A few years from now, no matter who is running the country, there's going to be a big hole in the civil service thanks to the one-two punch of a hiring freeze and a U-turn in foreign policy now being performed in Washington D.C.
Polk County's Cecelia Thompson is a casualty of those forces. She's a senior at the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill, where she’s studying political science, specifically the politics of peace and justice. Until a few weeks ago, she was on track to serve as an employee of the US State Department. Not anymore.
Now, as a putative member of the next generation of American diplomats, she has some thoughts on what the current president is doing to the State Department, and how she and her cohort of once-hopeful members of that service are coping.
Resources:
What would anyone work for this government?
https://www.wired.com/story/doge-worse-than-you-think
The hiring freeze executive order:
https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/01/hiring-freeze/
Civil service casualty count:
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2025/02/11/us/politics/trump-musk-doge-federal-workers.html
Bulwark "Shield of the Republic" podcast:
