Demanding loyalty over expertise in our federal civil service is bad for Minnesotans

Opinion editor’s note: Strib Voices publishes a mix of guest commentaries online and in print each day. To contribute, click here.

•••

President Donald Trump began his term as the vessel of retribution he vowed to be. His many grievances informed the executive actions taken in his first days in office, including his insistence that a “deep state” conspiracy festers within the federal workforce.

As a presidential appointee who served in the Biden-Harris administration, I worry about the impact on Minnesotans if these dedicated civil servants are ejected from government service as a result of Trump’s quixotic attempts to command fealty from every federal employee. I have seen firsthand how my fellow Minnesotans are served honorably by these civil servants, and we should all be concerned about how this transmogrification of the executive branch affects us here at home.

The federal workforce as an abstract idea remains an easy target for President Trump’s ire — and the ire of many Americans. It would be difficult to find someone who hasn’t had a frustrating experience with government bureaucracy. While inefficiency is a real problem, Trump isn’t interested in solving that. His objective is absolute loyalty. Our nation’s civil servants work for the American people and do not answer to any politician.

Presidential appointees, including Cabinet members and thousands of others, are specifically selected to represent the president’s values, vision and policies and can be dismissed at any time at the president’s discretion. Conversely, the modern federal civil service was developed in response to the “spoils system,” in which hiring and firing of all government workers based on political loyalties was a standard practice. Over time, these civil servants became a bulwark against partisan political whims inundating government operations.

Demanding loyalty from nearly 2 million federal employees will inevitably fail because it’s antithetical to the very reasons we have a civil service. It’s also impractical. By attempting this task, Trump will cause a brain drain in our federal government that will only hurt Minnesotans whose lives and livelihoods depend in countless ways on government workers whom they will never meet.

To better understand the folly in Trump’s approach, it’s worth making explicit connections between our federal agencies and our lives in Minnesota, using my work at the U.S. Department of Education as one example. That agency’s role is to foster the broad conditions for all students to access a quality education. In practice, this looks like distributing funds as authorized by Congress, enforcing existing civil rights laws, conducting research and evaluation that can be used by stakeholders to improve teaching and learning, and other activities.

Among my priorities as an appointee at the department, I developed and released guidance on the ethical and equitable use of artificial intelligence in educational settings. This urgent work was impossible without the deep technical and legal knowledge that civil servants from the Office of Educational Technology, Office of the General Counsel and Office of Civil Rights maintain. Other civil-servant colleagues I know use their skills to equip school leaders to improve safety and emergency preparedness through technical assistance. They help parents or guardians understand their rights related to a child’s education records and privacy. They simplify grant processes and get approved funding into districts and states faster and more efficiently.

Civil servants raise questions or practical concerns to their presidential appointee colleagues — like me — based on their subject-matter expertise. The ensuing discussions make programs or policies better.

This may still feel far away from Warroad or White Earth, but consider this: There are civil servants in Washington, D.C., who woke up today excited to serve Minnesota’s students. These are the people who ensured $876 million was distributed to support the 151,000 Minnesota students with disabilities over the past four years. They helped implement the programs projected to prepare 100 additional mental health professionals to serve our students and to launch two new full-service community schools.

There are issues to be addressed in the federal workforce. Even the most seasoned civil servants would agree. But casting the federal workforce as a monolithic enemy leaves real opportunities for change overlooked. Minnesotans don’t want a bigger government or a smaller government; they want a better government. Trump’s misguided blame game will not achieve that goal, nor will it deliver for our state.

Anil B. Hurkadli served until earlier this month as a presidential appointee at the U.S. Department of Education in the Biden-Harris administration. He lives in Minneapolis.