Interviews with over 100 civil servants under Trump reveal worrying picture
The Loyalty Trap
It was challenging to get civil servants from the first Trump administration to speak about their work experiences, but sociologist Jaime Lee Kucinskas succeeded. The picture that emerged from her findings, she says, is far from positive. 'The more I spoke with them, the more emotions I saw. They were incredibly confused.'
In the week of Trump's inauguration, Jaime Lee Kucinskas spoke about her research at the Wijnhaven building in The Hague as part of the Public Ethics Talks series. The lecture on 22 January was based on Kucinskas' book The Loyalty Trap (to be published in May 2025 by Columbia University Press). The book is grounded in in-depth interviews with mid- and senior-level civil servants during a tumultuous first term.
During the lecture, Kucinskas discussed how federal civil servants became entangled in insoluble moral dilemmas. They were committed to impartial public service, but also expected to follow political directives. What was their experience with this new leadership?
There are civil servants who supported the new leadership or indicated they were indifferent to it (20%), but Kucinskas also saw civil servants being critical, showing moral courage, resisting, resigning (25% of respondents), or living ‘split lives’ (about half of the respondents).
By ‘split lives’, she means that a civil servant is a different person at work and at home. The moral conflict leads to spending more private time with family and friends, writing a book or blog, engaging in self-care, but also (excessively) drinking wine. Additionally, she observed acts of resistance by these civil servants through protests and volunteer work.
Loyalty traps
What: Could not both fulfill the ethics and duties of their position and uphold the new stringent standard of loyalty sought by the president and some appointees
Who: Bureaucrats interfacing between administration and civil servants on politicized work
Experiences of civil servants
Mid-level manager in international affairs
'They found someone to punish. And that obviously had a very chilling effect on everyone. And if they're going to go after people and they're going to remove people from their positions because of using their best discretion, their best judgement about how to do their jobs, that's terrifying...'
Under the Trump administration, helping sometimes meant 'just doing little, quite frankly. And it means just doing what's necessary, and it means waiting to help educate folks about what their opinions are as we go forward, as opposed to getting too fired up about things. Because it's safer.
They (political appointees) want things which are in direct contradiction of each other.’
Employee Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)
When she raised a question about an agency administrator’s aberrant request, she was told: ‘the administrator decided … you don’t get to decide,’ even though she was supposed to be the person evaluating such requests.
Incidents like these occurred frequently. In the end she mostly ‘held (her) nose’ and complied. Leadership pushed back, treating voice as a form of disloyalty and clawing back some of her authority.
‘We were given a little bit of pushback for frivolously raising ethics questions… it wasn’t too long before they just… took away some of my authorities as a senior official and let somebody else sign the stuff. Remarkable.’
Concerns about the future
All in all, the picture is ‘depressing’, says Kucinskas about the conversations she conducted. ‘They were incredibly confused.’ According to the sociologist, there are concerns about the fragility of the American state. As soon as civil servants leave, they are replaced by ‘loyalists’, which leans towards authoritarianism.
‘I also hope the book will make civil servants in the US feel less isolated and that those in other countries facing similar risks and populist turns will take threats to democracy more seriously than Americans have,’ she said.
Interview
Andrei Poama, one of the co-organizers of the Public Ethics Talks series, had a short follow-up interview with Dr. Kucinskas.
AP: What is the loyalty trap? And how do US federal civil servants fall into it?
JLK: In speaking with 67 federal civil servants working under the first Trump administration, I found that those caught in loyalty traps could not both fulfill the ethical duties that came with their position and uphold the new standards of loyalty sought by the president and some appointees. Public servants working in politicized areas under suspicious Trump appointees who prized loyalty to the president above the Constitution, the law, and democratic norms and values were most likely to face expectations that they transgress other professional ethical commitments and best practices to support an appointee. This is why these civil servants were most likely to face loyalty traps.
AP: What were some of the more effective strategies federal civil servants used in resisting democratic backsliding?
JLK: Some really socially skilled career civil servants, who also were committed to supporting appointed leaders, tried to maintain the structure of their offices, units and programs, and maintain high-quality teams. They did so through communication, by retaining talented staff, and trying to preserve trust and morale. Some public servants reported ethical transgressions to internal accountability channels like Inspector Generals’ offices and Congressional oversight committees. Others documented transgressions in hope they might be able to come to light later, and a select few that I spoke with shared non-classified information with the media to preserve what they thought was important work or raise attention to problematic and unethical decisions or behavior by members of the Trump administration.
AP: Is there any good news for either democracy or the administrative state coming out of your book, despite some of the more worrisome findings?
JLK: Sadly, this is not a hopeful book. It is a historical time capsule sharing civil servants’ perceptions and experiences during a period of emergent democratic backsliding, which now seems to be a precursor to Trump’s even more destructive second term. President Trump is emboldened this term and is threatening more overt political retribution and a dangerous expansion of presidential power that is weakening democratic checks and balances.
I hope the book will make civil servants in the US feel less alone, and that those in other countries facing similar risks and populist turns will take more seriously threats to democracy than Americans have. I also hope that civil servants and others will work toward building governments that are more resilient to illiberal leaders by developing structural safeguards and building communities which can face such threats together, rather presuming individual civil servants should face superiors’ unethical or poor leadership alone. Professional organizations and external advocacy groups should also be hiring lawyers and preparing to support civil servants experiencing political retaliation.
AP: This a sociology book that examines some of the stories of mid-level to high-level bureaucrats who try to resist democratic backsliding and what you call “budding autocracy”. What were some of the ethical difficulties that you had to navigate as a researcher in documenting and writing this book? And what advice would you have for someone who might want to write a book on a similar topic about Trump’s second term or about similar cases around the world?
JLK: When I began the book, like most of the civil servants I spoke with, I -- perhaps a bit naively -- did not expect Trump to lurch the United States toward authoritarianism as much as he has. In speaking with civil servants, I simply asked about their work experience, how they experienced prior presidential transitions, and how they were experiencing Trump’s presidency. As it became apparent risks of political retribution were increasing, I got an additional NIH protection, and tried to anonymize respondents as best I could by sometimes changing socio-demographic or other details about them.
With respect to the next Trump term, I think the risks are higher for potential study respondents than they were last term. I would advise those doing future research to think carefully about how they communicate electronically with potential respondents and how such communications can be tracked in order to minimize risks. I did, for example, hear about some civil servants’ phones being checked under Trump’s last term.