Staying true to yourself in the age of Trump – a how-to guide for federal employees
LESS than three weeks into the administration of President Donald Trump, resistance from inside the US government is growing. About a thousand State Department employees have signed an unusual “dissent cable” expressing their opposition to the president’s executive order placing a temporary ban on immigrants and refugees from seven majority-Muslim countries. After the White House ordered the Department of Health and Human Services to cease advertising and outreach related to the Affordable Care Act, former agency workers and the law’s supporters pushed back, prompting the ban to be lifted in less than 24 hours. Still other federal workers have created social media accounts to leak information about new policies and directives from Trump’s political appointees. Nearly 200 civil servants signed up to attend a recent workshop to discuss legal rights and ways to challenge unethical or unconstitutional policies.
Bureaucratic resistance from below could cause significant difficulties for the Trump administration, which relies on the approximately 2.5 million civil servants in the federal government to implement policy. The new president is clearly aware of the power wielded by civil servants, who swear an oath of allegiance to the US Constitution, not to any president or administration. One of Trump’s first acts as president was a sweeping federal hiring freeze affecting all new and existing positions except those related to the military, national security and public safety.
Even before Trump’s inauguration, the Republicancontrolled House of Representatives reinstated an obscure 1876 rule that would allow Congress to slash the salaries of individual federal workers. This was a clear warning to those serving in government to keep their heads down. Trump’s high-profile firing of acting attorney general Sally Yates, who refused to follow the president’s immigration ban, sent shock waves through the bureaucracy.
There are, however, strong arguments for experienced, ethical civil servants to remain in government. Professional bureaucrats are needed to provide high- quality, evidencebased advice, to warn when administration proposals may be outside the law, and, if necessary, to blow the whistle when legal and ethical lines are crossed. Conservative national security expert Eliot Cohen recommended that those who decide to serve in the Trump administration “keep a signed but undated letter of resignation in their desk” in the event that personal or professional red lines are crossed.
But resignation isn’t the only option. There are numerous courses of action for federal workers who are asked to participate in actions they believe to be illegal or unethical or when they are aware of such actions taken by others. Decisions about what to do (or what not to do) are both personal and contextual, based on one’s rank, one’s tolerance for risk, one’s preparation and where one sits in the federal bureaucracy.
Bureaucrats can challenge policies and practices while working from within. On the less risky end of the scale, they can engage colleagues and make the case for why an action or policy is illegal or unethical, work to modify the plan, elevate the issue, or seek advice from the agency’s general counsel office. They can create a paper trail, producing a clearly written account of the problem in question and the actions taken to address it. Under the George W. Bush administration, this tactic was used by career staff in the Environmental Protection Agency, who helped compile 600 pages describing legal mechanisms to regulate greenhouse gases despite the EPA administrator writing an unusual preface describing his personal skepticism. This paper trail later helped to justify further regulatory action.