ANDREW LIMBONG, HOST:
On Monday, two days before the government shutdown, a dozen or so current and former federal workers held a press conference near the Capitol Building in Washington, D.C., and they repeated the same oath they took when they started their jobs.
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ASHLEY WILDER SMITH: I, Ashley Wilder Smith (ph), do solemnly swear...
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON: Solemnly swear...
SMITH: ...That I will support and defend the constitution of the United States.
LIMBONG: They were there protesting against President Trump's threats to use the shutdown as an excuse to lay off more federal employees.
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SMITH: Against all enemies, foreign and domestic.
LIMBONG: NPR's labor and workplace correspondent Andrea Hsu has been reporting on federal workers all year and says many of them mentioned this oath to her when they share concerns about what this administration is doing.
ANDREA HSU, BYLINE: You know, we take an oath to uphold the Constitution. We're not taking an oath to any one president. We're here to serve all the American people.
LIMBONG: It's been for federal employees. First, there was that fork-in-the-road email buyout offer, and then tens of thousands of probationary federal employees were fired, and then more mass layoffs, funding cuts, for projects and programs President Trump didn't support. And now Trump is telling Democrats the shutdown is an unprecedented opportunity to carry out even more layoffs of federal employees.
JENNA NORTON: As a federal worker, I am here to tell you that every awful thing that would happen in a shutdown - shuttering programs that Americans rely on, damaging our economy, firing federal workers - all of this is already happening.
LIMBONG: That's Jenna Norton, currently furloughed. She works at the National Institutes of Health, where she oversees research into kidney disease. Andrea says it's hard to get federal employees to talk to her right now, especially on the record, but it is important for her to always try.
HSU: I think it really helps to, you know, have a name, to know that this is a real person.
LIMBONG: For this week's Reporter's Notebook, I wanted to talk to Andrea about covering the federal workforce in the middle of President Trump's efforts to reshape the federal government. And Andrea was telling me how her job completely changed January 20, the day President Trump began his second term.
HSU: Before this year, I was - am - still am the labor and workplace correspondent for the Business Desk here at NPR. But I really had not reported at all on the federal workforce - virtually at all. I had done a couple stories, I guess, during the presidential campaign and after the election, and I had done one story about telework in the government. But really, most of my reporting was about, you know, autoworkers and dockworkers and baristas at Starbucks and work - you know, work-from-home trends and the four-day workweek and things like that, and I just had never covered the federal workforce before.
But of course, you know, after - starting on January 20, President Trump just had all these changes that he wanted to bring to the federal workforce, and a lot of this was actually outlined in Project 2025, so his administration came in very ready to implement these dramatic changes. And, you know, we have great colleagues on the Washington Desk but just not enough people to cover all these different agencies.
And I have to say, like, I was talking to a federal worker today, and I said, I'm kind of grateful to have had this assignment this year because I've learned so much more about what our government does and what the people who work for the government do day in and day out.
LIMBONG: Every - I remember everything was moving very fast. How did you sort of start finding your way in the water there?
HSU: You know, it was like a crash course in, you know, who works for the federal government? What are all these different agencies? There are agencies I'd never heard of, like the Merit Systems Protection Board, that were suddenly, you know, really important to the story. So it really was, like, a very steep learning curve, those first few weeks, couple months. And, you know, we did have a team of people at NPR. You know, we were all pitching in. We were all hearing things from different people, sharing information, you know, trying our best to figure out what was going on because there was so little official information coming out of the administration.
LIMBONG: Yeah. I mean, even little old me as a culture reporter - I was, you know, doing stuff on (laughter) federal workers. And the thing I kept running into was how hard it was to get people to speak on the record, to have their voice...
HSU: Yes.
LIMBONG: ...On the air. I mean, and with good reason, right? These are people who - their livelihoods are in limbo, right? And they don't want to, like, mess that up and dah, dah, dah (ph).
HSU: Right.
LIMBONG: How did you sort of navigate that fear in your sources?
HSU: Yeah. I mean, it was a real fear, and it continues to be a real fear now. So we did end up granting a lot of people anonymity, you know, just using their first initial or their middle name or, you know, something like that. But I did find that the stories where I could name people - they just resonated more with our audience. I think it really helps to, you know, have a name, to know that this is a real person. You know, in a digital story on our website, it helps to have a photo of the person. I just think it really helps our audience connect with them.
And I will say, there were not a lot, but a few - you know, a handful of current federal employees who were willing to go on the record. And, you know, this started with these probationary workers who were fired en masse. You know, probationary workers are typically those who are in their first or second year on the job. They're still, like, serving out their probationary periods. And, you know, in February, we were just flooded with these messages of people saying, I just got fired. They told me it was because of my performance, but I just had a great performance review.
And a couple of the people who were willing to speak out were veterans - military veterans. And a part of me thought, you know, these are people who've been through a lot. They have stepped up to serve the country. They've served their country for many years, some of them. And they have a real strong sense of what's right and wrong, and they knew their firings were wrong, and they were willing to talk about it on tape, you know, with their photo on our website. So I - you know, to this day, I'm grateful that some people are willing to speak about, you know, what has happened to them, while I'm also grateful for all the people who reached out and who aren't - you know, who aren't comfortable doing that.
LIMBONG: Yeah, like, those voices help give, I think, like, a support system - right? - to the people, you know, whose stories...
HSU: Absolutely.
LIMBONG: ...Are on the record, sort of help back up everything that they're saying. Was there any, like, trust building that you had to do with some of your sources? Like, hey, I'm legit. I'm - you know, this is where I'm coming from.
HSU: Yes.
LIMBONG: Dah, dah, dah, dah. I'm not, like - I'm not your stenographer, but here, I'm coming from a good faith place.
HSU: Yes. And I think it helped - the more stories we wrote, the more people saw our stories, people were reaching out because in our stories, we would put our Signal IDs and say, you know, you can reach out to us if you want to share information. You know, oftentimes, people did want to know who I was, and I - you know, in order to grant somebody anonymity, we had to confirm, verify ourselves, that they were who they said they were, that they are a federal worker, that they do work for this or that agency.
And we would sometimes ask people to show us, like, a government ID or, like, an email, or did they have a LinkedIn page? Did they - you know, was there a way that we could verify? And I had several ask me, like, can I see your ID? Can I make sure...
LIMBONG: Fairly.
HSU: ...You're a real person?
LIMBONG: Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
HSU: And yeah, and I thought, OK, that's fair.
LIMBONG: So I imagine by being around all these people, you got a sort of firsthand look at the culture of fear that these workers are living under, right?
HSU: People are rightfully concerned that speaking out could make them targets - not just of this administration, of, you know, the, you know, political appointees who might be overseeing their departments, but also sort of in the public sphere. Like, I think people nowadays worry that, you know, if they're seen - if you can Google their name, you can find them on the internet, speaking to NPR, being critical of this administration somehow - that they will be targeted. I think there's a real fear of that right now.
And Andrew, you know, I mean, like, 30 years ago - I can't believe it was actually almost 30 years ago - I started my journalism career in China. I worked as a researcher in the BBC bureau in Beijing for a couple years in the late '90s. And, you know, people there were not that excited to talk to a foreign media outlet. The average citizen was not really willing to share their - you know, their personal opinions with you. And so when I came back to the U.S. and I got this - got my job at NPR in 2002, I was just amazed at how, you know, almost easy it was to get great interviews because, you know, Americans are kind of hams. Like, they like to talk.
LIMBONG: Yeah.
HSU: They like to share their ideas. They - I mean, of course, not everyone, but there are a lot of people. Like, you know, we would go out and interview people or just approach people on the street. And I was just - I'm always amazed at how much people are willing to share. And I feel like that has changed. Obviously, people who are worried about their careers - they're worried about their livelihoods - they don't want to talk, but I think that people are generally fearful of the climate that we're in now.
LIMBONG: Andrea Hsu covers the federal workforce for NPR. Andrea, thank you so much.
HSU: Hey, Andrew, thanks so much for talking about it.
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