Federal bureaucrats might leave their jobs early out of fear that President-elect Donald Trump will follow through on his promise to purge the government of rogue and corrupt actors within the administrative state.
The potential abandonment would greatly help Trump’s incoming cabinet secretaries clean up Washington. Trump transition adviser Mark Paoletta asked members of the administrative state on Wednesday to “leave” the bureaucracy or “be fired.”
The term “administrative state” specifically describes the phenomenon of unaccountable and unelected administrative agencies, including the national security apparatus, exercising power to create and enforce their own rules. The administrative state uses its rule-making ability to essentially usurp the separation of powers between the three branches of government by creating a so-called fourth branch of government not formed by the Constitution.
Many unelected bureaucrats within the administrative state also use their position to inflict their own agenda on citizens. For instance, before the “laptop from hell” story broke in 2020, 51 intel officials signed a letter that insinuated Hunter’s laptop was Russian disinformation. The letter was peddled by Politico under the title “Hunter Biden story is Russian disinfo, dozens of former intel officials say.” The 51 signatories, however, seemingly knew the Politico story was false at the time because the FBI had the laptop that Hunter abandoned at a Delaware computer repair shop. President Joe Biden cited the story during a 2020 presidential debate with Trump to discredit the laptop’s contents. The story was reportedly planted by Secretary of State Antony Blinken for Biden to use during the event.
Some bureaucrats in the administrative state appear worried that Trump will replace them with employees who will perform the tasks assigned to them by Trump administration officials. They frame this angst as a concern over Trump politicizing their jobs. “I think there would probably be an exodus, because federal employees just want to do their jobs. They want to do the job according to law and regulation,” Jacqueline Simon, policy director of the American Federation of Government Employees, told the Hill. “They do not want to be political appointees. They don’t want politics to interfere with any aspect of their job”:
Republicans believe Democrats use nonpartisan agencies to push their agenda. “Progressives love to say ‘let’s keep politics out of this,’” Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT) posted on X. “What they really mean is ‘let’s make sure the people have no say in this’”:
Progressives say we should make legislative redistricting decisions non-political What that really means is that they don’t want voters—through their elected lawmakers—to be responsible for making those decisions … When you hear progressives—regardless of political party—suggesting that the core functions of policy making need to be insulated from “politics,” they’re really telling you that we, the American people, can’t be trusted to have any impact on such things … So when progressives tell you that, tell them to pound sand
Another way some bureaucrats are framing Trump’s campaign promise is to claim new employees will somehow manipulate data that contradict narratives set by the Biden-Harris administration.
“Pick up any edition of the Harvard Business Review, and they’ll talk about how decisionmakers need to look at issues from every possible angle, how they need to have the best unbiased information,” a current Biden administration appointee who deals with federal personnel matters told the Hill.
“And so if you’re going to make smart decisions, this is just the completely wrong direction to take. You want people to challenge your thinking. You want people to do the kind of research that will get you the best possible current information on a topic,” the official added. “And to just, with the stroke of a pen, dismiss all of that to make it easier to get your way is just incredibly wrongheaded.”
Before Trump left office in 2021, he signed an executive order (EO) to reclassify federal government employees into Schedule F, which would have allowed the president to enhance accountability and job performance within the bureaucratic agencies. “You have some people that are protected that shouldn’t be protected,” Trump said in April about Schedule F.
President Joe Biden canceled the order in 2021, but with Trump’s victory, he could reimplement the executive order and purge the unelected technocrats artificially running the federal government. “It would effectively upend the modern civil service, triggering a shock wave across the bureaucracy,” Axios previously concluded about the EO’s potential impact.
The potential EO has many bureaucrats concerned. Ronald Sanders, a Trump-appointed chair of the Federal Salary Council during the first Trump administration, resigned over Trump’s 2020 EO. “When I talked to folks in the first Trump administration, it became clear to me that they were really after political loyalty,” he told the Hill.
“If you put them in because they’re loyal to you and they’ll tell you what you want to hear … you’ve got an army of suck-ups. That’s not a good thing. You want civil servants to be able to speak truth to power and not have to fear for their jobs,” he added.
Wendell Husebo is a political reporter with Breitbart News and a former RNC War Room Analyst. He is the author of Politics of Slave Morality. Follow Wendell on “X” @WendellHusebø or on Truth Social @WendellHusebo.
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