Employees of the Homeland Security Department feared that the surge of enforcement in Minneapolis would lead to a loss of legitimacy.

Demonstrators at the Bishop Henry Whipple Federal Building in January in Minneapolis. Government lawyers have failed to respond in a timely manner to the pile of lawsuits and court orders stemming from the mass roundup of immigrants.

Travelers at Denver International Airport last week. On Monday afternoon, insufficient air traffic controller staffing caused arriving flights to be delayed about 40 minutes.

A Transportation Security Administration checkpoint at O’Hare International Airport in Chicago last week on the first day of the government shutdown.

Dr. Jeanne Marrazzo, former director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, testifying before the Senate last year.

The Department of Education in Washington on Tuesday. Employees are currently on furlough.

A government shutdown started at midnight on Wednesday.

Justice Department veterans see an overarching pattern in the dismissals — a quickening effort by the Trump administration to ignore and eventually demolish longstanding civil service legal precedents meant to keep politics out of law enforcement work.

“President Trump wants to eliminate the agency,” Kari Lake said, referring to her global media agency. “We need to eliminate this agency, find what’s salvageable and move it over to the Department of State.”

Bill Gates said that Elon Musk had gutted the U.S. Agency for International Development, resulting in the deaths of children in some of the world’s poorest countries.

Members of the American Federation of Government Employees union protesting budget cuts and layoffs near the Capitol in February. Probationary workers were the target of the first round of staff reductions.

The Trump administration is preparing budget cuts and further layoffs that could ultimately force the Internal Revenue Service to shed as much as 50 percent of its work force.

Days before a potential government shutdown, David Kirkley, the owner of Union Station Shoe Shine, was worried about the loss of walk-in business from federal workers heading to their jobs.