Trump goes to war with the federal workforce
-
Cameron Joseph Staff writer
| Washington
President Donald Trump is moving swiftly to purge the federal government of people his team views as disloyal – while seeking retribution against former senior staffers his team believes weren’t loyal enough last time.
On Tuesday, Mr. Trump’s administration sent out an email that encouraged federal employees who aren’t “reliable, loyal, trustworthy” to resign their jobs – with the promise of pay through September if they do so immediately. Earlier, he moved to fire a dozen inspectors general, some career Justice Department staff members, and members of independent agencies like the National Labor Relations Board, moves that may have violated federal law. He’s taken steps to strip federal employees of job security protections they’ve long enjoyed. And he’s stripped security details and clearances from some high-profile former employees who have faced threats on their lives, in a move they view as retribution.
The moves are part of a systemwide push to remake the federal government with loyalists – even areas that have traditionally remained independent from the presidency or staffed with nonpartisan career civil servants that his team often derides as the “deep state.”
Why We Wrote This
In President Donald Trump’s early flurry of actions, his goal of shrinking the federal government may overlap with efforts at retribution against perceived enemies. The result is turmoil in the federal workforce.
The result has been a chaotic swirl of uncertainty and anxiety for federal workers. One Justice Department employee, who asked to remain anonymous, said the deluge of emailed memos and directives had a “bad guys taking over the Ministry of Magic in Harry Potter feel to it.”
And the chaos may be the point – a tool to demoralize career civil servants and convince them to resign, clearing a path for Mr. Trump to fill the government’s vast bureaucracy with staff members who hold his views in a way unseen in recent American history. And this may be just the beginning, as a number of Mr. Trump’s nominees are on the verge of winning Senate confirmation to take their posts atop the government’s various federal agencies.
These include Russell Vought, Mr. Trump’s nominee to head the Office of Management and Budget, who could get Senate approval as soon as this week. Mr. Vought, who served as OMB director at the end of Mr. Trump’s first term, laid out his disdain for federal workers in a 2024 speech that was obtained by ProPublica last October.
“We want the bureaucrats to be traumatically affected. When they wake up in the morning, we want them to not want to go to work because they are increasingly viewed as the villains,” said Mr. Vought. “We want to put them in trauma.”
It’s unclear which of these orders and moves will stand in the long term, and which may be thwarted by the courts. Multiple lawsuits have been filed already against many of Mr. Trump’s most sweeping executive orders, and some of the orders themselves are vague enough that they left those in charge of agencies scrambling to figure out what they meant.
Democratic Sen. Tim Kaine, whose home state of Virginia has a lot of federal workers, took to the Senate floor Tuesday night to warn government employees not to take the retirement deal offered – arguing that since Congress hasn’t authorized funds for buyouts, there’s no way for the government to legally pay that money for workers if they depart.
“The President has no authority to make that offer. There’s no budget line item to pay people who are not showing up for work,” he said. “If you accept that offer and resign, he’ll stiff you.”
Indeed, speculation quickly arose about whether the “deferred resignation” offer, extended by the Office of Personnel Management, actually includes a buyout. Those who take the deal won’t have to meet new return-to-office requirements. And an OPM webpage says that employees who take the offer will not be expected to work “except in rare cases determined by your agency” during the resignation period through the end of September.
While some of the orders may be vague, the actions Mr. Trump has taken aimed at undercutting agencies’ independence are harder to misinterpret.
On Friday night, Mr. Trump fired a dozen independent inspectors general, the watchdogs tasked with investigating their agencies to make sure the law and ethical guidelines are followed. That move seems to have violated a law requiring that he provide 30 days’ notice, and set off a rare murmur of dissent from Capitol Hill Republicans. Iowa Sen. Chuck Grassley, the chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee, joined his Democratic counterpart, Dick Durbin of Illinois, to send a letter warning the Trump administration that “the law must be followed” in regard to firing inspectors general.
The Trump administration also fired Justice Department officials who worked on criminal investigations of the president, including career prosecutors who served under both Democratic and Republican administrations. And acting U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia Ed Martin, a longtime conservative activist who helped organize the pro-Trump “Stop the Steal” movement after the 2020 election, launched an internal review of the office’s prosecutions related to the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol riot.
Mr. Trump is also seeking to remove Democrats from various independent commissions including the National Labor Relations Board and Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, another move that may violate the law.
As Mr. Trump’s administration has looked to purge the government of those his team sees as disloyal and to eliminate countless positions his team believes conflict with administration goals, he’s also taken steps to punish former administration officials from his first term who in his eyes didn’t show sufficient loyalty.
Mr. Trump stripped Secret Service protection from former senior government officials John Bolton, Mike Pompeo, Brian Hook, and Anthony Fauci, all of whom served during his first term, and all of whom face credible threats to their lives as a result of their work.
“There’s only one interpretation that makes any sense. It was political. And this is part of an effort at retribution,” Mr. Bolton told the Monitor on Monday.
On Tuesday, newly confirmed Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth stripped retired Gen. Mark Milley of his security detail and ordered an investigation into whether the former head of the Army could face demotion or even criminal charges for misconduct. General Milley served as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff under President Trump during his first term, and warned voters against returning him to power, calling him a “wannabe dictator” during the 2024 presidential campaign. He and Mr. Fauci were among the former government officials who worried about retaliation from Mr. Trump and who received blanket pardons from President Joe Biden shortly before he left office.
When it comes to possible investigations and prosecutions, Mr. Trump doesn’t seem ready to let bygones be bygones.
“I went through four years of hell, by this scum that we had to deal with,” Mr. Trump told Fox News host Sean Hannity last week, in his first sit-down interview as president. “I went through four years of hell. I spent millions of dollars in legal fees and I won. But I did it the hard way. It’s really hard to say they shouldn’t have to go through it also.”
Some former Trump officials worry the retribution campaign may just be gaining steam. Mr. Trump’s polarizing choice to head the Federal Bureau of Investigation, Kash Patel, will face his Senate confirmation hearing Thursday, and appears likely to win confirmation in the GOP-controlled Senate barring any new revelations. A fierce Trump loyalist, Mr. Patel has threatened to “come after” the media, has sued reporters over unflattering stories, and has long argued that the FBI was weaponized against Mr. Trump. His 2023 book, “Government Gangsters,” includes an appendix listing 60 alleged members of the “Executive Branch Deep State” – including a number of former Trump officials.
Charles Kupperman, a former deputy national security adviser to Mr. Trump, was senior to Mr. Patel at the National Security Council, and was included on Mr. Patel’s “Deep State” list. He says the Trump administration’s moves to strip former officials of their security details were “retribution and pure vindictiveness” – and worries they are just the beginning.
“I think he will try to weaponize the FBI” against perceived enemies, he says of Mr. Patel.
Editor's note: The spelling of Brian Hook's name was corrected on Jan. 30, the date of initial publication.
