A landmark federal court ruling has, for now, stopped the Trump administration from carrying out widespread firings of federal workers during the government shutdown. Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER) called the legal decision “an important victory for federal employees, for the rule of law, and for the principle that public servants cannot be used as political pawns.” As PEER’s executive director Tim Whitehouse stated, “The Trump administration’s attempt to fire thousands of federal workers during a government shutdown was both cruel and illegal. The court made clear that this administration cannot rewrite the law or weaponize the shutdown to punish the workforce that keeps our nation running.”

As the shutdown stretches on from its start on Oct. 1, stories are emerging from inside federal agencies that show a system buckling under strain. “Their accounts reveal a government in disarray – one where rules are being bent, oversight is eroding, confusion rules the day and partisan politics are seeping into the daily operations of once-independent agencies,” said Whitehouse in an October 13 memo.

At the EPA, nearly 90 percent of staff were sent home according to the agency’s own contingency plan. The number of employees retained “during the shutdown” is just 1,734 – nowhere near enough to monitor the hundreds of thousands of sites entrusted to the agency. “Federal employees protect our air and water, ensure food and medicine are safe, and safeguard our communities. They deserve respect and stability, not pink slips in the middle of a shutdown,” Whitehouse said.

Confusion has dominated planning and communication. Federal employees described receiving furlough notices late, sometimes hours into the shutdown day, and a Bureau of Land Management headquarters employee said it was “the first shutdown in decades where staff were not part of contingency planning.” Other staffers reported that some managers were required to sign non-disclosure agreements, possibly related to reductions-in-force.

Morale among the career workforce has plummeted as political messaging bleeds into agency business. Education Department employees say “Out of Office” replies were changed to state that Democrats “refused to fund the government,” and a National Park Service worker at Yosemite said the Interior Department’s shutdown notice claimed, “Democrats are shutting down the government.” PEER raised concern that such communications “may violate longstanding bans on using taxpayer funds for propaganda or lobbying.”

Meanwhile, business quietly continues for certain favored sectors. Oil and gas permitting and timber sales within the Bureau of Land Management are “reportedly continuing,” while programs like native seed coordination and restoration led by the Institute for Applied Ecology were abruptly canceled for “no longer effectuating agency priorities” – a pattern PEER notes suggests selective and politically motivated decisions.

“It gives polluters a green light,” warned Justin Chen, president of AFGE Council 238, which represents EPA employees, in a public rally organized by agency unions. "Furloughing EPA employees means nobody will be holding polluters accountable for what they dump into the air we breathe, in the water we drink, while EPA is shut down," echoed other union voices at AFGE.

Enforcement and nearly all research activities have ground to a halt. “Site investigations, remedial design planning, and cleanup at Superfund sites are some of the activities that will halt under the shutdown,” confirmed WOSU. Only in rare situations where “a failure to maintain operations would pose an imminent threat to human health” does work continue, as shown by the isolated example of the J.H. Baxter cleanup in Oregon described by Lookout Eugene-Springfield.

The outlook for science is bleak: “No new grants, cooperative agreements, or contracts are being awarded, and no new funding is being provided for scientific research,” reports EOS. “Transparency is grinding to a halt.” The U.S. Air Force Academy’s FOIA office has already warned requesters of “unforeseen delays” due to lack of staff, and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission is operating only on “essential issues” tied to presidential orders.

EPA’s union leaders testified in court about “increased anxiety, career uncertainty, and the potential for lasting damage to their agencies’ scientific capabilities,” as described by PoliticoPro. Some essential workers, those unable to afford missed paychecks, have begun “showing up at food banks,” as reported by AFGE and echoed in public hearings.

Meanwhile, at the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers – the federal agency behind much of the nation’s largest environmental remediation and restoration projects – an $11 billion pause has been imposed on ongoing and planned water infrastructure and ecological restoration efforts. As reported by Engineering News-Record, “The Corps will be immediately pausing over $11 billion in lower-priority projects and considering them for cancellation, including projects in New York, San Francisco, Boston, Cape Cod, Baltimore, and others.” Read more at ENR.

The list of impacted work ranges from the Cape Cod Bridges to major New York City water systems, San Francisco’s waterfront, and vital aquatic habitat restoration in California, described in detail by Reuters. Only the bare minimum – maintaining hurricane barriers and disaster response – continues, with the Corps preparing for “the closure of USACE-operated campgrounds and day-use parks nationwide” – a move detailed in US Army Corps News.

Across agencies, PEER reports that: “Political messaging dominates official communications. Extractive industries are being prioritized over environmental protection. Transparency is grinding to a halt. Morale among career employees has collapsed. The shutdown isn’t just a funding lapse – it’s a stress test for the integrity of public service. And by many accounts, it’s one this government is failing.”