The tremors from Donald J. Trump’s decisive electoral victory have hit every corner of Washington. But their maximum intensity is felt by the capital’s federal work force, an aggregation of 2.8 million mostly anonymous employees not-so-fondly referred to by Mr. Trump as “the deep state.”
Few notions have consumed the once and future president more than the belief that his executive power has been constrained by a cabal of unelected bureaucrats. In his first rally of the 2024 campaign in Waco, Texas, Mr. Trump framed the bureaucracy as a national adversary, declaring, “Either the deep state destroys America, or we destroy the deep state.”
His intention to accomplish the latter is an explicit feature of Mr. Trump’s official to-do list, known as Agenda 47. From numerous interviews conducted with government officials spread across eight federal agencies, the overwhelming consensus is that Mr. Trump and his allies are not bluffing. That said, exactly how his war on the bureaucracy will be waged, and how government workers will respond to it, remain looming questions.
“There’s definitely anxiety, no question,” said Thomas Yazdgerdi, president of the American Foreign Service Association, which represents about 28,000 current and former State Department workers. He said diplomats were asking him: “Is my job going to be OK? Will they shut down my bureau? What will happen to me?”
Many longtime federal employees expressed exhaustion at the very prospect of a second go-round with Mr. Trump. “I believe there will be a significant exodus among the one-third of our work force that is eligible to retire,” said Nicole Cantello, a former attorney for the Environmental Protection Agency speaking on behalf of the agency’s union, which she represents. “Many of them will be unwilling to relive all the hostility they experienced four years ago.”
But most federal workers do not have the option to retire or to transfer their expertise to the private sector. Their anxieties about the incoming administration extend well beyond the usual uncertainty about what a new president’s priorities and leadership team will be.