The Trump administration just took a monumental step toward making the federal government accountable to the public.
On Feb. 5, the White House made it easier to discipline about 50,000 senior federal employees if they refuse to do their jobs. This announcement has already been met with a union lawsuit, but the president is simply ensuring that the most powerful unelected bureaucrats are no longer insulated from the public’s control. This move will benefit presidents of both parties — and most importantly, the Americans who elect them.
President Donald Trump’s action is, at its core, a restoration of the Constitution’s system of checks and balances and popular sovereignty. The United States is supposed to be governed by “we the people,” but over the past century, unelected bureaucrats have carved out an absurdly powerful and unaccountable niche. Civil service rules have effectively empowered them to ignore the presidents who have constitutional authority over the bureaucracy. That’s the opposite of a republic and an insult to Americans who elect leaders because they want to see change.
Trump is all too familiar with this injustice. In his first term, senior bureaucrats repeatedly used their power to prevent his priorities from becoming policy. They slow-walked reforms at the Department of Education, refused to prosecute civil rights cases, and circumvented a federal hiring freeze — to name just a few examples. At the start of the second Trump administration, a poll found that 75% of federal managers who voted for former Vice President Kamala Harris in 2024 planned to disobey instructions they didn’t like. But public servants are supposed to serve the public, even if they disagree with the party the public elected.
In the private sector, workers could be fired for not doing their job. But until now, presidential administrations couldn’t hold senior bureaucrats accountable because federal rules made them effectively untouchable. While Democrats outnumber Republicans 2-to-1 at federal agencies, conservative career officials could also refuse to implement a liberal president’s agenda.
Bottom line, the lack of accountability is a problem for both parties — and the entire country. No one benefits when unelected bureaucrats can ignore the will of the public.
Trump’s new policy only applies to the bureaucrats who have the biggest influence over policy. They’re now at-will employees, the same as many workers at private companies. These are the civil servants who effectively control how Washington works. They can slow-walk regulations, ignore policy decisions, and otherwise block a president’s agenda. If they do, they now run the risk of being let go.
That’s how employment is supposed to work. If you don’t do your job, you shouldn’t have your job. They’re free to resign if they don’t like what a president does. But they don’t have the right to ignore their responsibilities on the taxpayers’ dime.
Crucially, the president’s reform doesn’t affect the millions of front-line federal workers who don’t influence policy. In other words, the people who keep the government running aren’t at risk of losing their jobs. To the contrary: They’ll now find it easier to do their jobs.
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These hardworking public servants take their jobs seriously, and now they’ll have a greater ability to do what they signed up to do. In the new rule, the Trump administration cited my organization’s input that poor-performing employees reduce their coworkers’ effectiveness by nearly a third. But in states that have made it easier to discipline senior officials, including Georgia, Arizona, Texas, and Florida, the evidence shows that government employees are both happier and more productive. No one is blocking them from serving the public.
The Trump administration deserves praise for bringing accountability back to Washington. While unions are already trying to block this reform in the courts, they’re really fighting to keep government less responsive and less effective. The American people, through their elected leaders, are supposed to be the ultimate decision-makers — not unelected bureaucrats. Trump is simply restoring the public’s control over their own government.
F. Vincent Vernuccio is president of the Institute for the American Worker.
