'A lot of folks are terrified': FEMA joins EPA in retaliation against dissenting staff
The result of all that is an obvious chilling of the federal workforce's speech.
On Monday morning, close to 200 employees with the Federal Emergency Management Agency issued a "Katrina Declaration," opposing the Trump administration's ongoing decimation of the agency and petitioning Congress to act to protect it. By Tuesday, the 30-plus staffers who signed their names publicly were suspended, with little explanation.
"Our shared commitment to our country, our oaths of office, and our mission of helping people before, during, and after disasters compel us to warn Congress and the American people of the cascading effects of decisions made by the current administration," the Declaration reads. It is just the latest in a string of such public rebukes, following on similar missives from NIH, EPA, the NSF (a whistleblower complaint, in that particular case), and NASA. And it's not the first to face chilling consequences.
After EPA employees called out administrator Lee Zeldin for "recklessly undermining" the agency's mission, more than 100 were put on administrative leave. A staffer at the time told me that "morale is at an all-time low." Not long afterward, in a separate move, the EPA essentially killed its employee unions, removing their ability to collectively bargain — the absurdist justification there involved an executive order that claims the agency's "primary function" is actually "intelligence, counterintelligence, investigative, or national security work."
Around August 20, EPA management circulated guidance more or less threatening employees to stop engaging in any union activity at all, along with establishing that all previous grievances filed under union rules should be considered dismissed and that union office space was being reclaimed. The guidance, shared with me, even answers a question about performing such activities on non-duty time: "EPA Ethics Office advises extreme caution."
The result of all that, and the suspensions at FEMA and EPA that seem to rely on the shaky possibility that employees may have engaged in the acts of dissent during work hours or on work equipment (staffers involved in these declarations have told me they are all extremely careful to avoid doing so; they're not stupid), is an obvious chilling of the federal workforce's speech. The EPA's declaration, which originally featured dozens of employees willing to sign their names publicly, now has 620 signers — all anonymous. As one employee told me recently: "A lot of folks are terrified that they will prosecute us."
The FEMA version, as of Wednesday morning, still has 35 public signers. The agency, though, apparently has 35 fewer employees allowed to do their jobs. The meteorological peak of hurricane season is less than two weeks away.
