The mass exodus of federal staffers has decimated U.S. emergency preparedness, undermined local law enforcement operations and pushed the country’s weather forecasting system to the brink of collapse, current and former federal authorities told National Press Foundation journalism fellows.

While the terminations have been a cornerstone of the Trump administration’s attempt to transform the federal bureaucracy and stated intention to reduce waste, officials warned that local American communities have been put at increased risk, compromising such key institutions as civil rights enforcement and disaster response.

Others agreed that the dismantling of key government institutions will have far-reaching implications, including Tom Fahy, legislative director for the National Weather Service Employees Organization; Erik Hooks, former deputy administrator of the Federal Emergency Management Agency; and Tim Quinn, former chief liaison for Customs and Border Protection (CBP) to state and local public safety agencies.

“One of the things I wasn’t expecting is that we were going to turn off our engagement with certain national law enforcement organizations that we have partnered with for years and partnered with during the first Trump administration,” Quinn said.

That partnership, Quinn said, allowed for the sharing of “critical law enforcement and security information.”

Quinn left his post at Customs and Border Protection earlier this year after the Department of Homeland Security banned further outreach to law enforcement groups, including the interaction with law enforcement groups that advocated for the interests of Black, Latino, Native American and women officers and executives.

At FEMA, the nation’s central conduit for emergency response, Hooks said one-third of the career workforce has departed in the past nine months, taking with them decades of experience.

“Now, every administration has changes and directives, but when you come into the executive branch and you have espoused things that were clearly not true, and then you have set about a mission of tearing down an agency, it is very, very difficult for those career professionals who are fully committed,” Hooks said.

The Trump administration has advocated for the elimination of FEMA, suggesting that the mission should be transferred to the states.

“What we have seen in the last nine months, and it’s no secret to you, is a slowness to respond,” Hooks said. “And when you don’t have a forward leaning posture when a hurricane or any other catastrophe is knocking on your door, that costs lives.”

The administration has attempted to “take apart” the National Weather Service and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), Fahy said, moving to privatize the weather service’s capacity for pulling forecast data from its satellite network, despite billions of dollars invested in its development.

“That’s the casualty on the technology side, but the casualty is also on the human side,” Fahy said, citing the thousands of employees laid off and others who’ve been told they can’t unionize due to national security – the subject of a current lawsuit.

For journalists, the need to interview former federal workers is apparent.

“The people down in Jackson who work at the Weather Forecast Office in eastern Kentucky, they’ve been muzzled,” Fahy said to a Kentucky journalist. “They’re not allowed to talk to the press. They’ve been told, anybody talks to the press, you’re fired. And those people at EPA and other agencies that have talked to the press, they were fired.”

Access the full transcript here.

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