【中美创新时报2024 年 12 月 9 日编译讯】（记者温友平编译）随着当选总统唐纳德·特朗普的过渡团队进入联邦机构，数千名公务员——以及他们为之工作的一些拜登任命的官员——正在争先恐后地保护自己免受新政府承诺的清洗的影响。《华盛顿邮报》记者丽莎·雷因和杰夫·斯坦对此作了下述报道。
联邦雇员正在清理他们的 Facebook 和 X 账户上有关特朗普的任何负面帖子。一些人，包括至少一名在特朗普第一次弹劾调查中作证的知名官员，正在考虑提交退休文件，而其他人则设法转移到看似更安全的机构。华盛顿特区的招聘公司看到那些寻找私营部门工作的人生意兴隆。
与此同时，一些机构已经开始重新划分那些可能与特朗普议程相冲突的职位，尤其是那些促进多样性、公平和包容性、促进环境正义和应对气候变化影响的职位。一些公务员首次购买责任保险，以防被降职或解雇，从而为律师提供保障。此外，即将离任的拜登政府任命者与工会联手延长集体谈判协议，在新政府试图撤销之前锁定福利，这是罕见的联盟。
在特朗普 1 月 20 日上任之前，职业工作人员正在竞相超越他的计划，即彻底改变 230 万无党派官僚机构。这位当选总统承诺解雇数千名专业人士，用政治忠诚者取而代之，从联邦预算中削减数万亿美元，取消部门，并将其他人从他所嘲笑的首都顽固官僚的“深层政府”中调离出来。特朗普挑选的管理和预算办公室负责人拉斯·沃特今年早些时候告诉支持者，特朗普的第二任期将“让官僚们饱受创伤”。
除了这些全面的结构性变化之外，许多联邦雇员还担心，他们将被特朗普或埃隆·马斯克和维韦克·拉马斯瓦米点名，这两位科技大亨被任命为特朗普新任“政府效率部”负责人，他们已开始在社交媒体上呼吁公务员嘲笑他们认为浪费或带有政治色彩的工作。
“人们感到震惊和恐惧，并且自我谴责，因为人们害怕遭到报复，”美国政府雇员联合会地方分会 3403 主席 Jesus Soriano 说，该分会代表美国国家科学基金会的 1,000 多名科学家和管理人员。
另一个可能颠覆公务员制度的转变是，国会山共和党占多数的议员们正在重新制定法案，迫使远程办公的员工重返办公室，允许退伍军人事务部在没有多少追索权的情况下解雇表现不佳的员工，并要求进行强制性培训，以确保联邦雇员遵循政府的议程。
每一届白宫都会给政府带来新的优先事项和领导力，尤其是在政党转变时。但特朗普承诺将进行现代联邦体系前所未有的变革，重组程度远高于他的第一任期。在等待特朗普及其盟友是否能够坚持到底的同时，许多职业公务员对他第一任期议程的抵制这次基本上转入地下，工作人员保持低调，不愿大声疾呼，冒着被挑出来的风险。
即将上任的白宫削减劳动力的许多蓝图可能会因诉讼和国会的反对而放缓，一些人强调这是一种不可避免的惰性，以平息紧张情绪。
“美国政府是一艘航空母舰，你不会轻易改变它，”华盛顿地区的律师凯文·欧文 (Kevin Owen) 说，他的客户主要是联邦工作人员。不过，欧文警告大量寻求指导的客户，观望态度也可能适得其反。
“这是一个他们需要认真对待并提前规划的威胁，”他谈到他预计特朗普第二任期将盛行的气氛时说道。
特朗普的过渡团队表示，如果联邦雇员致力于在他的政府下工作，他们将有安全感。
特朗普过渡团队发言人布莱恩·休斯在一封电子邮件中表示：“特朗普政府将为那些致力于捍卫美国人民权利、将美国放在首位、确保劳动人民的税收得到最佳利用的政府工作人员提供一席之地。”
特朗普于 2017 年首次上任来到华盛顿，承诺缩小政府规模并与他所谓的臃肿的官僚机构作斗争。但他削减劳动力并要求职业员工忠诚的努力基本上失败了。在他的第一任期内，联邦雇员的总数有所增加。
他在任期结束时对劳动力发起了最全面的攻击，即一项名为“F 计划”的行政命令，要求取消对数万名专业人员的公务员保护，允许政治忠诚者取而代之，恢复 19 世纪末现代公务员制度建立后消失的总统任命制度。但他的任期在该政策生效之前就结束了，拜登总统很快就撤销了该政策。
现在，沃特，第一任白宫预算主管，在管理和预算办公室开始实施 F 计划，即将重返同一职位，因为特朗普承诺恢复 F 计划。
许多公务员面临着拜登总统任期对联邦雇员及其工会的冲击，他们表示，他们需要提前做好准备。
公务员们正在加入 Reddit 上的加密消息频道和匿名聊天室，以探索各种可能性。一些人乐观地认为，诉讼将阻止特朗普针对联邦劳动力的大部分议程生效。其他人则对工作感到极度焦虑，并预测自己将被解雇。
“人们看到政府工作人员被批评，很自然地，他们会想，‘这对我意味着什么？’”美国外交服务协会主席、高级外交官汤姆·亚兹德格迪 (Tom Yazdgerdi) 说。
那些计划留在政府的人正在联邦招聘网站上搜寻其他机构的职位，这些机构似乎可能会避免被裁员。据特朗普的竞选网站称，教育部、国家海洋和大气管理局、环境保护局、国税局、司法部以及至少二十多个较小的机构是大幅削减或取消的目标。
“如果我是预算分析师，我会申请海关和边境巡逻局的工作，或者如果我在环境保护局，我会尝试去退伍军人事务部或联邦航空管理局，”欧文说，他指的是他预测“不会消失”的机构。
题图：在特朗普于 1 月 20 日上任之前，职业工作人员正在竞相超越他的计划，即彻底改变 230 万无党派官僚机构。马特·麦克莱恩/华盛顿邮报
附原英文报道：
Federal employees scramble to insulate themselves from Trump’s purge
By Lisa Rein and Jeff Stein The Washington Post,Updated December 8, 2024
Before Trump takes office Jan. 20, career staffers are racing to outmaneuver his plans to gut and radically reshape the nonpartisan bureaucracy of 2.3 million.Matt McClain/The Washington Post
As president-elect Donald Trump’s transition teams move into federal agencies, thousands of civil servants — and some of the Biden appointees they work for — are scrambling to insulate themselves from the new administration’s promised purge.
Federal employees are scrubbing their Facebook and X accounts for any negative posts about Trump. Some, including at least one prominent official who testified in Trump’s first impeachment inquiry, are weighing putting in retirement papers, while others maneuver to transfer to seemingly safer agencies. D.C. recruiting firms are seeing booming business from those looking for private-sector work.
Meanwhile, some agencies have moved to reclassify jobs with titles that could clash with Trump’s agenda, especially those promoting Diversity, Equity and Inclusion, boosting environmental justice, and fighting the effects of climate change. For the first time, some civil servants are taking out liability insurance to cover lawyers if they’re demoted or fired. And in a rare alliance, outgoing Biden administration appointees are joining forces with labor unions to extend collective bargaining agreements, locking in benefits before the incoming administration can seek to undo them.
Before Trump takes office Jan. 20, career staffers are racing to outmaneuver his plans to gut and radically reshape the nonpartisan bureaucracy of 2.3 million. The president-elect has promised to fire thousands of professionals and replace them with political loyalists, slash trillions of dollars from the federal budget, eliminate departments, and relocate others away from what he derides as the “deep state” of intransigent bureaucrats in the capital. Russ Vought, Trump’s pick to run the Office of Management and Budget, told supporters earlier this year that Trump’s second term would “put the bureaucrats in trauma.”
Beyond these sweeping structural changes, many federal employees also fear they’ll be singled out by Trump or Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy, the tech moguls tapped to run his new “Department of Government Efficiency,” who have begun calling out public servants on social media to ridicule what they see as wasteful or politically tinged jobs.
“There is shock and there is actual fear, and there is self censure in the sense that people are scared about retaliation,” said Jesus Soriano, president of the American Federation of Government Employees Local 3403, which represents more than 1,000 scientists and administrators at the National Science Foundation.
In another shift with potential to upend the civil service, lawmakers with a new GOP majority on Capitol Hill are dusting off legislation to force teleworking employees back to the office, allow Veterans Affairs to fire underperforming workers with little recourse, and to require mandatory training to ensure that federal employees follow the administration’s agenda.
Every White House brings new priorities and leadership to the government, particularly when political parties shift. But Trump promises a transformation unprecedented in the modern federal system, a restructuring far deeper than in his first term. As they wait to see whether Trump and his allies will be able to follow through, the resistance that many career civil servants showed to his first-term agenda is largely going underground this time, with staff keeping their heads down rather than speaking out and risking being singled out.
Many of the incoming White House’s blueprints to slash the workforce could be slowed by lawsuits and pushback in Congress, an inevitable inertia that some are highlighting to calm jittery nerves.
“The American government is an aircraft carrier, and you don’t turn it on a dime,” said Kevin Owen, a Washington-area attorney whose clients are predominantly federal workers. Still, Owen is warning the burst of clients asking for guidance that a wait-and-see approach could also backfire.
“It’s a threat they need to take seriously and plan for in advance,” he said of the climate he expects will prevail in Trump’s second term.
Trump’s transition team said that federal employees will be secure if they are committed to working under his administration.
“The Trump administration will have a place for people serving in government who are committed to defending the rights of the American people, putting America first, and ensuring the best use of working men and women’s tax dollars,” said Brian Hughes, a spokesperson for the Trump transition team, in an email.
Trump came to Washington in his first term in 2017 pledging to shrink government and do battle with what he called a bloated bureaucracy. But his effort to gut the workforce and demand loyalty from career workers largely failed. The number of federal employees grew overall during his first term.
He issued his most sweeping assault on the workforce at the end of his term, an executive order known as Schedule F that called for removing civil service protections from tens of thousands of professionals, allowing them to be replaced by political loyalists in a return to the system of presidential patronage appointments that disappeared with the creation of a modern civil service in the late 19th century. But his term ended before the policy could take effect, and President Biden quickly revoked it.
Now, Vought, the first-term White House budget chief who began implementing Schedule F at the Office of Management and Budget, is set to return to the same role, as Trump is pledging to reinstate Schedule F.
Many civil servants, facing whiplash from a Biden presidency that embraced federal employees and their unions, say they need to get ahead of what might happen.
Civil servants are joining encrypted messaging channels and anonymous chatrooms on Reddit to game out the possibilities. Some are optimistic that lawsuits will block much of Trump’s agenda for the federal workforce from taking effect. Others express crippling anxiety about their jobs and predict they’ll be fired.
“People see the things being said about government workers and quite understandably they’re wondering, ‘What does this mean for me?’ ” said Tom Yazdgerdi, a senior Foreign Service officer who is president of the American Foreign Service Association.
Those planning to stay in government are scouring federal job sites for postings at other agencies that appear like they might avoid the chopping block. The Education Department, NOAA, Environmental Protection Agency, Internal Revenue Service, Justice Department, and at least two dozen smaller agencies are targets for steep cuts or elimination, according to Trump’s campaign website.
“If I were a budget analyst, I would be applying for jobs at Customs and Border Patrol, or if I was at the EPA, I’d try to get to VA or the FAA,” said Owen, referring to agencies he predicted are “not going away.”
