How Deep Is the Swamp? Why Taming the Liberal Bureaucracy Is Essential

Overview

With approximately 2.3 million civilian employees, the federal bureaucracy has ballooned in size.¹ Over the last 30 years, the number of bureaucrats focused on developing and enforcing federal regulations has doubled.²

While the president has direct control over a relatively small number of political appointees, entrenched bureaucrats outside the scope of the White House are far more insulated and protected. As a result, these career bureaucrats have been able to resist and even sabotage the policy goals of the White House in past administrations.

Career bureaucrats far outnumber political appointees. Most of these career bureaucrats identify as Democrats, reflecting a government that is wildly out of balance.

The federal bureaucracy is a one-party state with a persistent Democrat advantage

The White House has the authority to install the 3,200 presidential appointees, noncareer Senior Executive Service members, and Schedule C appointees that make up the political appointments of the executive branch.³

The partisan affiliation of political appointees changes drastically as new administrations take office—not because these political appointees change their views, but because they are replaced with staff whose views align with the new administration.⁴

As expected, the ideology of political appointees tends to follow the ideology of the administration in office.

However, these personnel only account for roughly one-quarter of one percent of the federal bureaucracy.⁵ The far larger category of “non-political” career bureaucrats is charged with the oversight and implementation of the policy directives of the administration.⁶

Unfortunately, these civil servants are anything but non-political, with Democrats outnumbering Republicans by a two-to-one margin across all agencies.⁷ This should not come as a surprise—in the 2024 presidential election, 84 percent of federal employees’ political donations went to Kamala Harris.⁸

But even more concerning is that as bureaucrats move up the governmental hierarchy, they tend to be even more liberal.⁹

One of the most significant and influential components of the bureaucracy is the career Senior Executive Service. Senior Executive Service members serve in positions just below presidential appointees—in theory working to implement major policy priorities and carry out the overarching functions of federal agencies. But that is not always the case in practice.¹⁰ Senior Executive Service positions include program directors, assistant secretaries, deputy counsel, and much more.

In stark contrast to political appointees—whose party affiliation varies with the party of the administration— the Senior Executive Service has a persistent and pervasive Democratic advantage.¹¹

In 2019, Democrats comprised roughly 55 percent of career Senior Executive Service positions, compared to slightly more than 25 percent for Republicans.¹² This Democrat advantage of approximately D+30 percentage points has been consistent over several decades.¹³ In times of Democratic administrations, the White House and Senior Executive Service are aligned. But when Republicans assume the White House, there is substantial dissonance—with the very individuals charged with implementing core policy priorities remaining ideologically misaligned with the president.

These trends are even more apparent in agencies and subagencies that administer major federal welfare programs, whose senior bureaucrats are significantly more liberal.

To further underscore how liberal these welfare agencies are, consider that the career Senior Executive Service in the Food and Nutrition Service (FNS)—which is responsible for the administration of the food stamps program—has a Democrat advantage of D+57. But the larger agency that FNS is a part of, the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), has a Democrat advantage of D+29 among its career Senior Executive Service. In other words, USDA’s welfare subagency is nearly 30 percentage points more liberal than the agency as a whole.

High-level bureaucrats living in the swamp are shockingly partisan

In many ways, Washington, D.C. itself is a huge part of the problem. The makeup of the federal bureaucracy differs dramatically inside and outside of D.C. Within the D.C. metro area, Democrats maintain a partisan advantage of approximately D+39 among career Senior Executive Service employees.¹⁴ For career Senior Executive Service employees outside the D.C. metro area, that advantage falls to roughly D+2.¹⁵

To give an idea as to just how liberal “D+39” really is, consider that the Cook Partisan Voter Index rates Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s congressional district to be a “D+28” district, and Bernie Sanders’s state to be “D+16.”^16-17 Only three congressional districts in the entire country have a partisan voter advantage of D+39 or more.¹⁸

Put simply, the senior executives running the bureaucracy are even more liberal than most of the furthest left congressional districts in the country—a frightening reality.

Bureaucrats routinely undermine the goals of Republican administrations

Unfortunately, the disconnect between political appointees and career bureaucrats manifests itself in blatant disregard for Republican administrations’ policies.

For example, even before President Trump assumed office in 2017, so-called academics and scholars implicitly called on the bureaucracy to resist implementing the incoming administration’s policies.^19-20

These types of practices were played out routinely by bureaucrats who were outside the scope of political appointees. From media leaks to intentional underperformance to blatant insubordination, the bureaucracy sabotaged the policies that President Trump sought to implement. Just a handful of notable examples of bureaucrats working to undermine the first Trump administration include:

• Health and Human Services staff used sharpies to cross out and retroactively adjust hiring dates to just before President Trump’s hiring freeze took effect;
• Department of Labor staff slow rolled the implementation of crucial rules;
• Employees at the Department of Justice refused to prosecute certain cases that they ideologically disagreed with; and
• Attorneys at the Department of Education, Department of Labor, National Labor Relations Board, and Environmental Protection Agency undermined the legal position of the Trump administration by omitting vital information and producing unusable work products.²¹

The sabotage by legal staff was especially harmful. It is no surprise that many Trump administration rules failed to survive judicial scrutiny in the courts considering the attorneys tasked with defending and writing the rules let their personal political beliefs influence their work.²²

And already, the liberal bureaucracy is attempting to sabotage the second Trump administration.

Prior to President Trump assuming office in 2025, nearly half of federal employees had indicated their intention to resist the administration’s efforts.²³ Even federal managers have expressed reluctance to follow a legal directive from President Trump.²⁴

These career bureaucrats have already begun their attempts to combat the Trump administration. In just one example, shortly after President Trump began his efforts to remove diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) positions from the federal bureaucracy, one federal employee’s title was quietly changed from “Chief Diversity Officer” to “Senior Executive” to remain hidden from the White House’s directives.²⁵

Similarly, in late January, the Trump administration was forced to place dozens of senior officials from just a single federal agency on leave due to their alleged intention to circumvent the president’s executive orders.²⁶ Other senior staffers have had to be escorted out of their offices for refusing to comply with the administration’s directives.²⁷

For the first time, career liberal bureaucrats are being challenged in a meaningful way—and they are doing everything in their power to push back by trying to undermine the Trump administration.

The Bottom Line: Congress must help the Trump administration guard against sabotage by bureaucrats.

Fortunately, the power that Democratic bureaucrats have wielded in the past is not guaranteed into the future. Already, the Trump administration has taken strong steps to correct the partisan imbalance and lack of accountability in the senior levels of the executive bureaucracy.

For example, President Trump’s executive order to reinstate Schedule F will help reclassify thousands of bureaucrats in policy roles into this new schedule of the excepted service, repositioning them in roles that are more accountable to the policy priorities of the executive branch.²⁸ Similarly, President Trump’s elimination of DEI-related roles and programs within the federal government will cut down on wasteful, harmful, and discriminatory roles that are aligned with the Left.²⁹ And the president’s hiring freeze will help stem the growth of the federal workforce and protect it from shifting even more to the left.³⁰

To build on these important first steps, the Trump administration could eliminate certain vacant positions and nonessential personnel that were previously furloughed. The administration could also relocate key agency headquarters outside of Washington, D.C., forcing partisan D.C. bureaucrats to move out of the swamp or find a different line of work. This type of effort was successful during the first Trump administration and could be deployed on a broader scale.³¹

Critically, Congress should take steps to make these actions permanent through codification of the above-mentioned executive actions and by advancing further measures to stem the growth of the partisan bureaucracy.

The bureaucracy will not fix itself. And unless the partisan imbalance in senior positions is addressed, so-called “civil servants” with a political axe to grind will do everything in their power to undermine the Trump administration and future Republican administrations. Fortunately, President Trump can create much-needed balance and accountability in the federal workforce.

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