on diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives and programming. Mr. Trump ordered the immediate shutdown of all such offices, with their staff placed on administrative leave by Wednesday at 5 p.m. Agencies were ordered to draw up plans to lay them off by Jan. 31. The administration also threatened employees with “adverse consequences” if they failed to report on colleagues who defy the orders within 10 days, setting up a special email account for such reports.
The Education Department employee who was placed on leave while she was at a funeral said she had worked on an acclaimed program connecting students with scholarships and industry leaders, and helped Black people tap into government programs they often did not know existed. In various communications, the Trump administration has called such efforts “harmful” and “wasteful.”
“I guess if that’s harmful, then I’m proud of providing that harm — empowering the community to be better because we are brilliant,” she said. “We just don’t have the access to generational wealth and nepotism that they have, so we have to teach people how to make it for themselves.”
In a work force that is nearly 20 percent Black, many employees said there could be another consequence of the moves: making the federal government whiter and less diverse.
By the end of the week, some employees said wearily that they did not know how long they could hang on. Many described conditions as reminiscent of the McCarthy era, and were despondent to see how quickly their office’s leaders acquiesced.
At the Department of Labor, staff members watched a colleague who had been recently hired to a civil service position be escorted out because she was a former political appointee. One employee said her manager required her to scrub the website not only of the words “diversity, equity and inclusion,” as the executive order required, but also of references to “underserved” and “marginalized communities.” Afterward, she said, she went into a closet, called her mother and wept.
On Tuesday morning, Moriah Lee, an analyst at NASA, joined a virtual town hall to learn what all the orders would mean for her small team, which monitors and audits projects in the space program. The acting supervisors, people she had known personally for years, made it clear to everyone that they were not inclined to show flexibility, she said.
Gone was the weekly speaker series that had been organized under the diversity program, which had brought in deaf people, combat veterans and others to share their experiences. Gone was her ability to live in Nashville and go twice a month to an office two hours away in Huntsville, Ala.
After the meeting, she and her colleagues went back to their jobs. They were rattled, she said, but not afraid. “The people who are acting most in fear are the ones in authority,” she said.
But the change to remote work, combined with the other directives, was just too much for her. And so Ms. Lee sent in her notice: Nearly six years after she began working for the federal government, she was resigning.
Kate Kelly, Hamed Aleaziz and Sheryl Gay Stolberg contributed reporting from Washington.
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Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced Saturday that the Trump administration is sanctioning a senior Nicaraguan official over alleged human rights violations.
Rubio said the U.S. is designating Vice Minister of the Interior Luis Roberto Cañas Novoa for his role in “gross violations of human rights” under the government of President Daniel Ortega and Vice President Rosario Murillo, marking what he said was the latest effort to hold the regime accountable.
“The Trump administration continues to hold the Murillo-Ortega dictatorship accountable for brutal human rights violations against Nicaraguans,” Rubio said in a post on X. “I’m designating Nicaraguan Vice Minister of the Interior Luis Roberto Cañas Novoa for his role in human rights violations.”
RUBIO TESTIFIES IN TRIAL OF EX-FLORIDA CONGRESSMAN ALLEGEDLY HIRED BY MADURO GOVERNMENT TO LOBBY FOR VENEZUELA
Secretary of State Marco Rubio speaks at the State Department, April 14, 2026. The U.S. announced sanctions on a Nicaraguan official tied to alleged human rights abuses under the Ortega-Murillo government. (Andrew Harnik/Getty Images)
The designation was made under Section 7031(c), which allows the State Department to bar foreign officials and their immediate family members from entering the United States due to involvement in significant corruption or human rights abuses.
The State Department has said the Ortega-Murillo government has engaged in arbitrary arrests, torture and extrajudicial killings following mass protests that began in April 2018.
“Nearly eight years ago, the Rosario Murillo and Daniel Ortega dictatorship unleashed a brutal wave of repression against Nicaraguans who courageously stood against the regime’s increased tyranny, corruption, and abuse,” the statement reads.
The State Department said that the sanction marked the anniversary of the 2018 protests, after which more than 325 protesters were murdered in the aftermath.
A panel of U.N.-backed human rights experts previously accused Nicaragua’s government of systematic abuses “tantamount to crimes against humanity,” following an investigation into the country’s crackdown on political dissent, according to The Associated Press.
The experts said the repression intensified after mass protests in 2018 and has since expanded across large parts of society, targeting perceived opponents of the government.
TRUMP ADMIN ANNOUNCES EXPANSION OF VISA RESTRICTION POLICY IN WESTERN HEMISPHERE
Nicaragua President Daniel Ortega delivers a speech during a ceremony to mark the 199th Independence Day anniversary, in Managua, Nicaragua Sept. 15, 2020. (Nicaragua’s Presidency/Cesar Perez/Handout via Reuters)
Nicaragua’s government has rejected those findings.
The designation follows a series of recent U.S. actions targeting the Ortega-Murillo government. In February, the State Department sanctioned five senior Nicaraguan officials tied to repression, citing arbitrary detention, torture, killings and the targeting of clergy, media and civil society.
Earlier this week, the department also announced sanctions on individuals and companies linked to Nicaragua’s gold sector, including two of Ortega and Murillo’s sons, accusing the regime of using the industry to generate foreign currency, launder assets and consolidate power within the ruling family.
The State Department said the move is part of ongoing efforts to hold the Nicaraguan government accountable for its actions.
Fox News Digital reached out to the Nicaraguan government and its embassy in Washington for comment but did not immediately receive a response.
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A man waves a Nicaraguan flag during a demonstration to commemorate Nicaragua’s national Day of Peace, which is celebrated in the country on April 19, and to protest against the government of Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega in San Jose, Costa Rica on April 16, 2023. (Jose Cordero/AFP)
The Trump administration has taken an increasingly aggressive posture in the Western Hemisphere in recent months, including a Jan. 3, 2026, operation that resulted in the capture of Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores.
The U.S. has also carried out a series of strikes targeting suspected drug-trafficking vessels in the region, part of a broader crackdown tied to regional security and narcotics enforcement efforts.
WASHINGTON — Upbeat claims from President Trump over an imminent peace deal to end the war with Iran were met with deep skepticism Friday across the Middle East, where Iranian and Israeli officials questioned the prospects for a lasting agreement that would satisfy all parties.
The outlines of an agreement began to emerge that would provide Iran with a major strategic victory — and a potential financial windfall — allowing the Islamic Republic to leverage its control over the Strait of Hormuz to exact significant concessions from the United States and its ally Israel as Trump presses for a swift end to the conflict.
In a series of social media posts and interviews with reporters, Trump announced that the strait was “fully open,” vowing Tehran would never again attempt to control it. But Iranian officials and state media said that conditions remained on passage through the waterway, including the imposition of tolls and coordination with the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.
Iranian diplomats posted threats that its closure could resume at any time of their choosing, and warned that restrictions would return unless the United States agreed to lift a blockade of its ports. Trump had said Friday that the blockade would remain in place.
“The conditional and limited reopening of a portion of the Strait of Hormuz is solely an Iranian initiative, one that creates responsibility and serves to test the firm commitments of the opposing side,” said a top aide to Iran’s president, dismissing Trump’s statements on the contours of a deal as “baseless.”
“If they renege on their promises,” he added, “they will face dire consequences.”
In an overture to Iran, Trump said Israel would be “prohibited” from conducting additional military strikes in Lebanon, where the Israeli government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu seeks to prevent Hezbollah, an Iranian proxy militia, from rearming, a potential threat to communities in the Israeli north.
But in a speech delivered in Hebrew, Netanyahu would say only that Israel had agreed to a temporary ceasefire, while members of his Cabinet warned that Israel Defense Forces operations in southern Lebanon were not yet finished. A top ally of the prime minister at a right-wing Israeli news outlet warned that Trump was “surrendering” to Iran in the talks.
It was a day of public messaging from a president eager to end a war that has proved historically unpopular with the American public, and has driven a rise in gas prices that could weigh on his party entering this year’s midterm elections.
Yet, Republican allies of the president have begun warning him that an agreement skewed heavily in Tehran’s favor could carry political costs of its own.
Trump was forced to deny an Axios report Friday that his negotiating team had offered to release $20 billion in frozen Iranian assets in exchange for Tehran agreeing to hand over its fissile material, buried under rubble from a U.S. bombing raid last year.
That sum would amount to more than 10 times what President Obama released to Iran under a 2015 nuclear deal, called the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, that was the subject of fierce Republican criticism in the decade since.
“I have every confidence that President Trump will not allow Iran to be enriched by tens of billions of dollars for holding the world hostage and creating mayhem in the region,” said Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), a strong supporter of the war. “No JCPOAs on President Trump’s watch.”
Still, Trump said in a round of interviews that a deal could be reached in a matter of days, ending less than two weeks of negotiations.
He claimed that Tehran had agreed to permanently end its enrichment of uranium — a development that, if true, would mark a dramatic reversal for the Islamic Republic from decades developing its nuclear program, and from just 10 days ago, when Iranian diplomats rejected a U.S. proposal of a 20-year pause on domestic enrichment in favor of a five-year moratorium.
He said Iran had agreed never to build nuclear weapons — a pledge Tehran has made repeatedly, including under the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, in a religious decree from then-Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and in the 2015 agreement — while continuing nuclear activities viewed by the international community as exceeding civilian needs.
And he repeatedly stated that Iran had agreed to the removal of its enriched uranium from the country, either to the United States or to a third party. Iranian state media stated Friday afternoon that a proposal to remove the country’s highly enriched uranium had been “rejected.”
Iran’s agreement to allow safe passage for commercial vessels through the Strait of Hormuz is linked to a ceasefire in Lebanon that the Israeli Cabinet approved for only a 10-day period. Regardless of whether it holds or is extended, Israeli officials said their military would not retreat from its current positions in southern Lebanon — opening up Israeli forces to potential attack by Hezbollah militants unbound by a truce brokered by the Lebanese government.
The Lebanese people, Hezbollah officials said, have “the right to resist” Israeli occupation of their land. Whether the fighting resumes, the group added, “will be determined based on how developments unfold.”
An Iranian official threw cold water on the prospects of reaching a comprehensive peace deal in the coming days, telling Reuters that a temporary extension of the current ceasefire, set to expire Tuesday, would “create space for more talks on lifting sanctions on Iran and securing compensation for war damages.”
“In exchange, Iran will provide assurances to the international community about the peaceful nature of its nuclear program,” the official said, adding that “any other narrative about the ongoing talks is a misrepresentation of the situation.”
Trump told reporters Friday that the talks will continue through the weekend.
While Trump claimed there aren’t “too many significant differences” remaining, he said the United States would continue the blockade until negotiations are finalized and formalized.
“When the agreement is signed, the blockade ends,” the president told reporters in Phoenix.
Times staff writer Ana Ceballos contributed to this report.
CHAMBERS OF
JUSTICE ELENA KAGAN
Supreme Court of the United States Washington, D. C. 20343
February 7, 2016
Memorandum to the Conference
Re: 15A773 West Virginia, et al. v. EPA, et al.
15A776 Basin Elec. Power Cooperative, et al. v. EPA, et al. 15A787 Chamber of Commerce, et al. v. EPA, et al.
15A778 Murray Energy Corp., et al. v. EPA, et al.
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15A793 North Dakota v. EPA, et al.
I agree with Steve that we should direct the States to seek an extension from the EPA before asking this Court to intervene. We could also include, at the end of such an order, language along the lines of the following, to encourage the D. C. Circuit to act expeditiously in its resolution of this matter: “In light of that court’s agreement to consider this case on an expedited schedule, we are confident that it will [or even: we urge it to] render a decision with appropriate dispatch.” See Doe v. Gonzales, 546 U. S. 1301, 1308 (2005) (GINSBURG, J., in chambers); Kemp v. Smith, 463 U. S. 1344, 1345 (1983) (Powell, J., in chambers); Holtzman v. Schlesinger, 414 U. S. 1304, 1305, n. 2 (1973) (Marshall, J., in chambers).
The unique nature of the relief sought in these applications gives me real pause. The applicants ask us to enjoin a regulation pending initial review in the court of appeals. As we often say, “we are a court of review, not of first view.” See Cutter v. Wilkinson, 544 U. S. 709, 718 n. 7 (2005); cf. Doe, 546 U. S., at 1308 (“Re- spect for the assessment of the Court of Appeals is especially warranted when that court is proceeding to adjudication on the merits with due expedition.”). As far as I can tell, it would be unprecedented for us to second-guess the D. C. Circuit’s deci sion that a stay is not warranted, without the benefit of full briefing or a prior judi- cial decision.
On the merits, this is a difficult case involving a complex statutory and regu- latory regime. Although the parties’ abbreviated discussion of the issues at stake here makes it difficult for me to determine with any confidence which side is likely to ultimately prevail, it seems to me that at this stage the government has the bet- ter of the arguments. The Chief’s memo focuses on the applicants’ argument that the “best system of emission reduction” refers “solely [to] installation of control technologies (e.g., scrubbers).” 2/5 Memo, at 2. The ordinary meaning of “system” is in fact quite broad, appearing to encompass what EPA has done here. Of course, we would want to consider this term in the larger context of the Clean Air Act’s regula-
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