'Behind closed doors': Inside the secret group of government workers fighting Trump

26 February

man in black crew neck shirt

A secret group of government workers calling themselves #AltGov is trying to fight the Trump administration from within, the Guardian reported Wednesday.

The network is aiming to “expose harmful policies, defend public institutions and equip citizens with tools to push back against authoritarianism,” Lynn Stahl, a contractor for the Department of Veterans Affairs and member of the group, told the Guardian.

The workers have created 40 Bluesky accounts such as Rogue NASA and Alt DHS aiming to share information with the public and combat propaganda. “Promoting health and science and resistance against pseudoscience, disinformation, and fascism,” reads the bio for Alt Health and Human Services. Alt CDC (they/them) is the largest account with 96,000 followers.

“#AltGov dates from the firstTrump administration, but it’s even more needed now,” said an anonymous employee of the Federal Emergency Management Agency. She recently created an #AltGov FEMA account.

When the workers got the news that Elon Musk would be asking federal employees to list five things they did the week before, they met on an encrypted app to discuss next steps.

“Within hours the network had agreed on a recommended response: break up the oath federal employees take when hired into five bullet points and send them back in an email: ‘1. I supported and defended the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic.’ ‘2. I bore true faith and allegiance to the same,’ and so on,” writes journalist Timothy Pratt.

“Every federal employee takes an oath,” the FEMA employee said. “When I did it, I teared up.” She decided to take part in the movement because “information [from the federal government] is so compromised right now. Everything is going on behind closed doors.”

The #AltGov movement began on Twitter during the first Trump administration. The original accounts worked on “sharing information about what was happening inside government – which usually doesn’t get covered as much, because it usually works,” said journalist Amanda Sturgill, author ofWe Are #AltGov: Social Media Resistance From the Inside.

She said they worked together to “provide services the government wasn’t providing,” such as organizing relief for people affected by hurricanes and distributing masks to help protect people from Covid.

The first iteration of #AltGov was “interesting … [because] it kind of stood up a different way of governing by putting it in direct contact with people – a ‘government with the people’. Whether this [version] can take it further depends on how much of the government is left,” Sturgill said.

The group has since moved from X, which is owned by Musk, to Bluesky. “It’s not safe to organize [on X] anymore,” Stahl said.

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