My friends Norm & Janet Jones retired from government service jobs. Norm worked for the DOD. Janet was a Colonel at the NIH Clinical Center in Bethesda MD. If Trump’s Stalinesque Government was in place they wouldn’t have considered Government Service.

Norm was a microwave engineer. He got his degree at Drexel University in Philadelphia. He was in ROTC and was sent to Fort Benning GA. 

I got a call from Norm. As a 2nd Lieutenant, he was discharged from the Army Infantry immediately after basic training at Fort Benning. The Army Infantry had too many officers. Norm, his first wife, Mary, and 2 yr. Old Suzie needed a place to stay for a week or two while he looked for a job and a house to live in.

That week or two turned out to be 3 months. I liked Mary’s home cooked pizza and Suzie running around our home in Philly.   

His first job was at Philco-Ford designing radios for cars. He designed a radio. The finance department made changes. Norm said the radio won’t last. Finance at Philco-Ford said that didn’t matter. It only needed to work at the dealership. Norm wanted to design stuff that worked. He decided to work for the DOD. 

 Norm’s team in Reston, VA designed the U.S. military satellite communications system still in use today. The Global Hawk drone uses the system Norm designed. Norm’s satellite communications system made the first Gulf War under President George H.W. Bush easier for the NATO Allies. 

Norm’s wife Janet was a Colonel at the NIH Clinical Center in Bethesda MD. Her floor did research on premature babies. 

If President Trump’s upending of the federal policy was in place when Norm & Janet were young and looking for work they wouldn’t have considered government service. 

We might not have a military satellite communication system. We might not have the pin point Google maps on our mobile devices that filtered down from Norm’s work.  

Janet would have worked in a private hospital and treatment of premature babies would have been set back. 

***

"On Tuesday morning, Moriah Lee, an analyst at NASA, joined a virtual town hall to learn what all the orders would mean for her small team, which monitors and audits projects in the space program. The acting supervisors, people she had known personally for years, made it clear to everyone that they were not inclined to show flexibility, she said.

Gone was the weekly speaker series that had been organized under the diversity program, which had brought in deaf people, combat veterans and others to share their experiences. Gone was her ability to live in Nashville and go twice a month to an office two hours away in Huntsville, Ala.

After the meeting, she and her colleagues went back to their jobs. They were rattled, she said, but not afraid. “The people who are acting most in fear are the ones in authority,” she said.

But the change to remote work, combined with the other directives, was just too much for her. And so Ms. Lee sent in her notice: Nearly six years after she began working for the federal government, she was resigning."

FROM:

The New York Times

Trump’s Moves to Upend Federal Bureaucracy Touch Off Fear and Confusion

Agencies are gripped with uncertainty about how to implement the blizzard of new policies as workers frantically try to assess the impact on their lives.

By Erica L. GreenCampbell Robertson and Noam Scheiber

Erica L. Green and Campbell Robertson reported from Washington. Noam Scheiber reported from Chicago.

Jan. 25, 2025