Commentary

The campaign against federal workers turns ominous

Federal workers who must guard what they think and say will be less open, strategic, and willing to take the initiative.

John Yochelson

June 5, 2026 3:42 pm

4 min read

President Donald Trump took a major step this week toward turning the federal workforce into an arm of partisan governance. He issued an executive order stripping 8,000 civil servants in policy-related positions of their job security. The order spells out agency-by-agency senior management and advisory positions that will be brought under White House control moving forward.

The president’s power play crossed a line that Republicans and Democrats alike had respected since the Pendleton Act in 1883 established the federal civil service. Both parties accepted the basic principle of non-political career civil servants who spoke truth to power regardless of the party in charge.

The logic underpinning the civil service is to ensure merit-based, high-level continuity of government operations, especially when the presidency changes hands. That’s when careerists brief incoming political appointees on their day-to-day responsibilities and the challenges ahead both inside and beyond their agencies. Senior civil servants routinely serve in acting capacities until Senate-confirmed political vacancies are filled.

The president, however, has never championed career professionals. His administration was not represented at a recent excellence-in-government event hosted annually by the nonprofit Partnership for Public of Service. The black-tie awards show celebrates Service to America Medals, or Sammies, the equivalent of Hollywood’s Oscars for high-achieving career federal workers. Former presidents Bush and Biden offered congratulations via video. Later in the program, author Michael Lewis jokingly referred to the current occupant of the Oval Office as “he who must not be named.”

The president has never shown much regard for the workforce of more than two million that supports his administration. He had no public sector experience when he swept into the White House in 2016. Politically, he embraced the conspiracy theory of the “deep state” which held that the bureaucracy had been infiltrated by the far left. Personally, he made no secret that he found the briefing papers and expertise of careerists of practically no use. Their preoccupation with process infuriated him. Unlike Republicans who trained their fire against big government on the failings of the civil service system, Trump trained his on civil servants themselves.

An executive order issued by Trump in October 2020, which was immediately reversed by the incoming Biden administration, anticipated his current efforts to break the federal workforce. As soon as he returned to the Oval Office in 2025, the president reinstated the order giving the White House the last word on senior careerists doing policy-related work. This time he did so commanding a majority of the popular vote, full control of the Republican party, a compliant cabinet and White House staff, and a boundless sense of grievance.

Control over hiring went hand in hand with cutting the federal workforce down in size. Private sector icon Elon Musk assembled a team of software engineers to slash budgets and personnel. Russell Vought, a savvy insider, served as field commander from his position as director of the Office of Management and Budget. A coalition of 100 conservative organizations provided a 925-page roadmap, Project 2025, to reshape the federal enterprise.

The federal workforce buckled quickly. Executive orders that side-stepped due process had their intended effect of reducing the federal headcount and intimidating those who remained. Some 350,000 civil servants left government within a year through a one-two punch of pressure and a buy-out offer. The administration chalked up the largest downsizing of the federal workforce since World War II as a significant political win.

The White House has discounted the cost of its win. The exodus of 95,000 workers in technical fields, including 10,000 Ph.Ds., has reduced public health, information technology, scientific research and engineering capacity across government. Quantitative measures, however, don’t fully capture the value of the experience, know-how and specialized skills that have been lost. As for morale, the administration has yet to conduct mandated surveys of federal employees, but informal surveys show a workforce that has never been more dispirited.

President Trump may have miscalculated his attack on America’s culture of federal public service, just as he underestimated the resilience of the Iranian regime and resistance to his appropriation of the Kennedy Center and other symbols of national identity in the nation’s capital. The coalition of federal worker unions that is contesting Trump’s reclassification of the civil service has the public on its side. According to 2025 survey data, 83% of Americans agree that an expert and non-political federal workforce is critical to the country’s well-being.

Americans will be ill-served if the White House prevails. Federal workers who must guard what they think and say will be less open, strategic, and willing to take the initiative. Such an environment will not attract, cultivate, or retain the high achievers who win Sammies.

The next Congress cannot remain on the sidelines in the face of a power play that makes government less effective. The legislative branch has the authority to block or modify executive branch rulemaking regarding federal employees. A partisan effort to protect non-partisan public service won’t work. Congress must come together to protect the national interest.

John Yochelson, the former president of the Council on Competitiveness, is assembling and editing a collection of personal stories of high-performing federal workers to make them more relatable to the public. He is the author of Loving and Leaving Washington: Reflections on Public Service.