Donald Trump’s storming of Washington isn’t leaving much time for nuance, yet distinctions matter. A case in point is the vindication of Internal Revenue Service whistleblowers Gary Shapley and Joseph Ziegler, a story that answers at least one big question.
Why is the president fundamentally uprooting the federal bureaucracy—cutting whole teams, firing senior employees, imposing new work rules? Our polarized political environment offers opposing partisan explanations. The left: A vengeful leader targets hardworking civil servants to make way for loyalists. The right: Mr. Trump is belatedly draining a swamp entirely filled with lazy liberal drones.
Think instead of Washington’s 2.4 million workforce as the political version of a terribly run company. It has its fair share of hard workers—dedicated to the job, the mission, the law. But they are undermined by the usual self-promoters and get-byers, with the added toxicity of embedded partisans and hidden power players. Why overturn the system? It’s the only way to elevate the good ones.
That is what’s happened in the case of Messrs. Shapley and Ziegler, veteran civil servants who were promoted this week to senior jobs, advising Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent on IRS reform. This comes after years of retaliation, for their sin of treating Hunter Biden like any other lawbreaker—for doing their job well—and for calling foul when colleagues put politics ahead of honest work.
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