This month, President Trump threatened to fire Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell if he does not resign when his term as chair ends. He has blasted Powell as “incompetent,” “crooked,” a “jerk,” “a TOTAL LOSER,” and “TOO ANGRY, TOO STUPID, & TOO POLITICAL.”
Likely acting at the president’s behest, federal prosecutors investigated whether Powell had misled Congress about the cost of renovations to the Fed’s headquarters. Finding “essentially zero evidence” that Powell committed a crime, the federal judge overseeing the case indicated that efforts to subpoena Fed records were intended “to pressure [Powell] into voting for lower interest rates or resigning.”
Trump’s campaign to replace Powell with a more pliable Fed chair is part of his systematic effort to turn “public servants” in the federal government into presidential puppets.
The Federal Reserve is one of many independent agencies established by Congress to serve the public. Its leaders are protected from arbitrary dismissal so that decisions affecting banking, markets, workplace safety and health would rest on expert judgment rather than the partisan political interests of the president. Since returning to office, however, Trump has summarily fired dozens of independent agency heads, replacing many with individuals whose principal qualification appears to be a willingness to bend to White House demands.
The administration has argued before the Supreme Court that laws insulating independent agencies from political pressure are unconstitutional, prompting Justice Elena Kagan to warn against a ruling that would “put massive, uncontrolled, unchecked power in the hands of the president.”
Trump proved Kagan’s point with a sweeping executive order requiring independent federal agencies to appoint White House liaisons, “coordinate policies and priorities” with the White House, and submit all “significant regulatory actions” for presidential review.
And he has sought to remake the entire federal workforce, prioritizing loyalty over merit, experience and expertise.
Last year, more than 300,000 federal workers resigned, retired or were fired. To ensure new hires are “patriotic Americans” who will “faithfully serve the executive branch,” the administration now requires applicants for many government jobs to write essays describing how they will advance Trump administration priorities.
Since returning to office, Trump has employed far more political appointees than any modern president. At the same time, he cut the Senior Executive Service, the government’s top-level career civilian leadership, by 30 percent. In the process, the administration has abandoned decades-old rules intended to ensure merit-based hiring and promotion, stripped civil service protections from tens of thousands of career civil servants, and created whole new categories of political appointments.
Executive branch employees who place adherence to the law above fealty to the Trump administration do not last long. A senior Justice Department immigration lawyer who admitted in court that a Maryland man had been wrongfully deported was suspended for failing to “follow a directive” from his superiors. A career federal prosecutor who raised concerns about the strength of a case against former CIA director John Brennan — part of Trump’s ongoing effort to punish his critics, past and present — was replaced by a former lawyer for Trump’s campaign.
Many career officials have been disciplined or fired simply for doing their jobs, including FBI agents and Justice Department lawyers who worked on criminal cases involving Trump. And the Justice Department has fired more than 100 executive branch immigration judges deemed insufficiently aggressive on enforcement, even though they are required by law to exercise independent judgment. Ads for new hires make clear what the administration wants: “patriotic legal professionals to serve as Deportation Judges.”
The administration is strangling internal oversight. Days after returning to office, Trump fired 19 inspectors general charged with exposing fraud, waste and abuse across virtually all Cabinet-level agencies. He has fired at least four more since then, exceeding the total fired by all other presidents combined. And he gutted the Justice Department’s public integrity section, which prosecutes misconduct by public officials, cutting its staff from 36 lawyers to just two.
When the head of the Office of Special Counsel — an agency Congress created to safeguard the merit system in federal employment — opposed Trump’s mass firing of probationary workers, Trump replaced him with political loyalists. Trump also weakened federal labor boards intended to serve as barriers against partisan abuse and stripped union protections from employees at half a dozen federal agencies.
This is not a bureaucratic turf war. It isn’t beneficial cost-cutting. When expertise is forced to yield to blind and total obedience, everything from interest rates to vaccine policies, environmental rules, educational standards, and national security policies becomes political, corruption becomes harder to police, law enforcement turns partisan, and dedicated professionals leave public service. We the people, “the public” in the phrase “public service,” pay the price.
Mark Twain once suggested that Americans show “loyalty to country ALWAYS,” but “loyalty to government when it deserves it.” Trump seeks to reverse that order, “the public,” as William Henry Vanderbilt once put it, “be damned.”
America enacted civil service reform in the 19th century because the spoils system had bred corruption, incompetence and public distrust. We are about to relearn why.
David Wippman is emeritus president of Hamilton College. Glenn C. Altschuler is the Thomas and Dorothy Litwin Emeritus Professor of American Studies at Cornell University.
Copyright 2026 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.For the latest news, weather, sports, and streaming video, head to The Hill.
