Think being a citizen of the U.S. under popular vote loser Donald Trump is an anxiety-inducing, exhausting ordeal, after just three weeks? Try being a public employee who's committed your professional life to the public good. 

WASHINGTON — Across the vast federal bureaucracy, Donald J. Trump's arrival in the White House has spread anxiety, frustration, fear and resistance among many of the two million nonpolitical civil servants who say they work for the public, not a particular president. […]

"It's almost a sense of dread, as in, what will happen to us," said Gabrielle Martin, a trial lawyer and 30-year veteran at the Denver office of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, where colleagues now share daily, grim predictions about the fate of their jobs under Mr. Trump's leadership.

"It's like the movie music when the shark is coming," Ms. Martin said, referring to "Jaws," the 1975 thriller. "People are just wary — is the shark going to come up out of the water?"

This article is based on interviews around the country with more than three dozen current and recently departed federal employees from the Internal Revenue Service; the Pentagon; the Environmental Protection Agency; the Justice and Treasury Departments; the Departments of Homeland Security, Veterans Affairs, and Housing and Urban Development; and other parts of the government. They reveal a federal work force that is more fundamentally shaken than usual by the uncertainties that follow a presidential transition from one party to the other.

These people don't know when or if the axe will fall and they'll be out of a job. Perhaps even more terrifying than the imminent loss of employment is what your job could turn into. Consider the relatively young and idealistic group that comprises the Digital Service, organized to "overhaul outdated government systems and databases, with the goal of helping President Barack Obama open the country's doors to refugees, protect immigrants, aid veterans and improve health care." Being told, as they were at an early meeting, that "their expertise was valued by the president; Mr. Kushner; Stephen K. Bannon, the president's chief strategist; and others in the West Wing," means that their work will be used for anything but good. "At that moment, when folks heard the name Steve Bannon, it was like a punch in the gut. It became so real," said one employee.

Conservatives have their eye on cutting the disaster relief fund of the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA). So if a tornado rips through your state or a hurricane breaches your jetties or an earthquake cripples your town, the federal government won't necessarily be there to help rebuild, writes Nathalie Baptiste. 

The proposal to cut disaster aid was part of a lengthy report released last year by the Heritage Foundation. Dubbed a Blueprint for Balance, the document argued that the federal government can save $10.5 trillion over the next decade by slashing funds for some programs and eliminating others. [...] 

The Heritage Foundation is extremely influential in the world of conservative politics, and the Trump administration appears ready to lean on the think tank for policy ideas. Donald Trump's transition team was stacked with advisers from Heritage, and the organization helped the president compile a list of potential Supreme Court picks. The Hill reported in January that a series of massive budget cuts being considered by the Trump administration "hew closely" to the Heritage budget blueprint.

Emergency or disaster declarations by a president currently prompt FEMA to help locales rebuild and provide immediate public health relief for up 75 percent of the costs.

But if the Heritage budget is implemented, state and local governments would have to pony up 75 percent of the costs, up to $5 billion. If the cost of an individual disaster tops $5 billion, the federal government's share would gradually increase, reaching 75 percent only if the damage exceeds $20 billion. The proposal would also completely eliminate FEMA's fire grants, which subsidize local fire departments.

North Carolina has emerged as ground zero in the battle for voting rights—with the Supreme Court weighing in last year on a law that Republicans designed in 2013 to severely limit people’s, particularly blacks’, access to the ballot. In August, SCOTUS blocked the strict law saying that it would “target African-Americans with almost surgical precision.”

The appeals court ruling struck down five parts of the law: its voter ID requirements, a rollback of early voting to 10 days from 17, an elimination of same-day registration and of preregistration of some teenagers, and its ban on counting votes cast in the wrong precinct.

The court found that all five restrictions “disproportionately affected African Americans.” The law’s voter identification provision, for instance, “retained only those types of photo ID disproportionately held by whites and excluded those disproportionately held by African Americans.”

And this week, the hits keep on coming. On Monday, lawyers sued Jones County, North Carolina, on the claim that it discriminates against black voters and makes it impossible for them to elect candidates of their choice.

The Lawyers’ Committee’s lawsuit seeks to force Jones County to switch to single-member voting districts. If the county were to be broken up into districts, black voters would make up the majority in at least one and would be able to elect a candidate-of-choice to the Board of Commissioners.

Oprah Winfrey has gotten involved in Andy Puzder’s nomination for labor secretary, providing the Senate committee considering Puzder with video of his ex-wife’s domestic violence allegations. 

The decades-old video, which is not easily found, has been provided by the Oprah Winfrey Network, those sources said. The video has been provided to senators in a Capitol Hill office building, according to people who have seen it. OWN did not immediately comment for this story. [...]

[Lisa] Fierstein’s accusations first surfaced in local news reports around the time of her divorce from Puzder. She has since suggested she made them up to bolster her divorce settlement. Puzder has always denied that he abused her.

Fierstein appeared on the Oprah show in a wig and glasses, and was identified only by the made-up name of Ann.

Fierstein wrote in a letter to the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee that she had been “hesitant” to go on Oprah, “but encouraged by friends and became caught up in the notion of a free trip to Chicago and being a champion of women and women’s issues. I regret my decision to appear on that show.” She has repeatedly said her abuse allegations were false and related to her efforts to get a better divorce settlement. However:

Fierstein's allegations of abuse weren’t confined to filings related to a divorce agreement. Court documents indicate that Fierstein filed an abuse claim against Puzder before the divorce — within a couple of weeks of the alleged May 1986 domestic violence incident. Fierstein also sought a protective court order against Puzder, documents show. The couple formally separated in June,1986.

We don’t know what happened between Puzder and Fierstein. We do know, however, that Puzder has been the CEO of a company with repeated wage theft violations and racial discrimination lawsuits, which casts some question on his fitness to fulfill the mission of the Department of Labor and “foster, promote, and develop the welfare of the wage earners, job seekers, and retirees of the United States; improve working conditions; advance opportunities for profitable employment; and assure work-related benefits and rights.”

For American allies, the resignation of conspiracy theory peddler and general crackpot Michael Flynn from Donald Trump's national security team is not necessarily being viewed as a positive step forward. Other nations have been struggling to make sense of a new administration whose policies seem to exist only in the tweeted word-farts of Donald Trump, and even then only until he contradicts them a day or two later. Now they're reduced to Kremlinology as they attempt to figure out what this latest scandal and resignation might mean.

Flynn’s resignation Monday night immediately sent European officials into a frenzy of attempting to determine what the change of the president’s top national security adviser would mean as the Atlantic alliance has already been struggling with understanding how the new president will approach a litany of complex European situations from the expansion of NATO to the war against ISIS to concerns about an expansionist Russia.

“I was hoping you could tell me what the fuck is going on over there,” said one European Union intelligence official who, like the other officials contacted, declined to speak about such a diplomatically sensitive situation on the record.

The view of the Trump team in the Middle East is no better.

In what could only be described as a complete act of cowardice, the head of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) canceled a meeting with the Congressional Hispanic Caucus Tuesday just hours before they were scheduled to meet. The presumable reason: because ICE Acting Director Thomas Homan does not want to answer questions about the immigration raids last week in which more than 680 people were arrested. 

House Democratic members requested the meeting to talk about deportation actions across the country last week. ICE officers arrested more than 680 immigrants in multiple states from Monday to Friday, officials said on Monday. About 75 percent of those detained had criminal records, according to ICE, although the agency did not break down the types of crimes and how many were solely immigration-related.

Immigration advocates want to understand how immigration enforcement will be different under this administration. But as we’ve come to expect from the current kleptocrats in power, Trump and company don’t believe they can be held accountable for anything—and they don’t feel it necessary to share information with the public. 

Wow. Local newscaster Chris Hurst, whose girlfriend, reporter Alison Parker, was murdered live on air by a gunman two years ago, has announced that he’s running for a seat in Virginia’s state House this fall as a Democrat. It’s an incredibly brave move for a man whose life was upended by an unspeakable tragedy—many of us would simply retreat from the public glare, and understandably so. But Hurst is running in the hopes that he can prevent others from enduring a similar fate:

Born and raised near Philadelphia, Hurst has not held office before, and he knows that, because of the national attention that WDBJ and he received after the 2015 shooting, guns will be an issue in the race. [...]

Returning to the topic of guns, Hurst said that he is a gun owner who wants “a healthy discussion of where we are with firearms, and trying to reduce gun violence is the only thing that I am interested in doing. … This is not about trying to change anybody’s way of life, but we can do more and do better to reduce gun suicides and gun homicides.”

Specifically, he said that he wants to find ways to remove guns from people under emergency protective orders “until we can get them necessary help. And that’s something that in Virginia we don’t have any mechanism for.”

Hurst emphasizes, though, that he’s not a single-issue candidate, and he has his considerable body of work as a reporter to point to for issues he’s investigated and is knowledgeable about, particularly on the environment. But Hurst knows that he brings a singular prominence to the topic of guns, and his unique stature will draw an unusual amount of attention for a legislative race.

What’s more, it’s one Democrats can win. Virginia’s 12th state House District, which is represented by Republican Joseph Yost, voted for Hillary Clinton by a 48-44 margin, making it one of 17 seats in the chamber (out of 100 total) that’s held by the GOP but was carried by Clinton. That means this contest will be a top target for Team Blue, and they’ve just landed a top-tier candidate to help them flip it. We’ll be watching this one very closely.

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Here’s Donald Trump complaining about how the Michael Flynn resignation was handled.

First note that Donald Trump believes the important story is not that his National Security Adviser held numerous secret talks with the Russian ambassador then lied to everyone, including the vice president, about the contents of those talks. Nope. The problem is the snitches who told on Flynn.

But as Trump raises the idea that leaks could endanger discussions over North Korea, it’s highly instructional to see how he actually handled delicate information concerning a ballistic missile launch.

The press revealing that one of Trump’s cabinet members was under pressure from Russia? Unacceptable. Donald Trump conducting foreign policy in his al fresco Situation Room, completely okay.

Just 26 days into the Trump regime, Washington has been rocked by the resignation of National Security Adviser Michael Flynn as a result of his extracurricular policy discussions with the Russians. It’s a scandal that goes to the heart of our national security and the potential intervention of Russia into our national politics. House Oversight and Government Affairs Committee Chair Jason Chaffetz is all over it—by which he means "It's taking care of itself." 

So in order to look like he's doing something oversight-y when it comes to Trump, he's sent a stern letter to the White House demanding information on their security protocols. But not related to Russia.

In a letter sent to White House chief of staff Reince Priebus on Tuesday, Chaffetz asked for information about the administration's security protocols at Trump's Mar-a-lago resort, including what documents were present at a Saturday powwow and how the administration vets club guests and employees to ensure they are not spies. […]

"Discussions with foreign leaders regarding international missile tests, and documents used to support those discussions, are presumptively sensitive," Chaffetz wrote.

"While the President is always on duty, and cannot dictate the timing of when he needs to receive sensitive information about urgent matters, we hope the White House will cooperate in providing the Committee with additional information."

In other words, "please help me change the subject, Reince Priebus, and make it look like I'm doing my job." Yeah, Chaffetz, nice try. But it's not going to work. 

U.S. District Judge James Robart, whose temporary restraining order on Donald Trump’s Muslim ban was upheld by the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, is moving ahead with the lawsuit by Washington and Minnesota challenging the ban. The restraining order is still in place, but the states asked for the lawsuit to proceed as soon as possible:

"Given the gravity of the states' constitutional allegations, defendants' stated national security concerns and the public interests at stake, the states respectfully submit that discovery should proceed without delay," the state lawyers said in a legal brief. 

The Trump Justice Department wants to delay while the 9th Circuit considers whether to have an 11-judge panel reconsider the injunction, but Robart has no patience with that:

Michelle Bennett, a Justice Department lawyer, told Robart there was no basis for speeding up the process, arguing the states are not being harmed because there's a temporary injunction in place.

She asked Robart to stick with a previous schedule that gives the government until April 3 to file a response to the states' complaint. Robart said he was "surprised" by that statement, since the president had said he wants to "see you in court."

Ouch. That should also remind the Justice Department lawyers that they’re going to have to answer questions about many of Trump’s other statements—they’re not just defending a sloppily written executive order, they’ll have to explain the fact that, while they’re arguing the ban doesn’t really target a religion, Trump is on the record repeatedly talking about a Muslim ban. You can see why they’d want time to come up with a creative argument about why Trump’s words don’t matter, but thanks to Robart, they’re going to have to hustle.

Despite Republican efforts to the contrary, the Office of Government Ethics continues to exist. They've now weighed in on Trump adviser Kellyanne Conway's televised promotion of Ivanka Trump's clothing line during a Fox News interview, which they agree is just as blatantly unethical as everybody already knew it was.

In a letter addressed to Deputy White House Counsel Stefan Passantino, the director of the Office of Government Ethics said Conway's comments were in "clear violation" of rules against the misuse of an official position. [...]

"I note that OGE's regulation on misuse of position offers as an example the hypothetical case of a Presidential appointee appearing in a television commercial to promote a product," Shaub said. "Ms. Conway's actions track that example almost exactly. Therefore, I recommend that the White House investigate Ms. Conway's actions and consider taking disciplinary action against her."

The only defense the White House has offered for Conway's promotion of Ivanka's products was that it was intended as lighthearted. (It should be noted that the courts are generally unsympathetic to this defense; clown masks are generally not considered ameliorating factors in a bank robbery, and murder remains murder even if you carried out the deed "ironically.") Get it? Conway was only breaking ethics rules from inside the White House to show how funny it would be if she would do that.

So we now have the government's own ethics experts agreeing that yes, what Conway did was a clear ethical violation. It's now up to one of two groups to do something about it. Either the White House itself can "discipline" Conway or the Congress, which cares very very very much about wrongdoing within the executive branch, can open an investigation into the matter themselves.

Oh, good. So we can rest easy, then.