Politics

‘We know what is coming’: Federal bureaucrats wrestle with fight-or-flight response to Trump election

Published

2 years ago

November 11, 2024

Thousands of federal bureaucrats have lived through one Donald Trump administration. Many are not sure they can or will survive a second.

Blue Light News spoke with more than a dozen civil servants, 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 due to the sensitivity of the topic and the risk to their jobs. Many are bracing for a wave of departures from key federal agencies in the coming months, amid fears that the next president will gut their budgets, reverse their policy agendas and target them individually if they do not show sufficient loyalty. The result is likely to be a sizable brain drain from the federal workforce — something Trump may welcome.

“Last time Trump was in office, we were all in survival mode with a hope for an end date,” said one State Department official. “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 2 million civil servants who staff it — blaming a federal “deep state” for trying to undermine him in his first term and driving the impeachment efforts against him. As president, Trump named political appointees to various agencies with the purpose of cleaning house — and will again have the chance to nominate people for roughly 4,000 political jobs throughout the administration. In 2021, his White House launched an effort to make it easier to fire civil servants and replace them with political appointees, something he is expected to restart when he returns in January. He’s also threatened to move thousands of federal jobs outside D.C.

Trump-Vance Transition spokesperson Karoline Leavitt did not reply directly to a query about the future of the federal workforce, saying, via email, “President-Elect Trump will begin making decisions on who will serve in his second Administration soon. Those decisions will be announced when they are made.”

Trump’s policy agenda is also at odds with core priorities for a number of agencies under Biden.

The former president and his allies are deeply distrustful of the executive branch bureaucracy and the more than 2 million civil servants who staff it.

Several of Biden’s political appointees at Department of Transportation headquarters near Washington’s Navy Yard were despondent at the prospect of a new Trump administration set on undoing much of their work over the past four years, including airline consumer protections and massive investments in infrastructure.

“There’s a lot of anxiety among Biden appointees, like myself, who need to find new jobs — and also among career staff who are worried about Trump trying to remove career civil servants who had a policymaking role,” a DOT official told Blue Light News.

“I am glad that I am retiring soon. … EPA is toast,” said a staffer at the Environmental Protection Agency, whose efforts to fight climate change clash with Trump’s “drill, baby, drill” approach to energy policy.

A number of officials, however, are wrestling with the conflicting desire to stay in government and defend the mission of the agencies they work for.

“We do our best to make sure either administration does what’s legal,” said a Department of Homeland Security staffer in a legal office. “If I leave, I’d be replaced with an enabler.”

The alarm over Trump’s return is particularly palpable among national security officials, environmental agencies and the federal health agencies, who fear the president-elect will follow through on his pledge to let noted vaccine skeptic Robert F. Kennedy Jr. “go wild on health.”

In his victory speech early Wednesday morning, Trump reiterated that promise. “He’s going to help make America healthy again. … He wants to do some things, and we’re going to let him get to it,” Trump said.

On Wednesday, Kennedy made the rounds on radio and television, saying that he would not seek to halt vaccinations.

Still, one current staffer at the National Institutes of Health said concerns are building inside the research agency about the future of vaccine research in the next administration.

NIH Director Monica Bertagnolli seemed to hint at those fears in an email sent to agency staff Wednesday that was shared with Blue Light News.

“With the 2024 election day now behind us, I want to acknowledge that change can leave us feeling uncertain,” she wrote.

“I do not want to dismiss those feelings, but I do want to remind everyone that throughout our 137-year history, the NIH mission has remained steadfast, and our staff committed to the important work of biomedical research in the service of public health.”

A former Food and Drug Administration official told Blue Light News on Wednesday that Kennedy’s assertions that he would have heavy influence over health agencies during Trump’s second term is raising the risk of career staff departing the agency responsible for drug oversight and food safety.

“The agency personnel are concerned, especially in light of Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s statements and his potential role at the agency,” said the former official. “The reality of that is something the agency has to grapple with.”

A former FDA official told POLITICO on Wednesday that Kennedy's assertions that he would have heavy influence over health agencies during Trump's second term is raising the risk of career staff departing the agency responsible for drug oversight and food safety.

“They’re worried, they’ve been through transitions before so they clearly understand how to do that, but they read the news, the same as you and me,” said a separate former senior FDA official. “I think it’s a lot of RFK-driven stuff.”

Staffers 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 who works 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 agency into two. (The Trump campaign has insisted that Project 2025 isn’t its official policy.) And many conservatives, including Trump’s former FDA commissioner, have argued that the CDC should narrow its scope to focus mainly on disease control.

“What is very clear is that in 2016, Trump was completely unprepared, and now he has a plan, and public health is right smack in the middle of it,” the person said.

A national security analyst who recently left the Biden administration shared similar fears and said having lived through a previous Trump administration, many civil servants are even more wary of working for a second one.

“People are sad and frightened. And what makes it worse is this time we know what is coming. It isn’t theoretical. It is real,” the analyst said.

“At State in particular, it is going hard to overstate how targeted people, career officers will be,” they said. “There will be no grace.”

Not everyone shared that bleak outlook. “I actually don’t see the freak-out yet, maybe it will come when the transition begins in earnest, but the folks I’ve talked to seem to have a pretty sober take that Trump’s victory means we carry out his policies,” said another State Department official. “If people disagree with those policies, nobody will hold anything against anyone that opts to leave.”

One Health and Human Services official who has worked under both Republican and Democratic administrations told Blue Light News that while individual employees are freaking out about the election results, the overall vibe of her office this week is: “Business as usual. Keep on working. It is what it is.”

She is trying to find a glimmer of hope in the Trump administration’s mixed record on health care.

“There are sometimes weird synergies,” she said. “Like under the first Trump administration, Scott Gottlieb was a very strong tobacco control advocate, and the Center for Tobacco Products was actually able to do more than they could under the Obama administration.”

“So I’m asking myself: Are there pathways to work with people that you disagree with and despise?”

Michael Doyle, Kevin Bogardus and Hannah Northey contributed to this report.

Politics

Colorado’s insurgent wave proves Democrats want fighters

Published

4 hours ago

July 1, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

An anti-establishment avalanche blanketed Colorado on Tuesday night.

Across the Centennial State, the candidates who cast themselves as fighters against the old-line Democratic establishment soared to victory — the clearest proof yet that the base’s fury at their leaders extends far beyond the five boroughs, following insurgents’ major victories in New York City last week.

Colorado democratic socialist Melat Kiros scored a stunning victory over 15-term Rep. Diana DeGette (D-Colo.), who was first elected before the 29-year-old Kiros was born, while Colorado Attorney General Phil Weiser defeated longtime Sen. Michael Bennet, losses for two of the most dominant Democratic figures in the state. Both winners were viewed as longshots just weeks ago, but Kiros and Weiser successfully positioned themselves as the true scrappers while painting their opponents as Washington insiders who were too beholden to the party machine, with little to show for their years in office.

“For decades Democrats have failed to meaningfully deliver for working families,” Kiros said in an interview after the race was called. “We have to root out the corruption and get money out of our politics … It’s not about popular support, it’s about political will — and that means we have to vote out any of the incumbents that are standing in our way by taking that kind of corporate PAC money.” That includes, she added, not supporting House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries for speaker.

Manny Rutinel, a progressive state representative backed by an infusion of cash from prominent Latino groups, also cruised to the Democratic nomination to face Rep. Gabe Evans (R-Colo.) for one of the most competitive House seats in the country.

Rutinel focused much of his campaign on attacking his more-moderate foe for failing to stand up to President Donald Trump’s ICE operations.

“Folks right now are upset with the establishment, and they’re looking for fighters who are going to stand up to Donald Trump and Gabe Evans, because they are destroying our economy,” Rutinel said. “We need fighters who understand the struggles, and we’ll fight for them every single day. That’s what I’ve done throughout my entire career. That’s what I’m going to do when I’m in Congress.”

That same anti-establishment energy ran up and down the ballot Tuesday night.

Moderate-leaning Sen. John Hickenlooper (D-Colo.) won his primary. But his democratic socialist-aligned opponent, state Sen. Julie Gonzales, ended the night closing in on a single-digit loss — despite Hickenlooper’s nearly 9-to-1 fundraising advantage over Gonzales in a race few observers thought would be close. She led him in Denver, the city where he was once mayor. Hickenlooper’s margin of victory was narrower than Weiser’s with 90 percent of the vote counted.

A number of more-moderate state legislators trailed their further-left opponents as well.

“Voters are angry,” said Doug Friednash, a longtime Colorado Democratic strategist and former gubernatorial chief of staff to Hickenlooper. “They are all anti-establishment and don’t feel like our leaders have fought hard enough and don’t have a coherent voice. Kiros is the clincher.”

Kiros lost her job as an attorney after writing an op-ed slamming the backlash against critics of Israel’s government, and she launched her campaign nearly a year ago with an ad portraying herself as a fighter who would deliver change. She painted DeGette, a reliable progressive vote but low-profile member, as someone who wasn’t “fighting back like they should.” In the two-minute ad, Kiros referred to the need for a fighter six times — which she carried over into her victory speech Tuesday night.

Weiser’s campaign didn’t mirror Kiros’ DSA-backed candidacy, but he did cast himself as someone who would take on both the Democratic establishment and the Trump administration. While he’s a two-term statewide official — and at age 58, is only three years younger than Bennet — Weiser built his campaign around the dozens of lawsuits he’s brought as attorney general against the president. He’s sued over everything from the president’s executive order on birthright citizenship to federal funding freezes.

“Coloradans need a governor who is a fighter,” Weiser said in an ad earlier this year. “I’ll always stand up to bullies, especially Donald Trump. Congress isn’t doing it. But I am. We are stopping him in court, winning 34 times and counting.”

Kiros’ campaign was buoyed by a wave of support from national progressive leaders and groups. She picked up major endorsements from Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) and Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.).

Justice Democrats, which has been on a hot streak this primary season and was the first national group to back Kiros’ campaign, framed the win as validation. “Our candidates are winning because they are running on an affirmative vision to make life more affordable for working class voters — from Medicare for All to ending taxpayer-funded genocide — and they are not afraid to call out a Democratic establishment that stopped fighting for us the minute they started being bankrolled by the corporations raising our prices,” said Usamah Andrabi, a spokesperson for the group.

The Democratic Socialists of America also poured major resources into the race, running phone banks for Kiros nearly daily in the campaign’s final stretch, knocking on over 100,000 doors and making over 500,000 calls on the ground in Denver.

Popular socialist Twitch streamer Hasan Piker, who emerged as one of the most visible outside organizers in New York’s insurgent sweep, dedicated multiple streams to boosting Kiros’ candidacy in the weeks leading up to the primary. At one point, he hosted her for an extended interview and also ran multiple marathon phone-banking sessions for her campaign live on stream, urging his viewers to call voters alongside him before ultimately traveling to Denver to campaign with Kiros in person on primary day.

“A thirty-year incumbent was defeated tonight. It’s clear that there is a real hunger for change. Democrats all over the country are demanding it,” Piker said. “That change is a working class centered movement. It’s socialism. We are not done yet.”