When Trump Attacks Your Work: 75 Grounding Moves to Stay Effective and Human

You can't serve from empty. But stepping away isn't an option. Strategic positioning for public servants trying to do good work under siege.

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The field reports are grim. They're also growing.

From across the country, stories are flooding in. In Charlotte, North Carolina, all eight staff members of a mobile vaccine program were laid off, ending school-based vaccination drives for children.

In Milwaukee, the entire CDC team responsible for lead testing in children was eliminated — just as the city was addressing a spike in lead poisoning among elementary students.

In New York, over 200 local organizations addressing food insecurity and mental health lost funding overnight, forcing immediate program shutdowns.

This is coordinated destruction. Trump is systematically collapsing capacity, fracturing trust, and punishing the infrastructure of care — with public servants across sectors working in federally-funded roles, public health, human services, education, and research trapped in the crossfire, forced to choose between their paychecks and their principles. In other words, your work is under attack.

This post offers a tactical response — 75 grounding moves you can implement without permission or a budget allocation, to protect your clarity, your values, and your ability to serve under siege.

If you've followed my previous work on Tiny Moves for everyday resistance (here and here), you'll recognize the approach here. But these grounding moves are more substantial and specific to the pressures facing people whose work depends on federal funding to help communities or serve vulnerable populations. Where Tiny Moves were designed for general resistance, these are tactical responses to the particular ways authoritarian aggression targets people in public service roles.

Understanding the Terrain

What you're experiencing follows a pattern — what I call the Authoritarian Harm Complex. This is how deliberate destabilization lands in the lives of people trying to serve the public good. Understanding these patterns helps you respond strategically rather than just react and survive day to day.

Authoritarians like Trump know exactly where to strike. They target specific areas:

1. Your work gets twisted beyond recognition (Vocational Harm)

2. You start calculating who's safe to talk to (Relational Harm)

3. You're pressured to stay silent about things that violate your ethics (Moral Harm)

4. Your body starts breaking down from sustained stress (Physical Harm)

5. The story you're told doesn't match what you see (Narrative Harm)

These five domains represent a few areas where harm hits hard and fast. But they're part of a larger pattern. The complete Authoritarian Harm Complex maps 12 domains and 30 distinct types of harm. For those ready for comprehensive navigation tools, I'm developing "Defiant Clarity: A Survival Guide for Purged Experts and Silenced Public Servants" — subscribe to stay updated on this expanded field manual.

If you're wondering which of these domains are affecting you most, I recently created a self-assessment to help you identify how authoritarian harm is showing up in your life. Doing the self-assessment helps you get unstuck by recognizing patterns you might not have connected before.

The 75 grounding moves below are organized around these five impact zones. They're designed to help you maintain your operational effectiveness and professional integrity while working inside systems under siege. Each move is something you can implement without permission — small acts of strategic positioning that build your capacity to stay human and keep serving, even when everything around you is designed to break that resolve.

Start with what calls to you. Try one move and see what shifts. Share what works with colleagues who understand your situation. The goal is building strategic range, versatility, and agility to stay professionally grounded and effective when the terrain is designed to destabilize public servants.

Let's start with where the assault hits first: your work itself. For public servants, this is where the betrayal cuts deepest — when the mission that brought you into service gets betrayed.

When the Job Stops Matching the Mission

(Vocational Harm)

This is often where the harm hits first. The mission that brought you into public service is being hollowed out in real time. Roles are being rewritten without warning. Programs that once served vulnerable communities are quietly ended or changed beyond recognition.

This is vocational harm: when your professional identity gets systematically dismantled, and your role becomes unrecognizable from what you were hired to do.

These grounding moves are designed to help you hold onto clarity, integrity, and agency in the face of that erosion. You don’t need permission to implement them — and you don’t need to have it all figured out. Just start with what you can hold today.

1. Reground in the Job You Originally Said Yes To

Revisit the job description or mission that brought you in. Highlight a sentence that still carries truth and keep it visible in your workspace.

2. Document Requests That Violate Professional Standards

Keep a private record of directives that contradict professional protocols or ethics. Include dates and specific language used.

3. Use a Delay Phrase When Values Are on the Line

Have a sentence ready for high-pressure asks: “I need a bit of time to review this carefully to make sure I understand it thoroughly.” It creates space for reflection without confrontation.

4. Reach Out to a Colleague You Trust

Check in with someone who might also feel the shifts. A single honest exchange can reestablish shared purpose.

5. Keep a Record of Work That Was Working

Document programs, initiatives, or grants that were producing results before being terminated (without violating regulations). This preserves institutional memory and validates your professional judgment. Keep these personal notes secure and separate from work systems.

6. Find One Small Space for Your Real Voice

Look for opportunities to adjust wording in reports, emails, or conversations to reflect your ethics, within whatever constraints you're operating under.

7. Sketch Out Three Threshold Scenarios

Make a personal outline: what would need to change for you to stay, shift roles, or leave. This brings structure to uncertainty.

8. Mark the Turning Point

Write down the specific moment your job stopped feeling like your job. Include the date and context. This becomes a reference point for future decisions.

9. Choose a Centering Phrase You Can Use During Compromise

Find a sentence that returns you to focus in moments of role distortion. Example: “I can still move with care.”

10. Start a Private Record of Decision Points

Create a document where you log difficult decisions and why you made them. This can serve as a reference for future alignment checks. Keep it at home, not on a work computer.

11. Talk to a Mentor Outside Your Org

Ask for their perspective on your current environment. Focus on what patterns they see that might not be obvious from inside.

12. Know Your Current Ethics Landscape

Review whatever ethics policies or protected disclosure frameworks your organization still maintains. Understand both what's available and what's been stripped away.

13. Keep Personal Copies of Official Messages Before They Change

Save non-sensitive institutional communications like policy updates, staff announcements, or public guidance to your personal files. These routine messages often get revised or deleted, and having the original language can be valuable later for understanding what was promised or required.

14. Set a Micro-Boundary Around Language

Pick one term or phrase you will continue to use in your work, even if others are avoiding it. Let that word stand for a value.

15. Create a Private Folder That Reflects Your Real Commitments

Save quotes, examples, or language that reflect the work you believe in. Keep this personal collection secure and separate from work systems.

Vocational harm creates a domino effect — and relationships are often next to fall.

When Trust Frays and Colleagues Become Strangers

(Relational Harm)

Vocational harm rarely stays contained — it spreads into the relationships that used to sustain your work. Team dynamics grow tense. Colleagues who once collaborated openly now calculate what's safe to say. The informal networks that helped you navigate challenges start to dissolve as people retreat into protective silence.

What once felt like shared purpose becomes a collection of individuals trying not to get caught in the crossfire. When fear shapes workplace culture, even trusted relationships become survival calculations. These moves help you find connection and rebuild trust, even when the environment is designed to isolate you.

1. Decide Which Conversations You Won’t Engage

Choose specific topics you'll decline to discuss at work, even when pressed. Have a polite deflection ready: “I don't have thoughts to share on that right now.”

2. Set Limits on Emotional Labor for Colleagues

Stop being the person others vent to about workplace problems if those conversations leave you depleted without helping anyone.

3. Research Your Organization's Conflict Resolution Procedures

Understand the official pathways for addressing workplace issues, even if you don't plan to use them. Knowing what exists helps you assess your options.

4. Practice Strategic Silence in Group Settings - Choose moments to stay quiet rather than filling awkward pauses or offering opinions when trust is compromised. Let others reveal their positions first while you assess the room.

5. Use Precise Language About Workplace Changes

Instead of euphemisms, use clear terms when discussing policy changes or staff departures. Say “after the layoffs” rather than “during the transition.”

6. Map Your Trust Landscape Before and After

Write down which colleagues you could speak openly with a year ago versus today. Notice the pattern of who pulled back and when.

7. Create Private Communication Channels

Establish secure ways to communicate with trusted colleagues that don't go through official workplace platforms or email systems. Assume everything you say on a work platform or email could be used against you someday.

8. Notice When Conversations Become Interrogations

Pay attention to colleagues who start asking probing questions about your views, especially in group settings. When you sense you're being tested rather than consulted, shift to listening mode and asking questions back. Document the conversation in a private place or device.

9. Understand Your Documentation Rights

Learn what kinds of workplace interactions you're legally allowed to document, and what protections exist if you raise concerns.

10. Name What Professional Support Actually Looks Like Now

Write a realistic description of what trust or collaboration can look like under current conditions. This helps update expectations.

11. Identify Which Meetings Still Feel Safe for Honest Input

Make a mental list of which team meetings, one-on-ones, or informal gatherings still allow for authentic professional discussion versus those that have become performance spaces.

12. Schedule Coffee Meetings Away From the Office

Meet with trusted colleagues outside your workplace when possible. Different environments can enable different kinds of conversations and reduce surveillance concerns.

13. Acknowledge Colleagues Who Take Professional Risks

When someone speaks up or holds the line under pressure, recognize it directly — either privately or in front of others if appropriate.

14. Practice Active Listening Without Offering Solutions

When colleagues share difficulties, focus on understanding rather than immediately suggesting fixes. Sometimes connection comes from being witnessed.

15. Create Buffer Time Before and After Team Meetings

Add transition time to your calendar so you're not moving immediately into or out of difficult meetings. Use those few minutes for something that brings you back to focus — deep breathing, stepping outside, or reviewing your priorities.

As relationships are strained, the pressure to compromise your values often intensifies.

When Doing What’s Right Becomes Dangerous

(Moral Harm)

You're being asked to carry out decisions that violate the purpose that once gave your work meaning. Maybe you're asked to implement policies that harm the people you entered public service to help. Maybe you're staying silent while colleagues get purged for doing their jobs well. Maybe you're signing off on decisions that violate everything you were trained to uphold. The message is unmistakable: choose between your paycheck or your principles.

This is moral harm — when the system forces you to betray your professional standards to survive within it. You carry guilt for actions you're compelled to take and shame for harms you couldn't prevent. There's no safe place to voice your concerns, no clear path to act with integrity.

These grounding moves won't eliminate the impossible choices you're facing, but they can help you navigate moral pressure while protecting what's still possible to preserve. They're about finding ways to hold onto your ethical center when the ground beneath it is shifting.

1. Write Down Your Bright Lines

List the specific actions you absolutely will not take, even if threatened with termination. Be concrete: "I will not falsify data" rather than "I won't do anything unethical."

2. Notice When Guilt Becomes a Management Tool

Pay attention to supervisors who use shame or moral pressure to secure compliance. Recognizing manipulation helps you respond strategically rather than emotionally.

3. Stop Attending Optional Meetings That Compromise Your Values

Skip non-mandatory gatherings where you're expected to celebrate policies that cause harm or nod along to rhetoric you oppose.

4. Practice Asking "What Would You Do?" Instead of Giving Advice

When colleagues share ethical dilemmas, resist offering solutions and instead ask how they're thinking through their options. This protects you from appearing to encourage resistance.

5. Understand the Difference Between Legal and Ethical Requirements

Know which directives are legally mandated versus organizationally preferred. Sometimes you have more room to resist than you realize.

6. Use Qualifying Language When Forced to Communicate Harmful Policies

Add phrases like "per the directive" or "as required by policy" when sharing information you believe is misleading or harmful.

7. Keep Evidence of Your Professional Competence

Save examples of work that demonstrates your skills and ethical judgment. Separate from current organizational dysfunction.

8. Identify What You're Carrying That Isn't Yours

Write down feelings of guilt or shame you've absorbed for institutional failures you didn't create. Distinguish between personal responsibility and systemic blame.

9. Create a Mental Separation Between Role and Self

Develop language that distinguishes between actions you take as an employee versus choices you make as a person. Example: "My role requires this, but I personally disagree."

10. Limit How Much You Explain Your Hesitation

When you express concern about a directive, don't over-justify your position. State your concern once and stop. Extended explanations can be used against you.

11. Create Code Language for Dangerous Topics

Develop subtle ways to communicate concerns with trusted colleagues without using words that could trigger retaliation if overheard.

12. Document Pressure to Violate Professional Standards

Keep private records of requests that contradict established protocols, licensing requirements, or professional codes of conduct.

13. Ask Clarifying Questions That Expose Problems

When presented with questionable directives, ask innocent-sounding questions that highlight ethical concerns: "How does this align with our professional standards?" Avoid tone that suggests attitude, be neutral.

14. Plan Your Exit Strategy Without Committing to It

Outline what it would take to leave — financially, professionally, practically — so you're prepared if your bright lines get crossed.

15. Refuse to Volunteer for Ethically Questionable Assignments

When harmful tasks are presented as optional, don't raise your hand. Let others volunteer or let supervisors assign them directly.

Protecting your conscience under authoritarian pressure is how you preserve your capacity to serve when better days return.

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When Your Body Keeps the Score of Institutional Betrayal

(Physical and Somatic Harm)

Moral injury and relational strains move into your body. The chronic stress of hostile workplaces, constant job insecurity, and absorbing harm from multiple directions creates physical symptoms:

• Your shoulders carry tension that won't release

• Your stomach churns during meetings

• Sleep becomes elusive and doesn't restore you

• Headaches, digestive issues, chronic fatigue, and mysterious aches become normal

This is somatic harm — when assault on public service settles into your nervous system and muscles. Your body is processing trauma from vocational distortion, fractured relationships, moral compromise, and systemic instability all at once. These grounding moves focus on working with your body's responses rather than ignoring them while you navigate systems designed to break you down.

1. Identify Your Body's Early Warning Signals

Learn to recognize the first physical signs that you're approaching overwhelm — jaw clenching, shallow breathing, stomach knots — so you can respond before hitting crisis.

2. Build Physical Resilience for Long-Term Sustainability

Invest in practices that strengthen your body's capacity to handle ongoing stress — whether that's regular exercise, better sleep hygiene, or stress-reduction techniques.

3. Map Where Stress Lives in Your Body Right Now

Notice which parts of your body feel tight, painful, or numb. Write down what you observe without trying to fix it. This creates awareness of your physical baseline.

4. Share Physical Coping Strategies with Trusted Colleagues

Exchange practical tips for managing workplace stress — breathing techniques, desk stretches, or brief walking routes — with people who understand the pressure you're under.

5. Take Sick Leave When You're Actually Sick

Don't work through illness because you feel guilty about the impact on understaffed teams. Your health matters, and working while sick often prolongs recovery.

6. Research Healthcare Providers Who Understand Workplace Trauma

Find therapists, doctors, or other practitioners — whether local or virtual — who recognize that toxic work environments create real physical and mental health consequences.

7. Create a Physical Transition Ritual for Work

Develop a brief routine that marks the beginning and end of your workday — changing clothes, washing hands, taking three deep breaths, or stepping outside — to help your body shift between work and personal contexts, whether you're commuting or working from home.

8. Honor Your Body's Signals Instead of Pushing Through

When your body says stop — through fatigue, pain, or illness — respect that message instead of forcing yourself to maintain unsustainable productivity.

9. Speak Honestly About Physical Impact of Workplace Stress

When appropriate, acknowledge to supervisors or colleagues that workplace conditions are affecting your health, without necessarily detailing specific symptoms.

10. Find Someone Who Understands Body-Based Stress

Connect with a colleague, friend, or healthcare provider who recognizes that workplace trauma creates physical symptoms and won't dismiss your experiences.

11. Practice Saying "My Body Needs a Break" Without Shame

Give yourself permission to acknowledge physical limits as legitimate workplace needs, not personal failures.

12. Protect Your Meal Breaks as Physical Recovery Time

Use at least part of your meal break to step away from your desk, get outside if possible, or do something that helps your nervous system decompress.

13. Learn About Employee Assistance Programs for Health Support

Research what mental health, stress management, or wellness resources your organization or union provides, even if they're limited.

14. Practice the 5-4-3-2-1 Grounding Technique During Overwhelm

Name 5 things you can see, 4 you can touch, 3 you can hear, 2 you can smell, 1 you can taste. This interrupts panic and returns you to your body.

15. Create a Post-Work Physical Recovery Routine

Develop consistent practices that help your body decompress after difficult workdays — hot baths, gentle stretching, listening to music, or other activities that signal safety to your nervous system.

Your body's responses to institutional betrayal are information, not weakness—listen to what it's telling you about the need for change.

When Truth Becomes a Moving Target

(Narrative and Epistemic Harm)

There’s another common assault — on your ability to make sense of what's happening. The language you once trusted has been weaponized. Terms like "equity," "evidence-based," or "public health" become dangerous to use. You find yourself translating thoughts into acceptable phrases, spending energy on linguistic survival rather than clear communication.

This is narrative harm — when shared language gets deliberately distorted. Budget cuts become "efficiency measures," layoffs become "restructuring," harmful policies become "necessary transitions." The gap between official explanations and what you observe becomes so wide you start questioning your own perceptions. These grounding moves help you maintain clarity about what's actually happening while navigating environments where truth has become a liability.

1. Learn to Recognize Gaslighting Techniques

Educate yourself about common manipulation tactics like reality distortion, history revision, and manufactured confusion so you can spot them in real time.

2. Write Down What You Know to Be True, Independent of Official Narratives

Create a private record of facts you've witnessed directly, separate from how they're being explained or justified by leadership.

3. Research How Other Organizations Describe Similar Situations

Look at how comparable institutions or professional associations are framing issues your workplace is handling differently. This provides perspective on what's standard versus what's distorted.

4. Notice When You Start Doubting Your Own Perceptions

Pay attention to moments when you question what you've seen or experienced. This awareness helps you distinguish between reasonable uncertainty and manufactured confusion.

5. Limit Time Spent Consuming Confusing Institutional Communications

Set boundaries around how much time you spend trying to decode contradictory or manipulative messaging from leadership.

6. Ask for Written Clarification of Vague Directives

When given unclear instructions, request specific details in writing. This forces clarity and creates documentation of what you were actually told to do.

7. Validate Others' Confusion Instead of Trying to Solve It

When colleagues express bewilderment about contradictory messages, acknowledge that confusion as reasonable rather than rushing to find explanations.

8. Practice Asking "Help Me Understand What That Means"

When confronted with confusing language or explanations, ask for clarification in a way that exposes vagueness without seeming confrontational.

9. Refuse to Engage With Obviously Circular Logic

When presented with explanations that contradict themselves or loop back without making sense, don't waste energy trying to follow the reasoning. Simply note what you're being asked to do.

10. Develop Skills in Information Literacy and Critical Analysis

Strengthen your ability to evaluate sources, identify bias, and distinguish between reliable and unreliable information for use in future roles.

11. Create a Timeline of When Language Started Changing

Mark when specific terms became dangerous to use or when familiar concepts got redefined. This helps you see the progression of narrative manipulation rather than accepting it as normal.

12. Gently Correct Factual Errors When You Can Do So Safely

If someone repeats misinformation that you know to be false, offer accurate information in a low-key way: "I think the actual number was different."

13. Practice the Phrase "That Doesn't Match My Experience"

Use this response when confronted with narratives that contradict what you've observed. It asserts your reality without attacking others' claims.

14. Stop Trying to Make Nonsensical Directives Make Sense

When given instructions that seem designed to confuse rather than clarify, focus on identifying what you're actually required to do rather than understanding the reasoning.

15. Maintain Your Professional Vocabulary for Future Use

Continue using accurate, technical language in private notes and trusted conversations so you don't lose fluency in precise communication.

Preserving your ability to think clearly isn't just personal survival — it's protecting the capacity for truth-telling that democracy requires.

Moving Forward Together

You can't serve from empty, but stepping away isn't an option — that impossible bind is exactly why strategic grounding matters. These 75 moves aren't wellness tips or productivity hacks. They're tactical responses to coordinated assault, designed to help you maintain effectiveness and integrity while working inside systems under siege. Each move represents a small act of strategic positioning, a way to stay strong when everything around you is designed to break your resolve.

These moves cover five critical domains where authoritarian harm lands hardest, but they represent only a portion of the full terrain. The complete Authoritarian Harm Complex framework maps 12 domains and 30 distinct types of harm that public servants are navigating right now.

For those ready to go deeper, I'm developing "Defiant Clarity: A Survival Guide for Purged Experts and Silenced Public Servants"—a comprehensive field manual that includes grounding moves for all 12 domains, plus additional tools for navigating professional exile and moral injury under authoritarian pressure.

Subscribe to stay updated on when this expanded toolkit becomes available.

Start with one move. Try it for a week. Share what works with others who understand the pressure you're under. Your grounding serves more than your own survival — it preserves the capacity to rebuild democracy and civic infrastructure. Step by step, move by move, we're maintaining our humanity, staying strategic, and preparing for what comes next.

In solidarity,

Paul

Remember: Stay human. Stay strategic. Shape tomorrow.

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Appendix: The Authoritarian Harm Complex

Your experience matters, even if it's not making headlines. The Authoritarian Harm Complex (detailed in the text box) is my term for the layered, cumulative effects of deliberate authoritarian assault and disruption — targeting not just systems and programs, but also our personal sense of meaning, safety, connection, health, and agency.

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How Is Authoritarian Harm Landing in Your Life?

Try this self-assessment:

What Have You Been Carrying? A Self-Assessment for Navigating Authoritarian Harm

Your overwhelm isn't personal failure — it's a natural response to engineered chaos. This assessment helps you get unstuck and start strategizing.

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***From Progressive Strategy Now, a publication of Paul T Shattuck LLC. The views expressed here reflect my personal analysis as a researcher and consultant, and do not represent the positions of any employer, clients, or affiliated organizations.