Trump’s better-known adversaries were expecting payback, but more intense vengeance is being felt by civil servants

Federal government workers have been left “shell-shocked” by the upheaval wreaked by Donald Trump’s return to the presidency amid signs that he is bent on exacting revenge on a bureaucracy he considers to be a “deep state” that previously thwarted and persecuted him.

Since being restored to the White House on 20 January, the president has gone on a revenge spree against high-profile figures who previously served him but earned his enmity by slighting or criticising him in public.

President’s move has convulsed Washington in a manner arguably unseen since the Saturday Night Massacre of 1973

For its potential to provoke a constitutional crisis, Donald Trump’s attempted freezing of trillions of dollars of federal funds – rescinded on Wednesday in what appeared to be a panicked retreat in the face of an angry backlash – evoked the darkest days of Watergate.

Monday’s memo from the White House office of management and budget (OMB) ordering a “temporary pause” on a vast array of spending activities across the US federal government convulsed official Washington in a manner arguably unseen since the Saturday Night Massacre of 1973.