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President Trump is telling Democrats that the shutdown is an unprecedented opportunity for him to do what he wants with the government, like cut programs that he doesn't like and order mass layoffs. But some federal workers point out that he's already doing all of that. NPR's Andrea Hsu reports.
ANDREA HSU, BYLINE: On her left wrist, Jenna Norton wears a set of beaded bracelets.
JENNA NORTON: They're sort of Taylor Swift-style friendship bracelets.
HSU: You know, with those alphabet beads - but instead of song titles or lyrics, Norton's bracelets say things like, support the Constitution.
NORTON: This one says NASA and EPA, NIH.
HSU: The National Institutes of Health, where Norton has worked for more than a decade. The bracelets were a gift from a former colleague concerned about the turmoil there - the mass layoffs, the cancellation of hundreds of research grants. That's gone on even as lower courts have found those moves unlawful. Just before the shutdown, Norton spoke at a press conference outside the capital organized by a coalition of civil servants opposed to the cuts.
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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.
HSU: Now furloughed, Norton agreed to speak with NPR in her personal capacity.
NORTON: I feel like I have this front-row seat to the destruction of our democracy. You know, we are seeing it in real time with a president who is asking us to do things that are illegal and harmful to the American public.
HSU: The White House says, Americans elected Trump to carry out his agenda, and federal workers who resist it are the ones working against the American people. Any lapse in funding, the White House says, has consequences. Now, even before the shutdown, Norton's work overseeing research into kidney disease had seen plenty of disruption. Her focus is on health disparities, a topic the Trump administration sees as linked to DEI. Grants she oversaw funded research into why some communities are harder hit than others and what can be done to improve outcomes, which Norton says not only saves lives, it saves the government money because...
NORTON: Anybody who comes to end-stage kidney disease and requires dialysis for survival is actually covered by Medicare. And so the cost to our society of people progressing to kidney disease is really, really substantial.
HSU: And yet, early this year, the Trump administration canceled hundreds of NIH grants, including some Norton oversaw, as part of its purge of DEI. Grantees sued and a federal judge in Massachusetts, Judge William Young, sided with them, finding the terminations unlawful. He said, I've sat on this bench for 40 years. I've never seen government racial discrimination like this.
NORTON: So we're not talking about some, quote, "woke, political," you know, "Obama appointee," right? This is a Reagan-appointed judge.
HSU: But then the Supreme Court stepped in. Without hearing arguments, the court vacated the key part of Judge Young's order. The same thing happened with layoffs at NIH. A lower court ruled the layoffs were probably illegal. Then the Supreme Court said, actually, the layoffs can go forward for now. Norton says this is something lawmakers from both parties should be concerned about.
NORTON: To me, this isn't really a partisan Democrats-versus-Republicans issue. This is a democracy-versus-autocracy issue.
HSU: She wants all lawmakers to remember Congress has the power of the purse, not the president. And Jenna Norton fears she could be laid off in the shutdown or fired for speaking out. But as a federal worker, she also feels she has a window into what's happening and an obligation to put up a red flag. It hasn't been easy.
NORTON: You know, my parents voted for Trump, so I understand that people who support Trump aren't bad people and they want the same things that I want.
HSU: Financial stability, opportunities for their kids - Norton also wants her kids to grow up in a world where they can speak freely. She worries that's not a guarantee. Andrea Hsu, NPR News. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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