The year Trump broke the federal government

How DOGE and the White House carried out a once-unthinkable transformation of the nation’s sprawling bureaucracy.

A State Department worker watched on television as President Donald Trump, hours into his second term, signed executive orders that halted relocation flights for Afghan refugees — which her office existed to coordinate. She wondered: What would happen now?

A Veterans Affairs staffer in that agency’s equity office watched Trump sign another document, this one outlawing diversity programs, and thought, “It’s over.” And in a Social Security building, a woman wandered over to her co-worker’s desk worried about Russell Vought, Trump’s pick for budget director. Vought said he wanted to put federal workers “in trauma,” she pointed out, and would soon decide which agencies to cut and by how much.

“It isn’t easy to fire federal employees,” her co-worker told her. “We have all these protections. We’ll be okay.”

He was wrong. The United States’ 2.4 million federal employees were about to get caught up in a once-unthinkable overhaul of the nation’s sprawling bureaucracy, carried out in less than a year by one of the most polarizing presidents in American history.

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