Robert Reich sez: When I was secretary of labor, I found the permanent civil service to be the backbone of the Department. I depended on them. That’s why it’s noteworthy that the resistance is a growing inside federal departments, coming from federal workers charged with implementing Trump’s agenda. As the Washington Post reports:
1. Federal workers are in regular consultation with recently departed Obama-era political appointees about what they can do to push back against the new president’s initiatives.
2. They’re organizing. Last weekend, at a church in Columbia Heights, dozens of federal workers attended a forum to discuss how they can best oppose the Trump administration. At least 180 federal employees have signed up for a workshop next weekend, where experts will offer advice on workers’ rights and how they can express civil disobedience.
3. The State Department has emerged as the nexus of opposition to Trump’s refugee policy, in part because it has an official dissent channel where Foreign Service employees can register opposition without fear of reprisals. The channel, formed in 1971, has been used to raise policy objections to the Vietnam War and other conflicts. Several hundred employees signed the dissent cable objecting to Trump’s refugee policy.
4. At the Defense Department, a Twitter account protesting Trump’s policies has popped up with the handle @Rogue_DoD, tweeting everything from Defense Department documents warning about the effects of climate change to an opinion piece accusing Trump of insufficient consultation with Defense Secretary Jim Mattis.
5. At the Justice Department, an employee in the division that administers grants to nonprofits fighting domestic violence and researching sex crimes says the office has been planning to slow its work and to file complaints with the inspector general’s office if asked to shift grants away from their mission.
6. At the Health and Human Services Department, employees protested a White House ban on advertising and other outreach activities encouraging Americans to sign up for health plans through Affordable Care Act marketplaces. Their internal protest, combined with an outcry on social media, prompted the Trump administration to revise its directive in less than 24 hours.
7. Individual acts of resistance are breaking out all over the government. After Trump complained about the National Park Service using Twitter to compare the crowd sizes at his inauguration with the far larger assembly at Obama’s gathering in 2009, a gag order temporarily silenced the official social media account. In response, an ex-employee at Badlands National Park who still had access to its Twitter feed started posting facts about climate change. The rogue tweeter won more than 60,000 followers before park officials regained control of the account.
8. An immunologist who worked at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has created what he called a “resistance page,”@viralCDC, for CDC employees to post vaccine and public health information that workers believe the Trump administration may seek to remove from public view.
9. At the Environmental Protection Agency, two Twitter feeds, @altUSEPA and @ActualEPAFacts, have attracted more than 200,000 followers and call themselves part of “the Resistance.” (It’s not clear whether they’re run by outside activists or agency employees.)
I'm sure these are only the tips of a vast upsurge of resistance inside government. You see, most government workers want to do their jobs, and they believe in democracy. In the months and years ahead, they'll also be an important source of whistle-blowing.
Let us pause to appreciate and applaud our federal workforce.
The signs of popular dissent from President Trump’s opening volley of actions have been plain to see on the nation’s streets, at airports in the aftermath of his refugee and visa ban, and in the blizzard of outrage on social media. But there’s another level of resistance to the new president that is less visible and potentially more troublesome to the administration: a growing wave of opposition from the federal workers charged with implementing any new president’s agenda.
Less than two weeks into Trump’s administration, federal workers are in regular consultation with recently departed Obama-era political appointees about what they can do to push back against the new president’s initiatives. Some federal employees have set up social media accounts to anonymously leak word of changes that Trump appointees are trying to make.
And a few government workers are pushing back more openly, incurring the wrath of a White House that, as press secretary Sean Spicer said this week about dissenters at the State Department, sends a clear message that they “should either get with the program, or they can go.”
