In some methods, final evening’s Sammie awards—also called the Oscars for federal staff—proceeded simply as they do yearly. In a packed auditorium a number of blocks from the White Home, authorities luminaries handed out medals to among the nation’s most gifted civil servants, recognizing groundbreaking analysis, main enhancements in customer support, and top-notch stewardship of taxpayer cash.
The ceremony, nevertheless, was uncommon in a single respect: Hardly any of the honorees took the stage to just accept their awards. As an alternative, they stayed at their seats, away from the cameras. Public recognition of their good work in Donald Trump’s authorities, organizers feared, may price them their jobs.
Such is the local weather of worry that has pervaded the federal workforce through the second Trump administration, which has moved to close down complete companies, shrink the federal government by mass layoffs and inducements to give up, and crack down on dissent. The Partnership for Public Service, the nonprofit that awards the Sammies, was decided to carry the ceremony, nevertheless it didn’t need to put its honorees in extra jeopardy. “The sensitivity is actual,” Max Stier, the partnership’s CEO, advised me. “We didn’t need to see them harmed in any approach for being acknowledged for his or her work.” At the very least one federal worker who organizers needed to honor was advised by supervisors to not settle for the award, Stier mentioned. He known as the administration’s assault on the civil service “a five-alarm fireplace.”
Previous Sammie ceremonies—the awards’ full identify is the Samuel J. Heyman Service to America Medals—have hardly been controversial. Administrations of each events have participated within the black-tie occasion since its debut in 2002, sending Cupboard secretaries and different high-ranking officers to function presenters and laud the achievements of their underlings. TV-news stars together with CBS’s John Dickerson and PBS’s Judy Woodruff have taken turns as emcees. (The choice committee this yr included Nicholas Thompson, CEO of The Atlantic.) The night is the one evening a yr when largely unheralded public servants are feted.
For a few years, the nonprofit partnership operated contained in the Washington institution. It has remained studiously nonpartisan and labored carefully with each presidential transition since George W. Bush, together with, initially, the primary Trump marketing campaign. However the escalation of Trump’s assaults on federal staff has compelled the partnership to take up a put up, considerably uncomfortably, within the opposition. Stier has fought the president’s efforts to transform 1000’s of nonpartisan civil servants into political appointees, a shift that he says would revive the discredited “spoils system” of Nineteenth-century America. In flip, Trump allies have labeled Stier “a Democrat activist” due to his previous work as a lawyer within the Clinton administration. He was additionally on Invoice Clinton’s protection crew when the president was impeached over his affair with Monica Lewinsky, then a White Home intern.
The primary Trump administration took half within the Sammies, however Stier mentioned the partnership didn’t attain out this time round. “All of the indicators have been that they have been undermining excellence” somewhat than recognizing or honoring it, he mentioned. “Due to this fact we didn’t consider we may try this.” Because of this, the occasion felt at instances like a reunion of a authorities in exile. Though the ceremony did embrace a taped look by a former George W. Bush chief of workers, Joshua Bolten, former Democratic officers have been overrepresented. At one level, a former Barack Obama chief of workers, Denis McDonough, spoke alongside Jeff Zients, who was Joe Biden’s most up-to-date chief of workers. At one other, certainly one of Obama’s Treasury secretaries, Timothy Geithner, appeared with Biden’s, Janet Yellen.
The Sammies normally happen in September, with a smaller occasion within the spring to announce finalists. However Stier determined to maneuver up the celebration this yr. He wasn’t certain how lots of the honorees would nonetheless be working for the federal authorities in September. “We want the general public to know that that is pressing,” Stier mentioned. “We can not function underneath the identical timeline, as a result of the destruction is going on so shortly.”
To protect towards reprisal, the honorees sat within the viewers and stood when their names have been known as, somewhat than showing onstage to speak about their work in acceptance speeches. (The ceremony will air on some PBS stations subsequent month.) The partnership appeared torn between recognizing the recipients publicly—none of their identities have been hidden—and defending them from any punishment if officers within the Trump administration objected to their remarks or believed they have been making a political assertion by standing in a literal highlight. Though the partnership has historically been wanting to make honorees accessible for interviews, a spokesperson this yr mentioned some have been reluctant to talk publicly “given the present surroundings.”
I did discuss with Dr. Laura Cheever, who obtained a Sammie for her a long time of labor managing federal applications combatting and treating HIV/AIDS. She retired in December—it was “long-planned,” she advised me. She was now freer to talk, however she mentioned she might need been in danger had she stayed, as a result of she had signed a letter stating that recipients of federal HIV/AIDS cash ought to have the ability to present gender-affirming care to their purchasers—a place at odds with the Trump administration’s strikes to dam transgender-health companies.
Cheever advised me she thought the partnership’s efforts to defend its honorees from retaliation have been crucial. Inside the federal government, she mentioned, “individuals are working aggressively to not name consideration to themselves or the work that they’re doing. They’re simply making an attempt to do their work.”
This yr’s awards honored achievements throughout a large swath of the federal government, many in areas focused by DOGE or threatened by cuts Trump has proposed to Congress. An worker with the all-but-defunct USAID, Kathleen Kirsch, was acknowledged for main efforts to assist Ukraine rebuild its vitality infrastructure after assaults by Russia. The IRS’s Maya Bretzius obtained a medal for decreasing wait instances within the company’s name middle. “Thanks, Maya, for making calls to the IRS rather less, let’s say, taxing,” McDonough joked in his speech. Others received awards for speedily chopping checks for COVID-era aid through the first Trump administration in addition to for recovering fraudulent funds.
Trump’s identify was not uttered through the hour-long program. However earlier than and after the ceremony, the pall forged by his cuts to the workforce dominated. Attendees commiserated over the intrusions of DOGE and a job market abruptly filled with fired federal staff or these searching for a approach out of the federal government. One attendee described a “heaviness” in his Virginia neighborhood, a suburb populated by federal staff who both had misplaced their jobs or feared shedding them. A most cancers scientist advised me about analysis he had labored on for many years that was now susceptible to shedding funding. “There’s simply type of a miasma of concern that overrides all the pieces else,” Cheever mentioned, describing morale amongst her mates who’re nonetheless within the authorities. “It’s like strolling on eggshells on a regular basis, which is simply not a really comfy place to be.”
One Sammie honoree did take the stage final evening—the federal worker of the yr, Dave Lebryk. However his award, too, carried reminders of a civil service underneath siege. Lebryk was acknowledged for his a few years because the Treasury Division official chargeable for the federal government’s cost system. Beneath each Republican and Democratic administrations, he oversaw trillions of {dollars} in annual disbursements—together with the common checks that go to Social Safety recipients and veterans—whereas sustaining the safety of a system that comprises confidential data for thousands and thousands of People. Lebryk has even seen the gold at Fort Knox. “It actually does exist. It’s there,” he quipped throughout his speech.
However in late January, he ended his 35-year profession in authorities, resigning somewhat than hand over entry to Treasury’s delicate cost system to Elon Musk’s lieutenants at DOGE. That act of resistance helped to elucidate his Sammie medal, in addition to his willingness to publicly settle for it: The federal worker of the yr is, in reality, not a federal worker.
