By David Malcom
Well, that’s a wrap. Today, I resigned as the acting Deputy Assistant Secretary for Policy and Environmental Management — and my permanent position as the Director of the Office of Policy Analysis — at the Department of the Interior.
I wasn’t faced with an order like the prosecutors in New York who resigned rather than drop charges in a well-founded corruption case. I wasn’t fired like the civil servants who have tried to stop illegal or inappropriate access to systems and data that are being used for illegal and unconstitutional actions. Or the likely hundreds of other valiant decisions that federal career staff are making these days. Kudos to them for their integrity.
Given all the bad things happening — too many to list here — for me the final straw might seem small: I had to contribute to terminations of federal employees who happened to be in their probationary periods. This was directed under the guise of “poor performance” or “skills not aligned with the Department’s needs” for these individuals.
That’s a lie. It wasn’t supported by facts or evidence, and in some cases I know darn well that the opposite was true: these were people whose skills are exactly what is needed and had been performing excellently. All I could do was to note in the record the lack of evidence to support this decision, which I hope is enough for these actions to be overturned.
But I realized there was one more thing I could do. I didn’t have the authorities needed to change decisions, but every hour I worked for Interior and the nation was an hour making it easier for the administration to do their damage. So I’ve taken that away.
And here we are. I really loved working for Interior, serving people across the country. Tens of thousands, maybe hundreds of thousands of other civil servants were dedicated to serving others but were fired without cause. We don’t yet know how many others will be lost in the continuing assault.
They were let go from jobs that were helping people in the face of wildfires and other disasters. Helping serve Native Americans in schools and beyond. Helping get money to local communities for energy, for infrastructure, for ecosystem restoration, for international development. Helping save threatened and endangered species from extinction. Funding for fundamental and applied sciences that make people’s lives better, for programs that use that knowledge to help people. So many things and so many people are being and will be hurt. Things that too many people take for granted.
I’ll do more posts in the coming days and weeks to celebrate everything our nation’s civil servants do for the country. For now, please give thanks and support to any federal staff and those recently terminated whom you know. They all care a great deal for our nation.
This was originally posted by Jacob Malcom on Feb. 18, 2025. Bald eagle photo courtesy of the National Park Service.