The Discarded
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What events led to the mass exodus of federal workers?
I'm Anne Applebaum. Over the past year, as I watched Donald Trump demand unprecedented new powers, I wondered, don't he and his team fear that these same powers could one day be used by a different administration and a different president to achieve very different goals? Well, maybe they are afraid. And maybe that's why they're using their new tools to change our institutions, even to alter the playing field in advance of midterm elections later this year, to make sure their opponents can't win.
Ultimately, destroying trust is the currency of autocrats.
We could win, but we are very, very, very likely to lose if we keep treating this as business as usual. reporting on the sweeping changes unfolding in our country and preparing you to think about what might happen next. The new season of Autocracy in America, available now.
I always tell people to kind of picture their cell phone and like navigating somewhere you've never been.
This is Ryan.
My name is Ryan Hippenstiel.
And he's explaining to me how the work that he and his colleagues do helps a person like me, who has no sense of direction, get around. Or I should probably say he and his former colleagues.
First, your cell phone is using GPS technology, and then you have all these layers, right? It might be a layer of restaurants so you can find a new pizza joint. All of those layers need to be on top of each other in the right place for your car and your iPhone or whatever it might be to know what road it's on.
The Earth is not a perfect sphere. It turns out that it's constantly shifting, in subtle ways.
You have subsidence, you have uplift, you have the gravity field underneath the Earth changing, you have oscillating poles. So we're all very blessed with modern technology that can navigate us around an extremely complex environment that's changing, not realizing that the work's never done, because the Earth truly is changing.
Hippenstiel's work was keeping up with all this complexity so that the maps would remain precise. It's a field called geodesy.
Geodesy is kind of the size and shape of the Earth, right? It's the sciences behind the size and shape of the Earth and what changes the Earth is undergoing at all times.
Hippenstiel did this work for the federal government.
I was the field operations branch chief for the National Geodetic Survey.
Before I talked to Hippenstiel, I was not aware that my getting around depended on the work of the National Geodetic Survey. So do other way more critical things, like precision farming, disaster relief, ships knowing how deep or shallow the shoreline is in real time. Even, Hippenstiel says, weapons firing accurately. The work that he and his colleagues did was invisible, but critical.
How did Trump's administration impact the federal workforce?
It kept the ground under my feet stable. I'm Hannah Rosen. This is Radio Atlantic. And this week, one year since Donald Trump was re-inaugurated, we're talking about the federal government workforce that was.
President Trump is only ramping up his unprecedented push to effectively take a wrecking ball to the federal government, laying off thousands.
Last April, Hip and Steel accepted a voluntary resignation package. He joined a mass exodus of federal workers. In Trump's first year back, over 300,000 Americans left the government.
We're removing all of the unnecessary, incompetent, and corrupt bureaucrats from the federal workforce.
Many forced out or fired.
If they don't report for work, we're firing them. In other words, you have to go to office.
Pressured to unceremoniously leave.
An offer or a threat. This morning, millions of federal workers are faced with a choice. Stay in their jobs with an uncertain future or leave the government, leave their jobs with a buyout from the Trump administration.
Careers ended in capricious, even cruel ways.
The new threat from President Trump now suggesting that some of the 750,000 furloughed government workers told to stay home during this shutdown may not get paid for time lost. The president said today, quote, some people really don't deserve to be taken care of.
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Chapters
8 chapters
1
What events led to the mass exodus of federal workers?
0:00–3:05
2
How did Trump's administration impact the federal workforce?
3:05–5:49
3
What role does geodesy play in modern navigation?
5:49–8:17
4
What insights did Franklin Foer gain from interviewing federal workers?
8:17–10:26
5
How does the loss of federal employees affect government functions?
10:26–13:21
6
What were the personal experiences of those who left government jobs?
13:21–17:38
7
What historical context is important for understanding the federal workforce?
17:38–21:07
8
What is the future of the federal government after these changes?
21:07–31:11