This NBC News article has a descriptive title:
'Fear' and 'chaos' grip federal workers as Trump rapidly remakes the government.
This brings back memories of what I experienced while working in a Federal office during another transition from one president to another. I experienced the change-over from the Gerald Ford administration to the Jimmy Carter administration.
It was a transition from a Republican White House to a Democratic one. I was interested to watch how the career civil servants (I was temp) reacted to the hand-off.
We got a new Secretary and new deputy and assistant secretaries, political appointees all. There was a lot of speculation among the career cadre about how agency policies would change.
As I remember it, nothing much got done for a couple of weeks while my co-workers gossiped about who would be "up" and who "down." That particular transition turned out to be a nothingburger but apparently some prior ones had been consequential.
Most of today's civil servants are Democrats so they will be gloomy anyway. Given Trump has indicated he intends to shrink the administrative state in ways they won't like, NBC's claims of fear and chaos probably aren't overstatements.
Offering career employees buyouts will have only exacerbated their fear and loathing. They will gain a new understanding of the insecurities business employees feel when M & A activity roils the workplace.
