Civil society is coming to the rescue of the civil service

Groups provide resources and support for embattled federal workers

Members of Congress and others protest the shuttering of USAID on Monday. (Photo by Aaron Fritschner)

From Day One of Donald Trump’s second term, civil servants have had a target on their backs.

One of Trump’s first executive orders called for the reclassification of thousands of federal workers to make it easier to fire them. The Office of Personnel Management (OPM) quickly ordered all staffers working on Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) programs be put on administrative leave.

Federal prosecutors involved in January 6 cases have been summarily fired, along with several FBI supervisors, even as Trump appointees appear to be plotting a wholescale purge of FBI agents who investigated any of the Capitol rioters.

Probationary employees across government have received letters warning them they could be fired at any moment. Almost all the staff of the U.S. Agency for International Development has been put on leave, at the whim of Elon Musk.

Nearly the entire federal workforce has been encouraged to quit immediately – and get more “productive” work elsewhere -- in return for a quite possibly specious promise that they would continue to draw their salaries through September.

And massive layoffs are expected to start soon, especially if the so-called “deferred resignation” program falls short of administration goals. Trump officials were hoping that 5 to 10 percent of workers would quit; signs are that many fewer will do so.

But as dire as the situation is for civil servants, they have allies they can turn to. A large network of progressive advocates, good-government groups, and labor unions is stepping up to help, offering advice to embattled workers about their rights and their options and connecting them with attorneys working pro bono.

A broad coalition of civil society institutions and organizations has launched Civil Service Strong, a website full of resources for federal workers, including how to appeal a personnel decision with the U.S. Merit Systems Protection Board (MSPB) and a Q&A on workers’ rights.

Protect Democracy has posted a series of missives to civil servants, the latest one helping workers understand the “deferred resignation” offer, which the group describes as “an offer of questionable legality — accompanied by thinly-veiled threats about what things will be like if you don’t leave — under a coercively-short timeline.”

The American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE) has published an FAQ on the resignation offer, and is cautioning employees not to take it, “because President Trump may not even have the authority to make such an offer, and federal workers who resign may not get paid.”

The Partnership for Public Service – a group singularly devoted to supporting and improving public service -- is holding a “federal employee explainer” webinar series. Upcoming topics include “What are my rights as an employee?” and “How might my benefits be affected.”

Stacey Young, who until last week was a career prosecutor at the Department of Justice, is building a network of DOJ alumni to provide employees with practical support. It’s called the Justice Connection.

Young told a House Judiciary Democrats briefing that “In the coming days and weeks, Justice Connection will build out a network of DOJ alumni willing to help employees navigate the multitude of threats they're currently facing. Alumni will provide employees with legal advice, doxing support, employment assistance – if they feel like they need to leave DOJ or were forced to -- and other types of support employees tell us they need.”

The briefing, held on Friday and led by House Judiciary Committee ranking member Jamie Raskin (D-Md.), featured a panel of experts who discussed rights, recourses, and resources available to DOJ and other federal employees targeted by the Trump administration.

Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER), which supports public employees whose work involves the environment, natural resources, and public health, are trying to help workers one at a time.

“We’re getting inundated with calls from public employees about how to address the administrative leave they’ve been put on, whether to take these deferred resignation plans, and how they can move forward in their work under the circumstances,” said Tim Whitehouse, PEER’s executive director. “We’re all working late into the night.”

Groups like the Government Accountability Project (GAP), which advocates for whistleblowers, are hosting emergency briefings for federal workers.

“Right now, people are terrified, confused, and angry,” Dana Gold, a director at GAP, told me. But, she said, “the civil society space is working very hard to ensure that federal employees have access to the best most accurate information as well as the resources to find help.”

In some cases, that means finding them a lawyer. “Basically, we’re all working together to ID all the lawyers who are working in this area who are taking cases, and harnessing this pro bono capacity,” Gold said.

And expect a ton more litigation. Some of what the Trump administration has done – firing civil servants without due process, in particular – appears to be flatly illegal.

The AFGE and other unions that represent federal employees have sued the Trump administration seeking to block the “deferred resignation” plan on the grounds that it has no statutory basis and is arbitrary and capricious, putting it in direct violation of the Administrative Procedures Act.

And two separate groups of FBI employees have sued the Justice Department, seeking to block the collection and distribution of a list of agents and others who investigated the Jan. 6 attacks or Trump’s classified documents case at Mar-a-Lago.

One complaint, filed on behalf of nine anonymous agents, called the action “retaliation based on perceived political affiliation.” The FBI Agents Association warned that the public release of the names of the agents facing scrutiny could put them in danger.

Public Servant Heroes of the Resistance

Acting FBI Director Brian Driscoll publicly refused a Justice Department order that he start collecting the names of every FBI employee involved in investigating Jan. 6 rioters. This turned him into, as the New York Times reported, an accidental symbol – and meme—of resistance.

James Dennehy, the top FBI agent in the New York field office, sent a defiant email to his staff, telling them to “dig in” for battle. “Today, we find ourselves in the middle of a battle of our own, as good people are being walked out of the F.B.I. and others are being targeted because they did their jobs in accordance with the law and F.B.I. policy,” he wrote.

David Lebryk, the highest-ranking career civil servant at the Treasury Department, quit rather than give members of Elon Musk’s “department of government efficiency” access to the government’s vast payment system.

Nick Gottlieb, USAID’s director of employee and labor relations, sent out an email under a subject line that read in part: “Illegal Activity in the USAID Front Office.” He explained that he had refused to issue immediate termination notices to a group of employees without due process. (Gottlieb was put on administrative leave.)

And also at USAID, two top security officials -- John Voorhees and Brian McGill – made headlines when they temporarily blocked efforts by members of Musk’s team to access a room housing sensitive data.

As historian Nicole Hemmer posted on social media: “This is the kind of action we need to make the constitutional crisis visible. Saying no instead of complying makes headlines because it creates conflict—and conflict drives coverage. Even if Musk gets into the classified systems, this pushes his crime spree onto the front pages.”

Other Lawsuit News

• Two federal judges have now temporarily banned Trump’s funding freeze. A Rhode Island judge wrote that the justification for the freeze in a (now-withdrawn) White House memo was “constitutionally flawed.” And he concluded that “no federal law would authorize the Executive’s unilateral action here.” A Washington, D.C. judge wrote that the government had “offered no rational explanation” for freezing all federal aid so quickly.

• Lambda Legal, the American Civil Liberties Union, and other groups filed suit on Tuesday on behalf of two transgender young adults and five transgender adolescents and their families whose health care has been disrupted by Trump’s January 28 executive order.

• A coalition representing academics, higher education officials, restaurant workers, and the City of Baltimore, have filed suit to block two executive orders that target DEI programs. The coalition is represented by Democracy Forward and Asian Americans Advancing Justice. “In his crusade to erase diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility from our country, President Trump cannot usurp Congress’s exclusive power of the purse, nor can he silence those who disagree with him by threatening them with the loss of federal funds and other enforcement actions,” the groups argue.

• Immigrants’ rights advocates, represented by the ACLU and other groups, sued the Trump administration over Trump’s Jan. 20 proclamation aimed at completely shutting down asylum at the border. “No president has the authority to unilaterally override the protections Congress has afforded those fleeing danger,” said the ACLU’S Lee Gelernt.

• Two more lawsuits have been filed against Trump’s order seeking to end birthright citizenship, one on behalf of the OCA-Asian Pacific American Advocates, and the other by Santa Clara County in California. I believe that makes seven and counting.

• Three union groups, represented by Public Citizen and the State Democracy Defenders Fund filed suit against the Department of the Treasury for sharing confidential data with the so-called “department of government efficiency”(DOGE) run by Elon Musk. “People who must share information with the federal government should not be forced to share information with Elon Musk or his ‘DOGE.’ And federal law says they do not have to,” the suit maintains.

• A federal judge in Boston temporarily blocked federal prison officials from transferring a transgender woman to a men's facility and denying her access to gender-affirming care. The suit was prompted by Trump’s January 20 executive order on what he called "gender ideology extremism." In a separate case, a Washington, D.C., judge blocked the move of three others.

For even more on the legal challenges to Trump administration actions, bookmark this excellent litigation tracker from Just Security. And here’s a New York Times article on the “legal counteroffensive” against Trump and Musk.

Immigration Enforcement Backlash

• Thousands of demonstrators rallied in downtown Los Angeles on Sunday and shut down a section of the 101 Freeway to protest Trump’s immigration policies. The Los Angeles Times interviewed Nailah Esparza, 18, who said it was her first protest and that she learned about it from TikTok videos. Her sign said, in Spanish, “No more I.C.E. raids, no more fear, we want justice and a better world.” There were also rallies in San Diego, Dallas, and Atlanta.

• Community members in Cleveland Heights, Ohio, rallied round a local Mexican restaurant after it was raided by ICE, placing messages of support in Spanish and English outside the Cilantro Taqueria.

• Some religious leaders reaffirmed their vow to offer sanctuary to undocumented immigrants after the Trump administration declared that immigration agents are now free to make arrests in places of worship. “We have an executive order from God, not from politicians," said Guillermo Torres, who leads immigration campaigns at Clergy and Laity United for Economic Justice, a nonprofit advocacy group in Los Angeles.

• Hundreds of people took part in an immigrants rights march in Elgin, Ill., after reports emerged that ICE had swept up an undocumented man who has been in the country for more than two decades. Agents broke into the house searching for the man’s stepson. The man’s wife said that agents told her “We have to take someone.”

• The Chicago Tribune reports: “From statements of defiance by local leaders to an unofficial network of tips and alerts on various social media sites, Chicagoland has become an epicenter of opposition to the president’s immigration agenda.”

• I wrote last week about local outrage after a raid of a seafood wholesaler in Newark, N.J.. The Washington Post reports that two of the three workers detained by ICE have now been released on bond.

And in Other News

• Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker signed an order prohibiting all J6 rioters from state employment, regardless of Trump’s pardon.

• On Friday, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention responded to Trump’s order against material promoting “gender ideology” by purging thousands of pages from its website that included terms such as “transgender,” “L.G.B.T.” and “pregnant person.” But, the New York Times reported: “By Monday, some of the pages had reappeared, in part in response to intense media coverage, backlash from the scientific community and concern for the public’s health.”

• Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) posted on social media: “It’s important to know that a lot of productive activity is happening in person and offline, too. Not all of it can be broadcast online, but we’ve had hundreds of people showing up to our trainings, mobilizations, and more. Keep going. Tyranny is eroded by a sea of small acts. Everything matters.”