It has absolutely gotten worse under this administration. I watched friends lose their jobs when USAID was shuttered. Many were recalled to Washington on short notice and had no home to go to. Local staff, some with decades of tenure, were out of a job. Aid recipients have, and continue to, starve and die because food and medical aid (that American taxpayers already paid for!) was destroyed instead of distributed. Visas are harder to obtain, whether for tourism or residency.

Policies have changed, and not for the better. While policy changes are typical when changing administrations, the changes are usually much more subtle. Our foreign policy stance has become significantly more antagonistic.

And then we had that shutdown at the beginning of October. I was put in a terrible position of having to decide whether to have people come to work without pay or furlough them. I ultimately kept them working because Trump had threatened not to pay furloughed workers. Shortly before the shutdown ended, I was having to find creative solutions for some of my team to continue to afford to come to work and feed their families. Anyone who says things have improved under Trump in the foreign service is either lying or oblivious.