Donald Trump’s Hateful Attack on US Government Workers Will Be Cheered by America’s Enemies

There are many reasons to be worried about the implications of Trump’s re-election, but one of the most chilling of these concerns his administration’s vilification of government officials. 

A classic example is the comments made this week by Russell Vought, one of the authors of the Heritage Foundation’s notorious Project 2025, who Trump has just nominated to head the Office of Management and Budget. In an interview with Tucker Carlson posted on X he said “we have to solve the woke and the weaponised bureaucracy and have the President take control of the executive branch.” 

He has previously been recorded as saying, “We want the bureaucrats to be traumatically affected. We want them to wake up and not want to go to work. We want their funding to be shut down. We want to put them in trauma.”  

On X, Elon Musk has targeted for criticism not just specific government agencies, but even individual federal employees by name, prompting a deluge of cyber bullying towards them from his army of online followers.  

This is part of a pattern of wider disdain for public officials which Trump has encouraged. Trump and his backers have for years derided federal employees as being part of a so-called “deep state”, determined to thwart his agenda. Now, he has vowed again to “drain the swamp.” 

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There are two main ways in which he may be able to carry out this plan.  

The first route is through reinstating an executive order which he issued at the tail end of his first term, which created a new category of political appointees, called Schedule F. His plan was to move into this category an unknown number of career civil servants, but estimated by some to run potentially into the tens of thousands, making it easier to fire them and replace them with loyalists. The rule was rescinded under Biden, and a new rule was introduced by the Office of Personnel Management making it harder to convert career positions into political appointees who can be fired at will. But, there is little doubt that Trump will try to revive the order.  

The second route is via implementing recommendations of the new Department of Government Efficiency – DOGE, for short – to which Trump has appointed Tesla CEO and X owner, Elon Musk, and business entrepreneur, Vivek Ramaswamy, as leaders.  They wrote in an recent opinion piece in the Wall Street Journal that they aim to identify and eliminate wasteful government spending and reduce head count at, or even eliminate altogether, entire federal agencies. This could lead to hundreds of thousands of government employees losing their jobs.  

Musk and Ramaswamy have also floated the legally dubious notion that government officials are exceeding their mandates when they implement government regulations, and that this therefore justifies a reduction in staff. “DOGE intends to work with embedded appointees in agencies to identify the minimum number of employees required at an agency for it to perform its constitutionally permissible and statutorily mandated functions”, they wrote in the op-ed.  

In addition, they have suggested that the administration should require an end to all remote working, and mandate that all federal employees come into the office five days a week, which could lead to many voluntary staff departures.  

Despite its name, DOGE is only an advisory body, with no formal executive powers. Musk and Ramaswamy’s radical approach raises serious practical, legal and political questions, especially if they cannot secure congressional approval for their actions.  

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Many have criticised Musk and Ramaswamy’s approach for being based on a fundamental misunderstanding of how government works. For example, David Reich, senior fellow at the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities, pointed out inaccuracies in their claims about unauthorised spending, since all government expenditure is authorised by Congress.  

Far from being a bunch of overpaid, politicised, lefties, deliberately trying to undermine government policy, as caricatured by their MAGA critics, the vast majority of civil servants are in fact relatively low paid, hard working employees, committed to public service. Many of them could command higher salaries in the private sector, but have chosen to work for the Government because they care about the issues they work on.   

Over 80% of government employees are based outside Washington DC, in locations across the country. Over 70% of them work on national security issues, keeping America safe.  

Republican members of Congress who have cheered on the idea of shaking up government may have second thoughts, when agencies based in their own electoral districts are targeted for reductions or elimination.  

Businesses may object, when they are left unclear about which government regulations are still in force, or cannot get timely approval for new products and processes. Huge damage could be done to the economy, as government agencies are thrown into turmoil, thousands of people lose their jobs, and valuable skills and expertise are lost.  

Members of the public may become alarmed, if DOGE starts recommending cuts to government programmes which they support, such as care for military veterans, clean air and water standards, or maintenance of national parks.  Millions of Americans depend on government employees for essential services, such as distribution of social security or healthcare benefits, air traffic control, or product safety.   

Ethics experts are also concerned about potential conflicts of interest, given the number of Trump cronies who could benefit from massive government deregulation. Eyebrows have already been raised by DOGE’s  hiring practices, with applicants invited to send in their resumes via X’s direct messaging system, which requires a premium subscription, directly sending funds to Elon Musk’s own platform.   

With all these questions, the Trump administration’s plans to slash the government will almost immediately get bogged down in legal and practical challenges.  

But, the damage may already have been done. Thousands of federal employees, fearful for their future, and the atmosphere of hostility towards them, may choose to take voluntary early retirement or look for jobs elsewhere.  Those who cannot afford to leave may just try to keep their heads down, and remain silent, even when they have concerns about the legality, efficacy or wisdom of a particular policy, to avoid being accused of disloyalty, or targeted for firing. The impact on government effectiveness is likely to be massive.  

America’s enemies will only watch with glee, as America self-destructs from within.  

This all feels very reminiscent of the turmoil which beset the United Kingdom following the 2016 vote to leave the EU, when Government Ministers sidelined or ignored British civil servants who didn’t get “on message” about Brexit. It has now become standard fare in the right wing of the Conservative party to attack civil servants.

Michael Gove famously declared that the UK had “had enough of experts”. Truss sacked the senior civil servant at the Treasury, and deliberately bypassed the Office for Budget Responsibility, before her disastrous budget in 2022.  Kemi Badenoch, the new leader of the Conservatives, was quoted recently saying that 10% of civil servants are so bad they should go to prison – a comment she later tried to brush off as being a joke – though it will not have felt that way to the subjects of her “joke.”  

But the rhetoric directed towards federal employees in the US by the incoming Trump administration is on a completely different level of hatefulness. When I hear the language towards them, following Trump’s attacks on migrants, muslims, and transgender people,  I cannot help but be reminded of the famous 1946 poem of Pastor Martin Niemoller: 

 “First they came for the the socialists, and I did not speak out, because I was not a socialist 

“Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out, because I was not a trade unionist 

“Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out, because I was not a Jew 

“Then they came for me – and there was no one left to speak out for me.”  

I fear a very dark chapter ahead.