This is the sixth installment in the short blog series, Cleanup on Aisle 47, which is meant to present ideas on rebuilding and strengthening U.S. democracy.
Federal Government Employees Are Everyday Americans – Like the Rest of Us
We didn’t realize how well much of the federal government was working until Donald Trump and his lackeys broke it. This was thanks to the professionalism of former staff of federal agencies, most of whom have been RIF-ed (reduction in force) or outright fired by Trump and Elon Musk’s DOGE. Federal government employees took their jobs seriously, with some positions, like Department of Justice attorneys, seen as highly prestigious jobs. (This isn’t the case anymore. Ethical attorneys are steering clear of the DOJ because it has become Trump’s personal vendetta machine. This will get worse with Todd Blanche, who was newly confirmed as Attorney General in the dead of night. (https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/justice-department-struggles-as-thousands-exit-and-few-are-replaced/ar-AA1Q8xdj, https://apnews.com/article/senate-blanche-attorney-general-justice-department-fcb4157d45d7b13a05de4d2b0f4f92e2)
Aside from the politicians, those who work in the federal government are us – they are everyday Americans helping to provide the rest of us with government services as determined by Congress. Politicians tend to eat up all the media oxygen, so we don’t typically hear what it takes to operate a government agency on a day-to-day basis. Instead, politicians, particularly Republicans, constantly attack government employees, saying they are engaged in “waste, fraud, and abuse.” When we allow politicians to relentlessly attack public servants for doing their jobs, we are allowing them to attack us. (While politicians are supposed to be public servants, many of them seem to forget this once they get into power.)
Trump’s Destruction of Federal Agencies
It has been the goal of Trump, his cabinet, MAGA Republicans, and the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 to destroy government agencies to benefit themselves and wealthy oligarchs. It’s typical authoritarian behavior, really, to strip away the social safety net or functional government agencies in order to divert tax dollars to the powerful and subjugate the majority of the public, so we feel too helpless to fight back. If you are starving because you are poor and can’t rely on SNAP or other welfare benefits, or if you’re sick and can’t afford healthcare, all the better to keep you down.
The Trump regime has been steadily shutting down and hobbling every government agency it can by illegally stripping them of funding and staff or shifting services to private contractors. Through the work of Elon Musk’s DOGE, USAID was shuttered completely. Other agencies that have been crippled under Trump include the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), Department of Education, Centers for Disease Control (CDC), United States Postal Service (USPS), Internal Revenue Service (IRS), Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, Office of Management and Budget, U.S. Agency for Global Media, National Science Foundation, Office of Personnel Management, Department of Housing and Urban Development, Peace Corps, Department of Defense, National Park Service, Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), Corporation for Public Broadcasting, Veterans Administration, Social Security Agency, and the aforementioned DOJ. (https://www.newsweek.com/federal-agency-cuts-trump-administration-11850442, https://www.cbpp.org/research/social-security/trump-administration-personnel-policies-harming-social-security-customer, https://prospect.org/2026/06/04/trump-kicks-dismantling-of-veterans-health-care-into-high-gear/, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/US_federal_agencies_targeted_by_DOGE)
I am sure I have missed other agencies being dismantled by Trump. I know his cabinet is currently working to destroy Section 106 of the National Historic Preservation Act because Trump doesn’t want to preserve historic structures. (See his destruction of the East Wing of the White House for his animosity toward historic preservation.) (For more on the thread to Section 106, see: https://savingplaces.org/section106)
The Knock-On Effects of Agency Destruction
It hasn’t taken long for us to see the knock-on effects of the destruction of federal agencies through funding and staff reductions.
Several months ago, I was working on a sewing project while half-listening to the TV. There was a weather forecast on and I stopped cold when I heard the forecaster explain that weather monitoring has been ended over a huge section of the United States due to the cuts by the federal government. After cheering on his honest commentary, I immediately wanted to know: Who was this bold forecaster to actually hold the Trump regime to account during a forecast? Turns out it was Minnesota’s own Sven Sundgaard. I didn’t recognize him at first because I wasn’t watching, only listening. And it’s true, weather forecasts have definitely gotten worse, and it’s because of Trump’s cuts to staff at the National Weather Service, which is part of NOAA. (https://gizmodo.com/heres-why-weather-forecasts-have-seemed-so-inaccurate-lately-2000779436)
In the case of the shuttering of USAID, it’s estimated that over 600,000 people have died around the world due to Trump’s ending of the agency. (https://oversightdemocrats.house.gov/imo/media/doc/usaid_report.pdf) If Trump was not a person in a position of power, he would be considered a serial killer (as would Elon Musk and the others in Trump’s cabinet who helped him kill all these people).
In Minnesota, Trump’s withholding of federal funds from our social service agencies due to his claim of widespread “fraud” is causing nonprofit agencies dependent on those funds to scale back on their services to those who need them. I should point out that Minnesota typically pays more in taxes to the federal government than it receives back, subsidizing states that don’t pay in as much. That Trump is pulling Minnesota’s funding because it is a “blue” state run by a Democratic governor is petty, vindictive, and unconscionable.
How Do We Rebuild Government Agencies and Prevent Their Destruction in the Future?
Once we get the Trump regime out of office and hold them legally accountable (be sure to vote, people!), how do we rebuild these government agencies?
We need to go through every agency Trump has decimated, figure out which ones continue to be necessary (I wager it’s most of them), and rebuild them by asking those who used to work in these agencies for guidance. We need to pay these former employees for their advice and rehire them, if appropriate and if they want the job.
As long as we need to rebuild we may as well improve the functioning of each agency. What worked in each agency? What didn’t? Likely, many of them will need a technology overhaul because they were using outdated systems and devices. Plus, with AI being used to break into other companies’ systems, we need to beef up the tech security of each agency.
What do we do to prevent the wholesale destruction of federal agencies and workforce in the future?
We must transfer some of the power of the President back to the Congressionally-formed independent federal agencies.
We NEED these independent federal agencies and the public servants who staff them. There has to be a degree of autonomy among federal agencies to have people with expertise make rules that make sense for each agency. To prevent the wholesale destruction of independent government agencies, we must limit the President’s power to unilaterally fire government workers on a whim.
There used to be a limit on the President’s ability to fire government officials without cause. It was called Humphrey’s Executor and was based on a 1935 Supreme Court decision in Humphrey’s Executor v. United States. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Humphrey%27s_Executor_v._United_States)
Guess what just happened to Humphrey’s Executor, which was considered “the canonical precedent for the constitutionality of independent agencies in the U.S. federal government”? (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Humphrey%27s_Executor_v._United_States) The Trump Six, Justices Roberts, Alito, Gorsuch, Thomas, Kavanaugh, Barrett, on the Supreme Court overruled it on June 29, 2026 in Trump v. Slaughter. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trump_v._Slaughter)
We must push Congress to codify Humphrey’s Executor in law and build in further protections for government workers and agencies.
Further, we must require anyone who heads a federal agency to renounce any for-profit positions or related financial entanglements they have when they join the agency. The U.S. Postal Service, for example, should never have been run by Louis DeJoy, who had conflicts of interest because he ran a for-profit delivery service. While he was at USPS, he pushed to privatize it. Heads of federal agencies must properly discharge their conflicts of interest in the private sector while serving in the federal government.
The DOJ absolutely must be independent of the President. The Attorney General is NOT the President’s personal attorney, no matter what Todd Blanche does in the position. The DOJ works on behalf of the American people. We need to figure out how to keep it independent and operating with people of high caliber and ethics, maybe with an independent commission to make nominations for Congress to approve.
There is one thing we can do right now for government employees at all levels. We can speak up for them when politicians bash them wholesale in the media. Often, government workers aren’t able to speak up for themselves when they are criticized publicly for fear they will lose their jobs. The rest of us can defend them by denouncing unfounded, unsupported criticisms by contacting politicians directly or through public protests. (Y’all, we are getting very good at public protests!)
What other ideas do you have for rebuilding federal agencies and the federal workforce? How would you protect independent federal agencies and agency officials from being destroyed in the future?
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