President Donald Trump’s directive to immediately eliminate any efforts to diversify federal offices and the people they serve — and require all federal employees to stop working from home — led some federal employees in Hawaii to apply for new jobs last week while they talked among one another about whether to quit.
Some don’t like the mandate to disregard issues of gender, equity and inclusion in their jobs. Others who balance child care with work by telecommuting say the new order to report to an office also prompted them to consider more flexible jobs outside of the federal government.
Some remote workers don’t even have an office, desk or chair and have yet to be told where they should go.
They spoke to the Honolulu Star-Advertiser on the condition of anonymity because they have yet to quit — and out of fear of being reported after Trump issued another order directing co-workers to identify any federal employee who doesn’t follow his policies.
A supervisor who works in a federal office on Oahu told the Star-Advertiser that the blanket directives to Hawaii’s 25,000 civilian federal employees sent the message “that they are worthless.”
“Waking up every day in fear is not something that folks in First World nations experience,” the supervisor said. “This is a new feeling for us.”
The supervisor served in the military for 10 years before working the last 20 in Hawaii as a civilian federal employee.
Asked if they plan to quit, the supervisor said: “I took an oath to protect and defend my country from all enemies foreign and domestic, and I will be here. The enduring patriotism I am seeing from people who were called ‘worthless’ is both heartwarming and heartbreaking.”
Civilian federal workers staff a wide range of government offices across Hawaii.
Add in federal contractors and others who are not “formal employees,” said U.S. Rep. Ed Case, D-Hawaii, and the total number could be 50,000 — on top of 73,000 active-duty service members.
The whirlwind of directives and executive orders from Trump last week also triggered fear and confusion among Hawaii’s nonprofit sector after the president ordered a freeze on government spending, including federal grants to nonprofits.
Chaos and unanswerable questions spread quickly through the Waianae Coast Comprehensive Health Center’s ‘Elepaio Social Services food programs, along with the health center’s staff and patients, said Alicia Higa, ‘Elepaio executive director and the health center’s chief health equity officer.
‘Elepaio represents Hawaii’s largest federally funded Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP food program, that enables its farmers market to match clients’ food purchases dollar for dollar and double their buying power, Higa said.
Its senior food pantries and school pantries feed an average of 1,200 kupuna and 4,000 to 5,000 children every week, she said.
Higa, who was born and raised in Waianae, said ‘Elepaio provides a critical service in an area considered “a food desert.”
“We do have a lot of food insecurity issues, so we also have to feed our community and not just treat our patients,” she said. “We’re a very rooted community where we all take care of one another, no matter what. We’re very resilient, always have been.”
‘Buyer beware’
Trump’s directive to suspend federal spending and grants to nonprofits was immediately suspended by a federal judge.
The White House the next day rescinded Trump’s order, leaving open the question of what he will do next to nonprofit funding for programs like ‘Elepaio that serve ethnically diverse clients in a rural community.
The flurry of activity, Higa said, was “confusing. To put it simply, we don’t understand what happened. Now we’re in a state of limbo. It’s been a roller coaster.”
For federal workers, in particular, Case said, “fear has been created personally in their minds. It’s insulting to federal employees, it’s disrespectful and, frankly, it’s cruel.”
Case thanked federal workers in Hawaii, saying he was “grateful” for their service. But he cautioned remote workers who were told by Trump that they could continue working remotely until September, as long as they promise to quit.
“They got a memo across the board saying, ‘Thanks for your service but you have to decide within nine days whether to quit’ even though a decision might be very, very difficult,” Case said. “It was thrown together without any real thought.”
Given Trump’s long, documented history of lawsuits against him for reneging on deals and failing to pay contractors as a private businessman, Case had a message for federal workers thinking the president will follow through on keeping them on the federal payroll until September:
“I would have a great deal of distrust that I would ever get that money,” he said.
U.S. Rep. Jill Tokuda, D-Hawaii, called Trump’s offer to federal employees working remotely illegal because laws were written to “protect workers from employers who create a sense of fear in the workplace.” And any federal employee considering resigning should know that Congress only funded the federal government through March, she said.
So no one — not even Trump — knows whether there will be money to pay remote workers who promise to quit through September, according to Tokuda.
The president also lacks the authority to make the offer because Congress, not the executive branch, controls the federal budget, Tokuda explained.
“Buyer beware,” she said. “Do so with the utmost caution.”
She called Trump’s offer “insulting,” and said it sent the message to the more than 2 million federal workers “that they are expendable and replaceable.”
“It had the intended impact to strike fear into the hearts of workers,” she said. “It’s just cruel. We have so much more important work to do.”
Confusion, threats
Among Hawaii’s federal workers, the source of and language in the original messaging was puzzling because they always receive broad policy goals from the Office of Personnel Management, or OPM, not specific orders, the supervisor said.
They eventually learned the directives were sent from an external server that tech mogul Elon Musk, head of the newly created “Department of Government Efficiency,” had installed and loaded with information on all federal employees.
The messages were immediately deleted or reported as spam by employees who thought someone, or maybe some foreign entity, was trying to hack into government IT systems.
The supervisor has seen employee reductions before but said they were always aimed at specific jobs, not a blanket message targeting the entire federal workforce, which also drew suspicion about the source of the directives.
“It was very jarring and marked ‘external,’ meaning it came from outside the federal government, so a lot of employees reported it as phishing or spoofs,” the supervisor said. “Some of the first directives were to remove any sign that referenced DEI (diversity, equity and inclusion) and suspend policies and contracts of DEI. It said to report back immediately. It fundamentally changed the core of what we’re doing.
“We then received an executive order from an external server, which was also disturbing,” the person said. “We were told to eliminate policies that had existed prior to LBJ (President Lyndon B. Johnson). It was extremely alarming and very disturbing.”
The supervisor thought, “Is someone overthrowing the federal government? Then we started to see folks posting on Reddit-type sites and social media from people that worked within OPM that read very much like cries for help.
“In my 30 years with the federal government, I have never heard cries of help within the federal government, and they were from multiple people within OPM. Then the real OPM was posting that a fake OPM had taken over, but Elon Musk had used an external server downloaded with everyone’s names. It was crazy.”
Other directives demanded “‘loyalty’ — that definitely read as a threat.”
The supervisor worries that critical employees will quit, such as the nuclear engineers who work on Pearl Harbor-based submarines and missile defense workers at the Kauai Pacific Missile Range.
“Only a finite number of people in the world can operate those systems,” the supervisor said. “There are no colleges out there graduating folks trained to operate systems created in the 1970s or how to defuel 80-year-old underground fuel bunkers” at Red Hill.
“Any disruption to that work has an immediate impact on the safety and security of our island and represents an enduring threat to our nation.”
Waiting for answers
Trump’s threat to suspend federal grants to nonprofit organizations shook up the staff at Family Promise of Hawaii, which shelters and helps homeless families with children on Oahu and Maui.
Family Promise receives 75% of its funding from federal programs.
“As we were watching the news, all of the updates were happening so quickly,” said Ryan Catalani, the organization’s executive director.
Amid texts, emails and phone calls, Catalani’s message to Family Promise of Hawaii’s board and staff was to stick to the basics: “Let’s continue to focus on providing our core services to families until we know more. We talked about contingency plans, but we stayed focused … and waited for more information to come out.
“Things were moving so quickly that there wasn’t going to be a definitive answer,” he said.
Family Promise client Kayla Keoho, 26, had been living in her Dodge Durango in Makakilo with her two daughters, who are 8 and 1. She’s expecting her third child in April.
Keoho has been homeless since New Year’s because she was unable to pay her half of the electrical bills for the home she shared with her sister in Ewa Beach.
Keoho’s not working and the bills were “in the thousands and thousands,” she said.
She was not interested in living with her daughters in a traditional dormitory-style homeless shelter and so began sleeping on the street in her Durango.
Family Promise took them into their Wahiawa facility, where Keoho and her daughters are grateful to live in their own studio apartment with attached bathroom, microwave, fridge and sink. She’s also receiving case management through Family Promise social workers, including training in financial literacy.
She wants to move into a transitional housing unit and avoid becoming homeless again.
“Thankfully, Family Promise took me in and now I have a safe environment to sleep with me and my kids,” she said. “I’m really thankful to this program.”
Keoho was unaware of all of the confusion coming out of the White House last week but said Family Promise needs to keep operating to help homeless families like hers.
“They gave us a safe place for me and my kids,” she said.
For the public at large, Case said his offices in Honolulu and Washington, D.C., received a steady stream of questions last week.
“Of course my constituents are concerned,” he said. “They’re shocked. Many of them are directly effected. The first reaction is confusion over the uncertainty of what is going on because this president has sown chaos. … We always knew this was going to be a chaotic presidency and here we are.”
