Thousands of federal bureaucrats lived through one Donald Trump administration. Many are not sure if they can or will survive a second.
POLITICO spoke to more than a dozen officials, political appointees under President Joe Biden and recently departed Biden administration staffers in the days since the presidential election was called for Trump, who were granted anonymity because of the sensitivity of the subject and the risk to their jobs . Many are bracing for a wave of departures from key federal agencies in the coming months, fearing that the next president will undermine their budgets, reverse their policy agendas and target them individually if they don’t show enough loyalty. The result will likely be a significant brain drain of the federal workforce — something Trump may welcome.
“The last time Trump was in power, we were all in survival mode hoping for an end date,” a State Department official said. “Now there is no light at the end of the tunnel.”
The former president and his allies are deeply distrustful of the executive branch bureaucracy and the more than two million civil servants who staff it. They blame a federal “deep state” for efforts to undermine him in his first term and ramp up impeachment efforts against him. As president, Trump appointed political appointees to various agencies with the goal of cleaning house — and will once again have the opportunity to nominate people for about 4,000 political jobs across the government. In 2021, his White House launched a push to make it easier to fire officials and replace them with political appointees, something he is expected to resume when he returns in January. He has also threatened to move thousands of federal jobs outside of DC
Trump-Vance Transition spokesperson Karoline Leavitt did not directly respond to a question about the future of the federal workforce, saying via email: “President-elect Trump will soon begin making decisions on who will serve in his second administration. These decisions will be announced as soon as they are made.”
Trump’s policy agenda is also at odds with the core priorities of a number of agencies under Biden.
Several of Biden’s political appointees at the Department of Transportation headquarters near the Navy Yard in Washington were despondent at the prospect of a new Trump administration undoing much of their work over the past four years, including airline consumer protections and huge investments in infrastructure.
“There is a lot of anxiety among Biden appointees, like myself, who need to find new jobs — and also among career staff who are concerned that Trump is trying to remove career officials who had a policy-making role,” a DOT official told me to POLITICO.
“I’m happy that I’ll be retiring soon. … EPA is toast,” said an Environmental Protection Agency official, whose efforts to combat climate change are clashing with Trump’s “drill, baby, drill” approach to energy policy.
However, some officials struggle with the conflicting desire to remain in government and defend the mission of the agencies they work for.
“We are doing our best to ensure that both governments do what is legal,” a Department of Homeland Security official said in a legal office. “If I leave, I will be replaced by an enabler.”
Alarm about Trump’s return is especially palpable among national security officials, environmental agencies and federal health agencies, who fear the president-elect will make good on his promise to kill noted vaccine skeptic Robert F. Kennedy Jr. “to let go of health. ”
In his victory speech early Wednesday morning, Trump repeated that promise. “He’s going to help make America healthy again. … He wants to do some things, and we’re going to let him do them,” Trump said.
On Wednesday, Kennedy made the rounds on radio and television saying he would not try to halt vaccinations.
Still, a current National Institutes of Health official said concerns are emerging within the research agency about the future of vaccine research under the next administration.
NIH Director Monica Bertagnolli appeared to hint at these fears in an email sent to agency staff on Wednesday and shared with POLITICO.
“Now that Election Day 2024 is behind us, I want to acknowledge that change can make us uncertain,” she wrote.
“I do not wish to dismiss these sentiments, but I would like to remind everyone that throughout our 137-year history, the NIH mission has remained steadfast and our employees have been committed to the important work of biomedical research in the service of public health . ”
A former Food and Drug Administration official told POLITICO on Wednesday that Kennedy’s claim to have major influence over health agencies during Trump’s second term increases the risk of career personnel leaving the agency responsible for drug oversight and food safety.
“Agency staff are concerned, especially in light of statements made by Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and his potential role at the agency,” the former official said. “The reality of that is something the agency has to grapple with.”
“They’re concerned, they’ve been through transitions before, so they clearly understand how to do that, but they read the news just like you and I,” said a separate former senior FDA official. “I think it’s a lot of RFK-driven stuff.”
Officials at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention also fear that under Trump, the public health agency — so central to the Covid-19 response — has “a target on its back,” as one person working with the agency said.
Republicans have outlined clear plans for changes to the CDC — including the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025, which includes ambitions to split the organization in two. (The Trump campaign has insisted that Project 2025 is not its official policy.) And many conservatives, including Trump’s former FDA commissioner, have argued that the CDC should limit its scope and focus primarily on disease control.
“What is very clear is that Trump was completely unprepared in 2016, and now he has a plan, and public health is right in the middle of it,” the person said.
A national security analyst who recently left the Biden administration shared similar fears, saying that after living through a previous Trump administration, many officials are even more wary of working for a second one.
“People are sad and scared. And what makes it even worse is that this time we know what’s coming. It’s not theoretical. It is real,” said the analyst.
“Especially at state, it becomes difficult to overestimate how goal-oriented people, career officials, will be,” they said. “There will be no mercy.”
Not everyone shared that bleak outlook. “I don’t see the panic yet, maybe it will come when the transition really starts, but the people I’ve talked to seem to be fairly sober in assuming that Trump’s victory means we have to implement his policies,” he said . said another State Department official. “If people don’t agree with this policy, no one will have anything against anyone who chooses to leave.”
A health and human services official who has worked under both Republican and Democratic administrations told POLITICO that while individual employees are panicking about the election results, the general mood in her office this week is: “Business as usual. Keep working. It is what it is.”
She tries to find a glimmer of hope in the Trump administration’s mixed record on health care.
“There are strange synergies sometimes,” she said. “As under the first Trump administration, Scott Gottlieb was a very strong advocate of tobacco control, and the Center for Tobacco Products was actually able to do more than under the Obama administration.”
“So I ask myself: Are there ways to work with people you disagree with and despise?”
Michael Doyle, Kevin Bogardus and Hannah Northey contributed to this report.
