WASHINGTON — Less than two weeks into his term, President Donald Trump is waging war against his own government, creating a deep sense of fear in the federal workforce — and recipients of federal aid — as he tests the limits of his power to alter the scope, function and nonpartisan nature of government without Congress.
Primarily using two little-known agencies — the Office of Management and Budget and the Office of Personnel Management — Trump has tried to choke off funding for a wide array of domestic and foreign assistance programs, made it easier to fire tens of thousands of federal workers, and launched a campaign to pressure more to resign from their posts.
Two federal judges have blocked the domestic spending freeze, and, in the face of public outcry, Trump rescinded an OMB memo implementing it this week — but the underlying executive order remains in place, with the federal workers responsible for enacting it left to choose between mandates from the courts and from the president.
In conversations with NBC News, nearly two dozen federal workers described a climate of fear, confusion, skepticism and anger at federal agencies over the past two weeks. A number of civil servants described a sense that they were being actively tracked and monitored in a way that was foreign prior to Trump’s return to power.
At a time when Americans’ trust in government has been eroding for decades — the vast majority say they do not trust that Washington will do the right thing always or most of the time in Gallup polling — Trump is putting into action long-standing Republican views on how to shrink and restructure the federal footprint. But critics say that taking an ideological sledgehammer to the government will make it less effective, less efficient and less protected from partisan influence.
Nearly 60 employees of the U.S. Agency for International Development were placed on administrative leave after Trump issued an order freezing funding for global aid programs, and his aides are in active discussions about unilaterally folding the agency into the State Department — a move that critics say cannot be done without Congress enacting a law. The agency’s website went dark Saturday.
“The organizing idea behind what they’re doing is that Trump wants to be king,” Sen. Chris Van Hollen, D-Md., said. “He doesn’t want to be accountable to the law, and the American people are getting hurt.”
Van Hollen added that Trump’s actions could make it harder for the president to collect enough votes to avoid a government shutdown six weeks from now.
“It also begs the question about whether we can proceed in any good faith” on a spending measure,” he said. “I mean, we go through these negotiations to get a compromise, but the president cherry picks what he likes and discards the rest.”
Trump allies in Congress, like freshman Sen. Jim Banks, R-Ind., say the president is simply fulfilling his campaign-trail promises.
“The American people overwhelmingly voted for President Trump in part because of his promise to root out government waste and bring common sense back to the White House,” Banks said in a statement to NBC News. “With a $36 trillion national debt, I welcome his administration working to ensure every tax dollar is spent responsibly on the agenda he promised.”
It all amounts to a high-stakes bet that the public will reward Trump and Republicans for a slash-and-burn approach to re-forming the federal government, even if it takes money out of the pockets of voters or state and local government functions they rely on. The person who faces the least risk is Trump, who is not constitutionally eligible to run for re-election, the president’s allies say.
“Thus far the approach has been phenomenal,” one Republican operative said.
But the operative said they harbored “some concern” about the Friday dismissal of the top six FBI officials — suggesting that may be more problematic for Trump and his administration on the outside than within government.
“When it comes to backlash, [Trump] really shouldn’t care,” this person said. “He’s not running again and slimming down the size of the federal workforce is a part of his mandate, it will ultimately be up to [Vice President] JD [Vance] [and] current incumbents to defend the actions of this administration if there is backlash in the future.”
In some cases, Trump is not waiting for attrition. In addition to dismissing FBI leaders, he fired as many as two dozen Justice Department prosecutors who worked on “Capitol siege” cases — those involving defendants from the Jan. 6 attack on Congress. Trump pardoned most of the people convicted of Jan. 6-related crimes and commuted the sentences of others.
Federal workers have been advised that they face “adverse consequences“ if they don’t report on colleagues whose work touches on “diversity, equity and inclusion” — and, citing “common sense” rather than evidence, Trump blamed a fatal mid-air collision between a commercial regional jet and a military helicopter on “DEI” hires at the Federal Aviation Administration.
The president’s words and actions amount to a full-scale effort to demoralize and intimidate the workforce, say some of the federal employees who spoke to NBC News.
Trump has empowered billionaire Elon Musk, the volunteer head of the Department of Government Efficiency, and his allies to offer “buyouts” that would pay federal civil servants through September in exchange for their resignations. Workers have received nearly daily communications about the “deferred resignation” option directly from OPM and from agency personnel chiefs at the behest of OPM.
On Wednesday, Environmental Protection Agency employees were reminded in an email that they can be fired at any time if they have worked for the government for less than a year.
“If you want government to function, you wouldn’t be attacking federal employees on a daily basis with psychological warfare,” said a longtime manager in the federal government. “You want them to show up motivated. This is not the way to do it.”
Noah Peters, a senior adviser at OPM who was the only individual copied by name on an email to agency HR directors about the deferred resignation program, did not respond to a series of questions from NBC News.
A USAID official said colleagues were “sketched out” by the new OPM email system that seemingly allows the federal agency to contact all federal employees directly.
“All communication from OPM used to go directly through the agency and then the agencies would disperse that,” this person said. “A lot of people are kind of sketched out by that, because that’s never happened before. And so it’s like, are you trying to control me? Are you trying to monitor my access? What are you trying to do?”
This person added that while they agreed that the federal government is in need of change, attempting to force through massive changes and disruptions so rapidly won’t actually improve the civil service.
“Change takes time,” this person said. “There could be positive effects if this was done smartly. And a lot of people would welcome that. But this is just fear mongering. It’s nothing more than [being] intimidating. … That’s not how it works. I mean, if you’re Elon Musk, it works that way. But that’s not how it works in government.”
At the U.S. Forestry Service, one civil servant said a higher-up told them in response to their questions and concerns about the shifting directives to simply maintain a low profile.
This person “told me that, if [they] were in my shoes, the best thing for me to do would be to lay low, keep my head down, and just do my work,” the Forestry Service employee said. “Which I can kind of understand, however, it’s not really a great answer.”
Republicans said there was little risk in Trump’s actions, given that civil servants are considered to be unsympathetic to the broader population while the president does not have to seek office again and face any potential blowback personally from the electorate.
“Not to be glib, but I think his goal is exactly what he said it is — to drain the swamp,” one Trump ally said. “Literally clean house of the career bureaucrats that are in there. I think the risk is low — very low.”
“Any service interruption will be related to direct payments to people and that is mostly automated,” this person added. “And if we’re reducing the amount of money spent that is essentially the waste on transfer payments I am not sure many will feel it.”
Rep. Riley Moore, R-W.Va., said Trump’s effort to reorient the federal workforce is about aligning it directly with his and his movement’s worldview.
“What President Trump is seeking to do is to maximize efficiency and outcomes for the American taxpayer and their tax dollars that are spent to support our society with security and essential services,” Moore said. “At the same time the president seeks to correct the mission statement and guiding principles of these departments and agencies to reorient them to an America First orthodoxy.”
But Neera Tanden, who was President Joe Biden’s domestic policy adviser, said there is a tension between the anti-government crusaders in Trump’s circle and the voters who put him over the top in November. That was reflected in the backlash he got from the OMB memo, which was interpreted by many civil servants, lawmakers and recipients of federal aid to require a pause in funding grants for everything from local fire departments and police programs to community health centers.
“The fundamental challenge for their coalition is it’s working-class people and billionaire libertarians, and they are in direct conflict,” Tanden said. “I don’t think all those white working-class and Latino working-class people who voted for him are like, ‘You know what? I really want to lose my healthcare.’”
Whether Trump can hobble the federal workforce and cut trillions of dollars from the budget without harming his own voters — and the Republicans who represent them in Congress — remains to be seen.
Kush Desai, a White House spokesperson, told NBC News that Trump will be able to do just that.
“President Trump received a resounding mandate to streamline our gargantuan government to better serve the needs of the American people,” Desai said. “He will use every lever of executive and legislative power to deliver.”
