Trump appointees attacked government institutions themselves. In the winter of 2017, for example, most of the senior staff in the State Department either left or were fired. The State Department building in Washington became a ghost town. Where there had once been long lines to go through security on the way in, guards now waited around, idling between visitors. Inside, remaining staff struggled to understand what was going on: the programs they worked on were still funded—many of them, they assumed, only until a new budget went into effect—but they no longer had a line of communication to the
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