'Never seen this much secrecy': DC workers raise alarm over Trump leak crackdown

Longtime D.C. government workers are feeling a chill in the air as Donald Trump's administration is going to extreme lengths to not leave any paper trails as the new regime disrupts and revamps government operations.

According to a report from the Washington Post's Hannah Natanson, department heads and staffers are discouraged from writing anything down, are forced to sign non-disclosure agreements before seeing proposals, with communications have been "increasingly shifted to the encrypted messaging app Signal, with messages set to auto-delete."

Noting what is occurring during Trump's second term has all the hallmarks of a "a creeping culture of secrecy," one staffer who left their job stated, "What’s particularly weird for me is that, as a regulatory agency, we tend to operate with the idea that ‘if it’s not in writing, it didn’t happen.'"

According to the Post, "It’s not just career staffers who are clamming up, fearful they will be tagged as rebellious or resistant to Trump’s policies and dismissed amid the administration’s push to trim the workforce, fulfilling the president’s promise to eradicate waste, fraud and abuse. Trump’s own political appointees are also resistant to writing things down, worried that their agency’s deliberations will appear in news coverage and inspire a hunt for leakers, federal workers said."

“I’ve never seen this much secrecy and lack of transparency from any leadership, including in the military. We don’t know anything until it happens,” explained a 10-year veteran of the GSA.

Fear of the Trump administration's crackdown has also affected workers' personal lives.

"At the Department of Housing and Urban Development, workers in one office no longer use Microsoft Teams but instead talk through Signal to discuss anything personal or that could be read as criticism of the Trump administration, said a staffer there," the report states. " In part of the Justice Department, attorneys who are friends outside of work have shifted all their text message conversations to Signal, said a staffer there."

You can read more here.