And a horrible thought grips me: since the civil service is going to get completely eliminated and replaced, the people who will be selecting all the new hires are the people who are being nominated to head those departments, now.

OTOH, I also find it hard to find a direct correlation between the dismantling of an advisory board to the FAA (that likely only meets once a quarter) and a couple of upper level firings/resignations to what happened. Advisory boards aren't in the towers directing traffic, nor are the bean-counter execs that usually find their way out the door when administrations change. The issues that led to this accident are likely much more 'ground level' than anything a politician directly has their hands into.

Concentration Camps, Offering to give Government workers a severance package so they\he can replace them with loyalists (we all know he has such a great history of paying people...), Freezing funding, tariffs, etc.  even if he sticks with them or rescinds these orders/proposals chaos has already been done and it's only week two now.  I hear rumblings of how we are repeating history with the USA being Rome or the Roaring 20s but it reeks of manufactured repeat history.  If that's the case well March 15th is almost here we'll get to see who's Caesar and who's Brutus.

I can only go by my own experience - the company I work for went through a long restructuring over the last two years with several waves of staff reductions (ie, firings). While I rode it out and am glad to have done so, there's no denying the overall vibe during that period gradually applied an increasing downward pressure on my work. You can't help it; it's human nature.