The purge
by Matt May
Well, that was a lot.
To quote Inigo Montoya: “Let me explain...No, there is too much. Let me sum up.” In the first week of the Trump presidency, and this is all off the top of my head, he:
- Announced plans to annex, invade and/or reject the sovereignty of *deep breath* Canada, Mexico, Greenland, Panama, and tribal lands inside the continental US
- Pardoned all of those charged or convicted in the Capitol riot on January 6, 2021, including over 200 who were still serving prison sentences, at least one of whom has been re-arrested on gun charges
- Deputized police departments to act as Immigration, Customs and Enforcement (ICE) officers in all 50 states, leading to multiple incidents of American citizens (including indigenous people, who by both treaty and common sense have birthright citizenship)
- Also issued an executive order intended to negate birthright citizenship, which a federal judge called “blatantly unconstitutional” in a ruling to block it
- Canceled policies limiting enforcement activities in public spaces like schools or places of worship
- Called for Gaza to be ethnically cleansed (“clean it out” were his exact words)
- Cut funding to Ukraine
- Attempted to rename the Gulf of Mexico and Denali, the nation’s highest peak
- Promised aid that’s already arrived in hurricane-stricken North Carolina, while threatening to withhold aid to California for their record wildfires unless they “release the water,” which is not a thing, and change their voting laws
- Withdrew the United States from the Paris Agreement on climate change, again
- Declared in his inauguration speech that there are only two genders, and began to torpedo the X gender marker on passports
- Announced a $500 billion AI package called Project Stargate, consisting of an awful lot of funding that had been announced during the Biden administration
- Made Fox News weekend host whose only management experience was tanking two dinky veterans’ nonprofits the civilian boss of the US military
- Illegally fired 17 Cabinet-level inspectors general, independent watchdogs whose job is to ensure that policies are followed and prevent waste, fraud and mismanagement
- Sent two military planes full of Colombian migrants back to Colombia without final permission, causing Colombian officials to refuse to allow them to land; this triggered Trump to announce 25% tariffs on Colombia, which in turn caused the Colombian president to read Trump the riot act and announce 50% tariffs on US products
- Renamed the US Digital Service, the team that brought us Healthcare.gov to the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) as a means of giving Elon Musk an official government title
- USDS employees were required to disclose their loyalty to DOGE, give advice on how to cut the organization by 30%, and talk about what makes themselves useful or worth keeping; engineers were also given a snap coding challenge, similar to what Twitter employees took when Musk bought it
- Meanwhile, Musk did a Nazi salute in our nation’s capital, made a non-denial denial, then spoke at a rally for the German right-wing party, AfD
So, you know, normal stuff.
Of course, the most relevant news for readers of a techie-DEI-oriented letter is that Trump issued two executive orders and an agency memorandum seeking to eliminate all “Offices of Diversity, Equity, Inclusion and Accessibility (DEIA).” Affected employees were to be notified by last Wednesday that they were on immediate administrative leave, and that plans are to be put in place by this Friday, January 31, to fire them. Trainings and vendor contracts were also to be canceled. A hotline was set up to allow federal employees to snitch report any job titles or programs that have changed in order to obscure their nature as a DEIA program. I have already begun to see federal employees post that they are available for hire, but we have yet to see the full extent of the purge.
This week, I have talked with and seen reports from a number of people in and near the federal government, and it gets worse from there. Memos have circulated stating that groups based on protected classes (except veterans, they’re cool) will be banned, as will visible signs like rainbow lanyards, or indications of allyship in office spaces. (If you have any other first-hand information to share, please contact me by email, or preferably, on Signal. I will maintain your anonymity to the greatest extent possible. My handle is @mattmay.74.)
If you were following Project 2025, you will have seen that pretty much all of this is accounted for. In other words, if you were the kind of person who didn’t believe this was the playbook… welp! Better luck next administration. That said, the addition of “accessibility” to the DEI mix caught a lot of people off guard, including both federal employees and people outside the government whose jobs depend on grants that may no longer be honored.
I’ve written about the complex relationship between accessibility and DEI in the past. In a nutshell, accessibility is an overloaded term, representing the whole of disability rights to some, and mere technical compliance to standards like Section 508 to others. It’s been indicated to me that any ongoing federal accessibility work will be to the letter of the law and not a step further, so that’s currently the best-case scenario. If you happen to work in accessibility and are disabled yourself, however, slashing any staff intended to support you as a protected class is a bad omen for your ability to continue doing either.
I have seen some accessibility professionals rather callously dismiss the idea that the executive orders and memorandum involved target accessibility compliance. In other words, don’t worry about those other people, we’re still in the game. Needless to say, I don’t want any of these employees leaving where they are, because the purpose of these firings is ideological. But given that accessibility statements are among the documents being scrubbed from .gov sites, it’s not a stretch to believe that it’ll be your turn as soon as it’s legally and politically feasible.
Bad look, accessibility folks. Do better.
What I think will happen is that employees (and their unions) will file suit, if they haven’t already, seeking an injunction in order to keep their jobs, and I think that will be granted by the end of the week. Still, that alone may not get them back into the office. I hope that there are enough people willing to stay, given the costs of sticking it out in such a hostile environment.
Last week, I wrote that this is not a “call your legislator” type of situation, but once it’s put on hold, I think it will be. At this point, if you care about DEI, with or without the A, it is imperative that these roles stay in the federal fold. It’s taken six decades for DEIA work to become something that the feds take seriously, and dedicate resources to do. Once those positions are vacated, and the money is allocated somewhere else, whether or not the laws are still on the books, on the ground we’re back to square one. Worse yet, any new headcount will be filled by career Trump flunkies, people whose main qualification will be a fierce ideological opposition to the kind of progress these roles represent.
Just two newsletters ago, I was telling people to quit their jobs at Meta. So I appreciate any whiplash you may feel, given that this time I’m asking people to stay in the civil service. It’ll be a battle to get even the most basic things done, with people not just rooting for them to fail, but actively undermining them. Plus, we all know the big boss is even more of an asshole. I know that. However. I'm still a 0.0000003% shareholder in $USA, no matter how bad the returns. People in the civil service are not just our workers, but also our institutional memory, and that is a good chunk of what these firings are attempting to eradicate.
One last point on this. If you’re a hiring manager, or ever plan to be, let the date January 20, 2025 be burned into your brain. When you see a federal role on an applicant’s resume, particularly one involving DEI and/or accessibility, anyone who started before this administration and sticks it out deserves not just a job, but a medal and a cookie. (A nice soft one with frosting, like a Crumbl.) Conversely, you can safely assume that anyone hired after this date, up until the next administration, took a more-qualified person’s job out from under them. They pledged their loyalty to Trump as a condition of their employment, in order to undo decades of good work in favor of a cynical project of self-destruction. And that, to a potential new boss, in light of alllll those bullet points I listed above, should be enormous red flags.
To those currently in limbo, hang in there. You are needed.
Office hours
My office hours are open this Thursday for people who want to talk.
That’s all. Be well.