All presidents have valued loyalty, particularly among Cabinet members and senior officials who work in jobs set aside for political appointees. But Trump and his team have pushed for political allegiance in an unprecedented way, demanding career civil servants jettison impartiality for a more partisan stance backing the administration’s agenda, according to current and former officials and experts.
“I am getting reports from literally all over the world of individuals who are reticent to offer up their well trained and well experienced opinions regarding the situation on the ground, the way in which foreign interlocutors will view our positions, and even to propose — heaven forbid — an alternate course of action,” Dinkelman said.
He declined to say how many diplomats have been reassigned for offering candid assessments, to avoid exposing his colleagues to potential further retaliation.
State Department spokesperson Tommy Pigott said Secretary Marco Rubio “values candid insights from patriotic Americans who have chosen to serve their country.”
“In fact, this administration reorganized the entire State Department to ensure those on the front lines — the regional bureaus and the embassies — are in a position to impact policies,” Pigott added. “What we will not tolerate is people using their positions to actively undermine the duly elected President’s objectives.”
A White House spokesperson, Anna Kelly, defended the administration’s approach.
“It’s appropriate and expected for unelected officials across the administration to ensure all actions align with President Trump’s America First agenda that people voted for,” Kelly said in an email.
A series of recent firings across federal agencies have shocked current and former career civil servants and members of Congress.
In May, the administration fired two of the country’s most senior intelligence analysts after they presided over an assessment that contradicted the administration’s assertion that the Venezuelan regime of Nicolas Maduro exerts direct control over the Tren de Aragua cartel.
On Aug. 1, the head of the Bureau of Labor Statistics was fired after her office delivered a report on employment statistics that indicated a weakening jobs market. Trump claimed without evidence the numbers were “faked.”
And late last month, the three-star general leading the Defense Intelligence Agency was abruptly dismissed after his agency produced an initial intelligence assessment that found U.S. strikes on Iran’s nuclear sites had a limited effect, seeming to contradict Trump’s claim at the time that the facilities had been “obliterated.”
“The demand for loyalty that we seem to be seeing is deeper and broader than almost at any other time in the history of the country,” said Austin Sarat, a political science professor at Amherst University.
Prizing ‘fidelity’
The civil service was created in the late 1800s to stem corruption and create an apolitical government workforce based on merit instead of doling out jobs to reward partisan favors. Since then, these federal employees have toiled in relative obscurity, performing the kind of behind-the-scenes work that insiders and experts say is crucial to a functioning government.
During Trump’s first term, he frequently railed against “deep state” actors in the federal government. But Trump and his aides did not fire or demote large numbers of career civil servants.
That has become a focus of his second administration. Since his inauguration in January, Trump and his deputies have carried out a purge of career civil servants who they deem insufficiently loyal to his agenda, and have placed a heightened priority on political allegiance to the president when hiring new government employees, current and former officials say.
Trump’s political appointees at the State Department have rewritten the foreign service’s criteria for promotions, adding a new category: “fidelity.” Among a list of skills and traits, including communication, leadership, management and knowledge, fidelity is listed at the top, according to the department’s new scorecard for employees.
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