Washington D.C. - a City in Fear

In the good old times, whenever these might have been, one could always talk to people, even in Washington, D.C.. They’d be incredibly busy but would then tell the inquisitive journalist more than he ever wanted to know in the first hour of us meeting up. That has changed, at least in the capital, which the Executive Orders of Donald Trump and have turned into a city in fear. 

Nobody working for the federal government or its agencies wants to give their name for fear of negative repercussions. Friends tell you about their precarious lives between the oscillating emails from Elon Musk’s Department for Government Efficiency (DOGE) that tell them one thing today and another one tomorrow; that you got fired, or maybe not. That is why nobody in this blogpost is called by his or her real name. And there has not been one conversation with friends and people affected which ended without the adjectives “incredulous”, “chaotic” and “chilling”. 

Some of their bosses have taken the generous offer of early retirement leaving a demoralized staff defending the institution against further attacks. Other superiors have accepted the new regime with slavish fervour. The smartest leaders of departments, I hear, play it both ways. No public resistance even to the mostly ridiculous orders but trying to save what is possible by not implementing them. 

Friends of friends are not calling you back, but you hear that they are not in the position to talk being overwhelmed by the sudden storm that blew into their sheltered middle-class life. Most affected in D.C.  by Elon Musk’s systemic madness seems to be the medical sector with the “National Institute of Health” (NIH) as “the crown jewel of American science”. 

According to the “Washington Post” there are 6.000 scientists working at the NIH Campus with 75 buildings in Washington’s Northern suburb of Bethesda. Nobody would deny that this medical complex did not deserve some cuts, but it was here that the human genetic code was deciphered and important research for the development of drugs to treat AIDS, COVID and now obesity originated from this institution. Firing many and then rehiring a few researchers in the middle of clinical trials left not only those working in Washington stunned. The “Washington Post” has made one of its local reporters a kind of agony aunt, to whom they can explain themselves into online spaces: “how are your job insecurity and economic instability impacting you?” Or “what recent changes to your lifestyle did you have to make?” 

Fear is everywhere. If you ask the staff at the wonderful new “National Museum of African American History” what they make of their boss going for an “indeterminate leave” they will not say anything. If you ask the staff at the old and venerated “National Portrait Gallery” about the chances that its critical references to the role of slavery in American History will survive this Trump Administration, they will only shrug their shoulders.  

After all, this is a city with about 43% of its population black in which the contested “Diversity, Equality and Inclusion”-Programs (DEI) came into force rather belatedly. But these are exactly the so-called “woke” references for promoting equality on the Republican’s hitlist for institutions from the Kennedy Center of Arts to the Pentagon across the river to be purged from their programs, websites and communications. “Museums in our nation’s capital should be places where individuals go to learn – not to be subjected to ideological indoctrination or divisive narratives that distort our shared history” reads Donald Trump’s Executive Order about the Orwellian takeover of America’s history. 

Washington’s black mayor, Muriel Bowser who – with her Democrats getting 93.5% of last November’s vote - finds her whole city under attack by the Trump Administration. The legal and financial situation of the city is precarious. Congress which is planning to cut one billion Dollars from its budget could abolish the barely 50-year-old odd entity of the District of Columbia with a simple law. Given this double dependency of her city on its endangered federal institutions and the US-Congress, the mayor has not exactly practiced full resistance. Some of her critics in the Democratic party call this “appeasement. But a friend who works for a local councillor, thinks this is “a bit unfair”. Because who is currently n o t appeasing the attacks by Trump and Musk: Congress, the Supreme Court, most elite universities? All seem to be in shock and driven by fear. 

Thus, the state just caves in to its own dismantling. All in all, there are 2.4 million federal workers in the US, 30% of them war veterans. By last week 56.000 job cuts had been confirmed and further reductions of 17.000 were being planned. 75.000 federal employees chose generally generous buyouts. US-Aid and the Voice of America are completely gone, the Education Department’s workforce will be cut by 46%, at Health and Human Services by 24%. With many of those jobs in the capital it will thin the city’s tax base and demoralize its citizens, of whom only 21.076 have voted for Donald Trump. 

So why are middle-class Washingtonians not out in the streets? The shock, the helplessness, the need to sort out your life in this sudden turn of events. There might be the hope that there will be another email reinstating you and there definitely is the fear of exposing yourself to the unpredictable powers of the new regime. “Compared to Europe there is no historic legacy”, one friend remarks, “Americans did not have to overcome fascism.” Yet they once had a President whose first inaugural address in 1933 included the famous line which every schoolkid has heard: “The only thing we have to fear is fear itself”. It seems that the well-to-do civil servants must still learn to own this phrase. 

But there have been some tenths of thousands of protesters on the Nation’s Mall on April the 5th. Yet my rather anecdotal survey of the demonstrating crowd at the Washington Memorial showed many visitors from further outside of the Washington area, many grey-haired pensioners and very few participants who looked like recent recruits to civic protest with its shouting of slogans and showing off homemade banners. It was, of course, difficult to tell how many fired and fearful civil servants were among the crowd.  

Well, there were Linda and Brian, both federal workers, recently engaged and then both sacked at the beginning of April. But they had no time to tell their story to the visitor. They had just briefly come to the demonstration to make their statement. Now they had to hurry back home to work out how to unfreeze their savings intended for their wedding to now be used for a new job search they never bargained for.