Lisa Desjardins:
Presidents have the right, as we just heard, to change agencies and to affect political appointees.
But what’s happening here is sort of an unprecedented barrage of activity against the largest civilian work force in this country, pressure tactics, people told to snitch on their co-workers. Let’s take a look at through all the orders that federal workers have received in the last bit.
First, there is a hiring freeze in place across government. They have this deferred resignation deadline that you talked about for tomorrow. There have been administrative leave notices, layoffs in places. There’s been lists of new requirements that people think are going toward a purge.
Their back-to-office policy starts beginning Friday at the Department of Defense. Now, as you said, Trump wants to downsize government. But what’s happening here is something even bigger, a bigger message, which is, it doesn’t matter what your skill set is. We’re not looking at your job. We simply want you to resign, whoever you are.
So what’s happening for workers is, they’re thinking if I could be fired. Do I need to return to the office? There is a debate over returning to office, of course, that can be had.
But our producer Diane Lincoln Estes worked out — spoke to some federal workers who are dealing with this issue. One of them she talked to in Texas explained that this difficult decision puts her family in a tough spot.
