Will federal employees comply with President Trump's change in direction, or will they try to ride out the storm using their civil service protections as a shield?
We all know the answer to that: of course, they will #resist. The only question is whether Trump and company will be able to punish them enough to make resistance so dangerous to their careers and pensions that most will give up and leave.
Across the federal government, and especially the wokified military, Trump's DEI-crushing Executive Order is being circumvented or maliciously interpreted in order to avoid getting rid of DEI policies or to make the enforcement of it politically toxic. These tactics are an attempt to execute a pincer movement to undermine what is a simple and popular order to retreat from racialist and alphabet-driven policies.
There are many examples of the former strategy, whether it is renaming DEI departments or programs without making any real changes, or rebranding DEI managers as benign-sounding "Senior Executives."
Nice try, @ATFHQ. But “senior executive” sounds equally as pointless. Gotta be more creative than that. pic.twitter.com/1pZyyX88KW
— Dan Crenshaw (@DanCrenshawTX) January 23, 2025
One of many examples of the second strategy is called "malicious compliance"--something seen in government all the time when administrations or government employees intentionally misinterpret policies or create ridiculous compliance measures in order to make things they disapprove of look bad. When we had a government "shutdown" during a budget dispute, the Minnesota Department of Transportation closed unmanned rest stops for no other reason than causing pain to the public to pressure the legislature to buckle to the governor's demands.
With the federal DEI EO, the Air Force tried to embarrass Trump by excising the Tuskegee Airmen from history, making it look like Trump's policy was racist. "WE had to do it because Trump ordered us to!"
This is the Air Force indulging in political theatrics.
— Ron DeSantis (@RonDeSantis) January 26, 2025
We’ve seen this “passive aggressive” performative nonsense in Florida where activists claim complying with anti-woke curriculum standards requires them to exclude basic history that everyone knows should be taught.
It’s… https://t.co/bufdQCuSze
No, he didn't. The whole point was to plant stories in the Pravda Media making Trump and Hegseth look bad, and it worked. The media dutifully reported it as if Trump was a white supremacist.
Hegseth put a stop to that, and I hope he demotes whoever came up with that idea.
This has been immediately reversed. Thank you @SenKatieBritt. https://t.co/bmoJ4obPNL pic.twitter.com/fXCP3lisLN
— Pete Hegseth (@PeteHegseth) January 27, 2025
Biden's military has been at the forefront of pushing DEI under Lloyd Austin, and it would be an excellent place to start making immediate changes because civil service protections are the least problem there. Ruining careers for disobedience should be less complicated than elsewhere, although swift and sure punishment in federal bureaucracies is vitally important if more difficult.
Minot Air Force Base is still doing DEI, but it is now called Organizational Culture Office to circumvent Trump pic.twitter.com/VRbLnjvaTe
— End Wokeness (@EndWokeness) January 24, 2025
I have confidence that Hegseth will take this nonsense on, but we will have to see how well individual Secretaries elsewhere do. If they buckle under early, the fight will drag on and could be lost due to neglect.
In what appears to be a possible trend in the Air Force, an email from the “Organizational Culture Office,” formerly the DEI office, was sent out to all of Luke AFB. pic.twitter.com/vGnSTAPUTk
— Shoe (@samosaur) January 23, 2025
No doubt there will be lawsuits, but I think it is far more important to act swiftly and fight things out in court than to hold back and pussyfoot with the #resistance. The Attorney General should establish a position dedicated to fighting civil servants who will not comply.
Republicans should consider using these two years of control of the legislature and the executive to rewrite civil service laws. We have elections for a reason, and federal employees should be subject to the results and not be an unelected fourth branch of government.
MUST WATCH: Former federal employee spills all the secrets about the incompetence and waste in the federal government pic.twitter.com/3RrHeABNWk
— Libs of TikTok (@libsoftiktok) January 27, 2025
Prior attempts at reforming the civil service have stalled--this has been a known problem for decades--but Trump is magic so he should take up the mantle again. Put Elon Musk on the job.
He seems to have a lot of free time, right?
