Published April 3, 2025
BY ZANA BALABAN
“They said if I say anything about what’s been going on, I’d be putting a target on my back,” says an employee with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, referring to a message from her supervisors concerning the current administration’s actions to cut down federal agencies.
The past two months have been filled with experiences like these for government employees.
Responding to 100 rapidly issued executive orders, federal agencies across the country now must cut employees, discontinue community programs, stop research and watch the way they teach. But it’s more than the tangible changes–there is a growing sense of fear and silence in local offices, threatening the way they have served their country for decades.
President Trump has signed a record number of executive orders during the first two and a half months of his second term–100 through March 27–and local federal workers feel immediate impacts. (courtesy of CREATIVE COMMONS)
Many government employees declined to speak even to a high school newspaper offering them complete anonymity, and those who did agree did so cautiously, having been explicitly warned by supervisors not to share any information that could link their words to their identity.
“People are freaked out,” explains a civilian employee of the Department of Defense, “so I’d ask that you don’t use my name, you don’t use exactly where I work. That’d be too easy. People are really afraid that if they say something, they’re going to lose their jobs.”
Federal workers at various organizations across the Monterey Peninsula, from NOAA to the Naval Postgraduate School, say they have become accustomed to presidential transitions over the years, and the priority shifts that come along with them. Much like any other job, a new boss means a new way of doing business.
What’s different this time is the sheer speed of change.
“We’ve never seen this level of control, this level of uncertainty,” says a professor at NPS who has been in public service for over 50 years. “Policy is changing within 24 hours. Federal employees don’t know who is considered relevant and who is not.”
The professor is referring to the “chainsaw” billionaire Elon Musk has promised to take to the federal government. While there are no official numbers available, The Associated Press estimated that hundreds of thousands of federal workers have been affected by Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency buyouts, layoffs and firings.
A key tool to these cuts is the exploitation of the probationary period, a loophole in the regulations of civil service when an employee can more easily be removed from their position, typically within one year of being hired or promoted. In just the last few weeks, the local NOAA employee has lost five coworkers she collaborated with on a daily basis, and NOAA told The New York Times they are expecting to lose 20% of their staff.
The scale of these statistics is felt across local agencies, even more so with buyout offers from Trump, encouraging federal employees to resign.
“When all of these executive orders came in January, we were told, ‘If you don’t like it, you can put your resignation in now, and you will be paid until the end of the fiscal year,’” says the NPS professor. “So people who were thinking of retiring just took it early. They were really top-of-the-line professors who decided to quit.”
But it’s not just personnel that federal agencies across the country are losing. Even more drastic cuts to research institutions have been in terms of funding.
For many, changes started on Jan. 20, the first day of President Donald J. Trump’s second term, with the 5th of 26 orders signed: Executive Order 14151, titled “Ending Radical And Wasteful Government DEI Programs And Preferencing.” In essence, Trump ordered the termination of existing Diversity, Equity and Inclusion programs, positions and policies, deeming them an “illegal” and “shameful discrimination” against the greater American public.
New federal policies flag and review wording in grant programs and other public documents to identify whether their efforts align with the executive order. To protect organizations from federal intervention, The New York Times and other publications have pushed out lists of trigger words, advising federal employees to read through works and limit or remove phrases including “advocacy,” “barriers,” “Black,” “Latinx,” “disabilities,” “discrimination,” “groups,” “equal,” “female,” “historically,” “marginalized,” “privilege,” “race,” “systemic,” “underserved,” “victim,” and many others.
“It’s demoralizing,” says the NOAA employee, currently going through the process of evaluating and editing all these public works and taking apart entire community programs. “You don’t want your science to be influenced by the current administration. Science is science, facts are facts.”
Outside the civil service sector, major private institutions are dependent on federal funding for program operations. At research universities and organizations across the country, proposals already won and programs in progress have been abruptly terminated. Over $1.2 billion in federal funding for international development was terminated at Johns Hopkins University and Columbia University, the latter of which responded March 21 to Trump’s threats by agreeing to policy changes, most notably concerning the oversight of their Middle Eastern Studies department.
At the Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey, one such program coordinator had her grant revoked and is technically no longer “allowed” to pursue her life’s work. While lying in wait for further action from the federal government, she feels as though she must tread on thin ice, not directly criticizing what happened.
“Our grant has been suspended,” she says, “but it may be unpaused, so I want to be very cautious about how I say what I say because of the sensitive nature of this matter.”
The coordinator explains that Order 14151 removed the opportunities her program provided for hundreds of underrepresented women in STEM and nuclear security across regions overseas.
And while the president’s orders cannot exceed the bounds of the United States, these funding cuts are not limited to domestic programs and thus have ripple effects across the globe.
“A few months ago, we were leading these efforts,” the MIIS coordinator explains. “Now there is concern that we will lose the trust of our international partners.”
Also navigating the landmines of trigger words are professors, whose ideas of academic freedom have been challenged in ways they’ve never seen before. Now they say they must modify lessons to avoid topics deemed “sensitive,” severely undermining lessons in anything from female terrorism to general geography.
“Now we don’t know what freedom of speech is or when we’re crossing the line,” says the NPS professor, attesting to an atmosphere of stress and tension at the school. “We can’t show that we are critical of the U.S. president, but we’re supposed to teach our students how to think critically. What can we teach in the classroom?”
The educator is now required to report the completion of the very tasks he doesn’t know how to carry out.
On Feb. 22, an email was received by all Defense Department civilian employees from the United States Office of Personnel Management that required them to prepare and submit five bullet points on their work accomplishments at the end of each week.
“They’ve created their own email system,” says the NPS professor. “At first, people thought it was spam.”
After meeting briefs and follow-ups, it became clear that these were official orders, and responses would be examined by Musk’s DOGE. But questions of what to write still remained. As the professor explains, NPS is the research reservoir for the Department of Defense, conducting studies and research on topics ranging from engineering mathematics to classified national security issues.
At first, he didn’t know what DOGE would be looking for.
“How can my work be summed up in five bullets?” asks the professor, explaining that such a short email prompt would never be able to explain the gravity of the projects NPS works on and their far-reaching impacts.
The professor admits that the early stages of this memorandum were a guessing game for employees. Even as questions are gradually answered, a feeling of unease still weighs on civilians across local agencies. Everything is “upside down,” he says, whether it’s listening to the news or awaiting the next set of directions.
“We’ve felt harassed and bullied for the last two months,” says the NOAA employee. “We’re scared to lose our jobs, but what’s more depressing is the narrative that’s out there about civil servants–that we’re not dedicated, that we’re fraudulent, that we’re lazy and don’t work hard.”
Joining the federal workforce was a choice she made 25 years ago, understanding she could have made much more money in the private sector. Now she says she feels betrayed by the very public that she has dedicated her life to serving. Others feel the same way.
“There is a mix of confusion, uncertainty and feeling insulted,” observes an Army civilian who has been serving for over a decade. “You read things that say that we’re the villains or the opposing team, and that is not what you want to hear from your leadership.”
The defense employee sees these situations of betrayal as coming from the very top–the executive office. Both the conduct and the written policy language of the current administration reflect this. To the top offices and the public, the NOAA employee asks for the opportunity to prove the value of her agency.
“Come in and see what we do,” she implores. As NOAA is the country’s top agency for weather and climate science, she wants people to learn where their taxpayer dollars are going. “Walk in our door, email us, contact us, and we will tell you–show you–what we are contributing to society, to the public, to Monterey Bay.”
But in the meantime, federal workers continue to drown in waves of uncertainty.
“Where do we go?” asks the professor at the Naval Postgraduate School. “We can’t do anything. This is absolute executive power. The only hope federal workers have is that some justice will be served.”
