The Takeover, Up Close

What I Wrote About the Attack on the Federal Workforce

I wrote it as a warning, hoping people would see and understand what was coming.

But not enough did, so here we are.

But given what the Trump Administration is doing to the federal workforce, I decided to revisit my Chapter on that topic from “2025.”

It’s hard for outsiders to know exactly what’s happening on the inside now—and it will get less transparent soon. That lack of transparency will be Trump’s friend, because it means what they are doing gets lost in the chaos.

My goal is to make it real for people. And my fear is that what I imagined in the middle of 2024 will continue to come to pass if the resignations they are trying to push happen. All the more reason to encourage hard-working public servants to NOT get bullied into resigning—we need them there, and not political hacks.

Here’s what I wrote last summer about what early 2025 would look like if Trump won, from the perspective of a scientist in the CDC trying to deal with the spread of avian flu:

“Yvette walked briskly to her office after exiting the elevator. Two long hallways, usually clean and tidy, now strewn with boxes and papers as a revolving door of new and old staff rotated in and out of the various offices along the way.

As with the meeting at OEOB, she recognized only a few faces looking up from empty desks and through open doorways. Those strangers, the boxes crammed everywhere, and cleaning crews working over time all provided a reminder of the daily chaos that consumed her once orderly workplace.

The White House called it “the Project 2025 transition,” and it was turning Washington upside down. She pictured it as a long, meandering line of dominoes falling all around her, knowing full well one would topple her soon. Maybe even today.

The first fell above her, at the highest levels of the CDC—the overall structure split in half, two mega-sections uselessly cut off from one another, and the entire leadership team replaced over the course of two days in late January. Some highly respected people were out—experts she’d learned from for years. Mentors on science and pandemic prevention. Mentors in life and values.

Within days, the next dominoes tumbled far closer to her—she’d been “layered” by new appointees and hires within six weeks of the inauguration.  An extra level inserted between her work leading the Zoonotic Infectious Diseases section, and the top leadership at CDC. A layer of bureaucracy and meddling and watching that made no sense unless driven by politics and paybacks and control.

Then within her own section, even though she was technically the director, colleagues began dropping like flies around her. They’d come by her office, explain that a strange name and young face from CDC HR had dropped by, and were out by day’s end. Their access to technology cut off immediately; personal items cleared out by the end of the day; key fobs and security passes shut down as soon as they walked out for the last time.

A day or two later, new faces would appear—most far too young to have the right experience— occupying those newly vacated and scrubbed offices but visibly clueless about what they were supposed to be doing. Mainly waiting around, it seemed. No doubt for her and remaining leaders to go.

No one was briefing her on any of it, so Yvette had to call HR to learn who these people were, and what their job titles and descriptions were.

But whatever the job titles, the buzz of the place was now all politics, and almost no science. Once she saw their resumes and did research on her home computer, she understood why.

It was basically a swarm of political activists converging from around the country, some from the official party, others from more obscure far-right groups. Even, she learned online, a few pardoned January 6 participants.  While some had government experience at the local level, rarely was that experience relevant to the posts they were assuming now.

The only ones with any real experience or knowledge came from Congressional offices and the same think tanks who’d designed “Project 2025” in the first place. Like the two at the pandemic table, smart in one way. Ideological. But completely clueless about how public health really works, let alone how to prevent and battle infectious diseases. They simply repeated talking points from the White House—“herd immunity,” anti-vax propaganda, and the like.

These more ideological hires were the ones she worried the most about. They were true believers—and everything she stood for was everything they had arrived to fight against.

Which meant that they also were watching her. She was convinced that everything she said would be passed up the chain, to the new layer above her. And every day that passed, there were more of them than her. More eyes watching, more ears listening. And ever more chatter that would’ve been foreign only weeks ago.

The entire tone and culture of the workplace flipped in the cold weeks of February, when so much of the turnover took place. A serious-minded focus on science and health on the first of the month transitioned to a workplace where broader politics infected everything by month’s end.

And in a way that surprised even her, the focus wasn’t just about the politics of health and disease and how to respond. Rather, they were consumed with the broader political maelstrom that was tearing the nation and the Capitol apart.

In only weeks, what started as occasional and muted political whispers became far louder and nastier as more of them arrived. It grew even worse once TVs popped up in offices and break rooms throughout the CDC, all turned to the same right-wing channels….

[W]ith smirks and gossipy chatter, the new hires clearly enjoyed the turbulence and violence that was making her stomach churn.  Like they were taking in a sporting event.

Yvette had already discovered that some of them had served time and were recently pardoned for storming the Capitol on January 6th. For them, she gathered, these crackdowns were their payback.  The revenge the new president had promised them. That’s definitely how they were acting.

The new crop of staff was different in one other way.  As at the table from earlier, diversity was gone. She’d always assumed that the right-wing talk of eliminating “DEI” was code for simply eliminating diversity—and people of color like herself. The initial wave of hires proved that instinct right.

Worst of all, what was playing out in the corridors of the Zoonotic Infectious Diseases section of the CDC was not isolated. She knew from the shadow pandemic team that it was happening on every floor within the CDC. It had happened rapidly over at HHS, from NIH to the FDA, driven largely by anti-abortion and anti-vaccination fervor.

And it spanned way beyond health agencies.

In the OEOB meeting, the new Agriculture representative was perhaps the most clueless. Just an unqualified partisan who’d started three weeks before. Which is why someone from a think tank was going to call the CEO of a tainted meat-processing plant rather than the Department of Agriculture approaching the problem by the book.

That empty Ag suit reflected a department that had disbanded its science agencies in mere weeks.  Because avian flu and other infectious diseases originated in America’s agriculture infrastructure—the milk and meat supply spanning across rural America—that decimation of top-flight ag science talent would cripple any national efforts to prevent or contain the most dangerous pandemics.

This bleak new reality whirled through Yvette’s head as she turned one corner, then completed her walk down the second long hallway and entered her office.

She was breathing quickly as she closed the door.  Rushing without even meaning to. Butterflies fluttering in her gut.

She knew the clock was ticking. The few civil servants who remained all knew it.

Like all the other dominoes in line before her, she’d be toppled soon enough. Turekian too.

But given the news from Ohio, there was so much to do….”

For the full chapter, go HERE.

For the podcast episode, go HERE.

Day 62—January 31, 2025

On Friday evening, the Trump Administration exacted its promised revenge on both prosecutors and FBI agents involved in investigating and prosecuting January 6 insurrectionists and Trump, firing dozens of them, along with leaders of the FBI’s field offices in Washington, D.C., Miami, Seattle, New Orleans and Las Vegas.

The Trump administration also engaged in a mass shutdown and scrubbing of federal government websites, including valuable health and safety information: