Members of the Aviation Security Advisory Committee received a memo Tuesday saying that the department is eliminating the membership of all advisory committees as part of a “commitment to eliminating the misuse of resources and ensuring that DHS activities prioritize our national security.”

The aviation security committee, which was mandated by Congress after the 1988 PanAm 103 bombing over Lockerbie, Scotland, will technically continue to exist but it won’t have any members to carry out the work of examining safety issues at airlines and airports. Before Tuesday, the group included representatives of all the key groups in the industry — including the airlines and major unions — as well as members of a group associated with the victims of the PanAm 103 bombing. The vast majority of the group’s recommendations were adopted over the years.

It wasn’t immediately clear how many other committees were effectively eliminated Tuesday or whether other departments will take similar actions. A similar safety group advises the Federal Railroad Administration on new rules and safety issues in that industry.

“I naively thought, ‘oh they’re not going to do anything in the new administration, to put security at risk — aviation security at risk.’ But I’m not so sure,” said Stephanie Bernstein, whose husband was killed in the bombing and served on the committee.

The future of the committee remains unclear because DHS officials didn’t respond Tuesday to questions about the move. The memo that announced the terminations said that future committee activities will be focused on “advancing our critical mission to protect the homeland and support DHS’s strategic priorities” but the group has no members.

Federal workers and their advocates on Wednesday condemned the Trump administration’s attempt to encourage them to resign en masse, describing an unprecedented email from the government’s human resources department office as a ham-handed attempt to create hostility in their workplaces and offer a false promise of an easy transition out of government service.

On Tuesday, the US office of personnel management (OPM) sent nearly all of its 3 million employees an email offering them deferred resignations and warning that, if they choose to stay, they may be laid off or reassigned.