"Long before Congress failed to pass a funding bill, the Trump administration essentially started shutting down the government bit by bit, Gorman says. At NASA, entire offices have been shuttered, including her own at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland. She had been using data science to predict the cost of future NASA missions. Due to cuts proposed in Trump's budget request, she was reassigned to a new position working on a lunar communications project."
"Her first day was supposed to be Oct. 1 the same day the government shut down. Now, the shutdown has given her hope that some in Congress may be willing to assert their Constitutional authority over spending and push back against some of the sweeping cuts. "To see people in Congress taking a harder line, I feel like we're finally being heard now in a way that we weren't before," she says. "I'm done being afraid""
As the government shutdown enters its second week, hundreds of thousands of federal employees are not working and many are not receiving pay. The White House has questioned whether some employees will ever be made whole. Monica Gorman, a NASA data scientist and IFPTE member, experienced office closures at Goddard and a reassignment due to proposed budget cuts. Her reassignment was to begin Oct. 1, the day the shutdown began. The shutdown has energized federal workers, prompted hopes for congressional pushback on spending cuts, and driven organizing, outreach to reporters and meetings with members of Congress amid financial and emotional stress.
Read at www.npr.org
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