The most challenging day in decades for air traffic controllersgolden palasyo, safety inspectors and other Federal Aviation Administration employees started with profound questions about a deadly crash the night before — and ended with an email urging them to resign from their jobs.

The email, sent from President Trump’s Office of Personnel Management to employees across the sprawling federal government, arrived just before 8:30 p.m. Thursday — almost exactly 24 hours after an air crash in Washington that killed 67 people. The message reiterated an offer earlier this week from the administration encouraging federal employees to seek new jobs in the private sector — and did so in terms that appeared to denigrate their contributions, if not cast them as lazy.

“The way to greater American prosperity is encouraging people to move from lower productivity jobs in the public sector to higher productivity jobs in the private sector,” stated the email, which was reviewed by The New York Times.

From the Department of Homeland Security to the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, the message was regarded by many federal employees as an astonishingly tone-deaf missive to deliver in the midst of a crisis. Workers from the Commerce Department to the Army Corps of Engineers described the email as the latest assault on one of the nation’s largest workforces from an administration scrambling for ways to deliver major spending cuts.

Among national universities, Princeton was ranked No. 1 again,22win register followed by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Harvard. Stanford, which tied for third last year, fell to No. 4. U.S. News again judged Williams College the best among national liberal arts colleges. Spelman College was declared the country’s top historically Black institution.

“There are so many public servants working in government because they want to serve the public — that is what motivates them,” said Max Stier, the president of the Partnership for Public Service, a nonprofit group that promotes best practices in government. “This series of hammer blows that federal employees have experienced has created fear and disorientation and distraction, and shows the administration has not read the room at all.”

Two White House spokesmen and a spokeswoman for the Office of Personnel Management did not respond to requests for comment.

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