Nowrouzzadeh’s case is not unique; in a kind of revival of Nixon’s New Assignment Technique, hundreds of State Department employees have been banished to a bizarre form of bureaucratic purgatory. Last October, Tillerson’s office announced the launch of a “foia Surge,” a campaign to process a backlog of Freedom of Information Act requests, which would require three hundred and fifty State Department staffers. The work was rudimentary (“You could do it with smart interns,” one participant said), but the list of those assigned to it included prominent Ambassadors and specialized civil servants. They quickly discovered something in common: many had worked on issues of priority to the Obama Administration. Lawrence Bartlett had been one of the department’s top advocates for refugees. Ian Moss had worked to close the prison at Guantánamo Bay. (Bartlett and Moss declined to comment.) “It seemed designed to demoralize,” one participant said.

In Washington, the tactic of marooning civil servants in obscure assignments is known as sending them to the “turkey farm.” The turkey farms are reminiscent of the “rubber rooms” of New York City. Until the practice was banned, in 2010, the city’s Department of Education exiled hundreds of troublesome teachers to reassignment centers, where they idled, sometimes for years, reading newspapers and dozing. An Asia specialist assigned to the turkey farm likened the experience to a Japanese tradition in which unwanted workers are relegated to a “banishment room,” to encourage them to resign out of boredom and shame. Another turkey-farm inhabitant, who has held senior intelligence and national-security posts, told me that he joined the government during the Reagan Administration and never conceived of himself as an opponent of Trump. “I’m a Reagan holdover,” he said, shaking his head in bewilderment. “I sometimes don’t go in before ten, and then leave before five. You just float.” (Asked about the complaints, the spokesperson said that the State Department is “continuing to highly value career employees.”)

“It seems to be happening throughout the civil service,” Representative Adam Smith, of Washington, the top Democrat on the House Armed Services Committee, told me. “They’re taking out people, and I think that is undermining the over-all competency and capability of the government, irrespective of ideology.” In some cases, sidelined experts have found new posts at the Pentagon, where Secretary of Defense James Mattis has deflected White House attacks on public servants. “Mattis has done a remarkable job of being the exception to this rule,” Smith said.

Civil servants who think that they have been mistreated can appeal to a semi-judicial agency called the Merit Systems Protection Board. By law, though, the board needs two members to function, and one left just before Trump’s Inauguration, so for sixteen months it has issued no judgments. For a while, the staff continued to work—reading complaints, marking them with notes—assuming that a new hire would arrive soon. (Since 1979, the board had never been without a quorum for longer than a few weeks.) But, as complaints kept coming in, the staff was forced to store them, unresolved, in vacant rooms of the office, which occupies part of a commercial building in downtown Washington.

When I dropped by, Mark A. Robbins, the remaining board member, flipped on the lights in a storeroom. Cardboard cartons towered in sagging, listing piles. “As of last Friday, the backlog is eight hundred and ninety-six,” Robbins said. “We’re running out of space.”

Robbins is a lawyer with small round glasses, a shaved head, and an air of earnest perseverance. Despite his predicament, he has continued to read cases and recommend judgments, so that things will move faster when operations resume. In March, he got what appeared to be good news: the White House had nominated a new member. Then he discovered that the appointment was not to the empty post but to his post. As a result, all the work he has conducted since January, 2017, will be legally void. At first, he wondered if there had been a clerical error, but officials at the White House confirmed that there had not, offering no further explanation. “It is mind-boggling that everything I’ve been doing for a year and a half will be wiped off the map,” he told me.

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/05/21/trump-vs-the-deep-state

Libs still don't realize this is what we voted for.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=3985418&forum_id=2#36118636)