In an effort that reflects both defiance and rising fears of retaliation, federal workers from over 50 agencies published a letter on Thursday that condemns the Trump administration for executive overreach and urges Congress to step in.
It’s the most recent in a series of letters from federal workers at different agencies that criticized the Trump administration for abandoning the agencies’ core missions.
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Initially, some of the organizers hoped signatories would number in the thousands by the time the letter was publicly released and sent to lawmakers. At time of publication, though, the letter had just under 900 federal employees sign on. While that number represents an impressive feat, and a show of defiance by career bureaucrats, it also highlights the tension as some officials feel compelled to speak out but are weighing risks to their jobs — and increasingly, their safety.
“Folks are feeling very unsafe not just in terms of their jobs, but also being in public around any kind of contentious issue just given the tense climate,” said Jenna Norton, a program officer at the National Institutes of Health who spoke to STAT in a personal capacity. Norton is also one of the letter organizers.
In June, NIH employees sent a letter of dissent to their director, Jay Bhattacharya. Staffers felt emboldened to publicly speak out because Bhattacharya has spoken often about fostering a culture of dissent. The action spurred similar letters from employees at other agencies — some of whom faced retaliation from their leadership. Concern has only ratcheted up in the wake of a shooting on the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s headquarters, and other instances of political violence in recent months.
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The letter is addressed specifically to Congress ahead of the government’s fiscal year ending on Sept. 30. Congress must pass an appropriations package or a continuing resolution by then in order to fund the government and avoid a shutdown. The letter asks Congress to include statutes within the funding bills that authors broadly believe will protect the essential work of federal agencies including science and health work. “Fully funding our services means nothing if the president can unilaterally ignore or redirect that funding,” the letter reads.
“The mantra of the whole group is that part of being a federal employee, you swear an oath to defend a Constitution against enemies, foreign and domestic,” said Jeremy Berg, who previously led one of the NIH’s institutes and signed onto the letter. “That means that while you have an obligation as a member of the executive branch to follow directives from your branch leadership, it doesn’t doesn’t allow you to violate the Constitution or to do things which you think are illegal, and I think that’s where, that’s where people feel the line is being crossed.”
Federal workers are charged with providing essential services to the American public, including emergency response and public health work as well as grantmaking that drives research for new therapies for cancer and other diseases. Over the last year, Trump policies have disrupted this work through things like grant terminations and increased political oversight on scientific or health work. Administration officials have argued these steps are necessary to tackle what they call “waste, fraud, and abuse” in the federal government.
“We are watching our agencies be dismantled from the inside. This is happening at the NIH where I work, but also across every agency,” Norton said. “All of that is being done by an executive branch that is overstepping their constitutional bounds. We are asking Congress to use its power to rein in the executive branch and ensure the American people have the services they need and deserve.”
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Some of the specific asks in the letter include reversing cuts to Medicaid, disaster relief, and veterans’ care as well as the reinstatement of federal staff fired without cause. The letter also asks Congress to include language that will prohibit arbitrary grant terminations, funding halts, and vaccine decisions by political appointees.
The letter gathered hundreds of signatures from current and former federal workers over four days. Even so, organizers and signers told STAT that they’d encountered reluctance from colleagues to sign onto letters critical of the Trump administration, mainly because of fear of retaliation for signing, even anonymously.
The concern is not theoretical. After Environmental Protection Agency employees signed a “declaration of dissent” criticizing the Trump administration’s leadership, dozens of employees were suspended without pay and several were fired. Multiple federal workers told STAT that some of those workers had signed anonymously but were still discovered and punished by agency leadership. That story has deterred people from signing onto future letters including this one, even though organizers communicated additional security measures. For instance, the full list of named signers will only be sent to some members of Congress.
“There was huge retribution to people, even to those who signed anonymously because of a security glitch in the signing website,” said a federal worker who spoke on the condition of anonymity. “We’ve seen this administration act outside of the normal disciplinary process. Some people look at all that and what happened to our colleagues in EPA and said, ‘I don’t want to risk signing it at all.’”
The rising incidences of political violence have also made federal workers more reluctant to speak out, Norton said. “If I were to lose my job, I think I made my peace with that part of it when we signed the Bethesda Declaration. I expected to be fired, and was surprised when I wasn’t,” she said. “Since we did the Bethesda Declaration, there’s been politically motivated assassinations of politicians in Minneapolis, the Charlie Kirk shooting.”
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Since the CDC shooting, “we’ve been told not to tell anyone that we work for CDC,” an agency employee told STAT. “Some people have CDC stickers on their car. We’ve been told to take those stickers off. A lot of people are fearful. The shooting happened for a reason. We don’t know if there will be others trying to do the same.”
Altogether, that’s left many federal workers uncertain about making their voices heard in this environment. Those who have already signed onto the letter with their names told STAT that they, too, are worried about the risks — but felt they couldn’t stay silent.
The prospect of a fight over the continuing resolution is a high stakes one, particularly for federal workers, some of whom could be put out of work during a shutdown. The letter expressed anger over Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) backing the Republican funding bill in March, writing that “a bad CR paved the way for mass firings across our agencies, gutted science, slashed healthcare access, and embolden further attacks.”
The imperative to speak out about the mounting disruptions to agency norms is growing to outweigh the risks of a shutdown to some signers, said Anna Culbertson, who was fired from her job at the NIH earlier this year. “Federal workers are used as this pawn in this ‘I want to shut down or I don’t want to shut down’ game. This letter also serves to say, ‘No, we want our agencies protected,’” she said. “We want our agencies protected. We don’t want a shutdown, but also we want to be able to work at the agencies that we work at.”
Mollie Manier, an NIH employee who signed onto the letter and spoke in her personal capacity, said: “Our attitude is we can’t be intimidated. That’s what they want: they want us to shut up, sit down, and be compliant as they dismantle our institutions. There needs to be a fight for the continuing resolution as a way for Congress to save us.They are our last hope.”
The letter ends on a challenge to congressional lawmakers: “We took an oath. You did too. Will you uphold yours?”