In the months since Trump reassumed the Presidency, seemingly every aspect of working for the federal government has been upended. That’s especially evident in the country’s immigration courts. Plus:

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Donald Trump speaks in Pennsylvania.Photograph by Alex Wong / Getty

E. Tammy Kim A contributing writer who covers politics and labor.

In September, while reporting on the Trump Administration’s attacks on the immigration system, I visited the courtroom of Judge Jeremiah Johnson, in downtown San Francisco. He was presiding over a large batch of preliminary hearings, mostly concerning applications for asylum. The courthouse was emptier than usual. Many applicants were afraid to show up, since ICE had recently made arrests in the hallways. And about a hundred of the nation’s seven hundred or so immigration judges, including some of Johnson’s colleagues, had either resigned, retired, or been fired since the beginning of the year. Even judges, it turned out, could not escape the shrinking of the federal workforce.

Despite this upheaval, Johnson, who’s reedy and outgoing, projected calm. He greeted the immigrants who came before him with a big smile and the word “namaste.” Some of the immigrants were kids. Through Spanish, Mam, and Hindi interpreters, he advised everyone of their rights and obligations. “The purpose of these proceedings is to determine whether you can stay in the United States,” he told a woman named Guadalupe.

When the federal government shut down for all of October and half of November, Johnson and other immigration judges kept working, without pay. Their services were considered essential. During this period, I didn’t hear of any firings in the courts. But, as has become the norm this year, there were plenty in other parts of the government, including at the Departments of Energy, Education, Health and Human Services, and Commerce.

Then, after the shutdown ended, just before Thanksgiving, Johnson and at least five other immigration judges, in San Francisco and New York, were fired via e-mail. And, in early December, seven more in New York were let go. (A spokesperson for the Administration would not comment on matters of “personnel.”) Now the Administration is recruiting “deportation judges” in those and other cities. “Combat fraud,” a new web page from the Department of Justice reads, “and ensure those seeking to exploit vulnerabilities in our immigration system are not successful.”

Johnson’s situation is both galling and typical—very 2025. To be a federal worker these days is to do one’s job from inside a whirlpool. Every day is a surprise; what used to be the most stable employment has become a constant gamble. So far this year, more than three hundred thousand federal employees—of around two million total—have left government service, either voluntarily or involuntarily. (Sixty-eight thousand employees have been hired, a figure that likely includes civil servants who were fired and then brought back.) Dismissals are being contested in court. Some employees who were fired just before, or during, the shutdown, still don’t know their status. Are they employed, on administrative leave, or unemployed? Many retroactive paychecks haven’t arrived.

Trauma is the point, Russell Vought, Trump’s de-facto human-resources director, has said. There’s also a lot of pointless mayhem.

In the eleven months since Trump reassumed the Presidency, the meaning of federal work has been remade. Some agencies, such as U.S.A.I.D., have been destroyed completely. Other demolitions are in progress. Elon Musk and his DOGE chainsaw are now gone, but the reductions and retribution continue.

I spoke with Judge Johnson last week. “I used to be optimistic—Pollyannaish,” he told me. Just before his termination, the Department of Homeland Security had brought a group of new prosecutors to observe his courtroom. He had thought he was safe, that his work was understood to be fair and good. “Now I’m realistic. The trend is firing.”

For more: read E. Tammy Kim on how DOGE tried to cripple the government.

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P.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio has ordered his department to return to the use of Times New Roman font in official correspondence, according to a memo obtained by the Times. The State Department had been using serif-less Calibri—a font with a shockingly scandalous history. 📝

Ian Crouch contributed to today’s edition.