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Norton believes she has a right and an obligation to speak out about matters of public interest.
The Trump administration faces multiple lawsuits over its firing of federal workers and cancellation of grants, including at NIH.
The Department of Health and Human Services, which oversees NIH, did not respond to NPR's request for comment.
Job applicants are asked to identify one or two of the president's executive orders or policy priorities that are significant to them and explain how they'd help implement them.
According to the lawsuit, the question has appeared on close to 6,000 federal job listings for positions that have nothing to do with politics, including research biologist and air traffic control specialist.
The Office of Personnel Management has told agencies not to disqualify applicants who don't respond, saying it shouldn't be used as an ideological litmus test.
Still, the plaintiffs in the case argue the essay question does amount to an unlawful loyalty test, one that puts partisan politics over expertise.
In a statement, the president of the American Federation of Government Employees, Everett Kelly, calls the shutdown an avoidable crisis that is harming families, communities and the very institutions that hold our country together.
He called on Congress to pass a clean continuing resolution, a move Democrats have rejected as part of their effort to force Republicans to negotiate on federal health care subsidies.
Kelly wrote there is no winning a government shutdown.
Instead, they cost taxpayers billions and erode confidence.
But some federal workers have urged Democrats to stand firm.
They see the shutdown as a chance for lawmakers to reassert their authority over government spending and push back against the president's agenda.
Food banks have been distributing boxes of provisions to government employees.
Those events have drawn hundreds of people with lines stretching around the block.
A lot of federal workers do their banking at credit unions, and now these credit unions all over the country are offering short-term interest-free loans to help with things like house payments or car payments.
If it drags on and on, experts say the general public will feel the economic effects in their communities.