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Comment by rayiner | Hacker News Reader

Rooting out the "Resistance" in the executive branch--the democrats who run the country regardless of who wins the election--is literally Item #9 of Trump's 2024 platform: https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/documents/2024-republican-pa....

I think that for the most part federal employees are good people who work just as hard for one president as another. I used to work at a government agency. It was full of fantastic, dedicated, hard working people.

But in recent years there seems to be a large number of people who think that being a federal employee gives them the right to use their positions to “Resist” what people voted for. And such thinking has no place in our democracy. And it’s shameful that federal employees didn’t condemn what happened in 2017.

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> Executive branch employees should have no ability to resist or frustrate those changes.

Yes, they should. Unless you believe that it's so easy to run the government that you can replace all the workers every four years (doubtful at best), you need to keep these people in their roles.

It doesn't matter what the Constitution theorizes; the simple truth is that an advanced country needs career civil servants capable of thinking for themselves. That inherently means they will loudly disagree if they think the president is doing something stupid.

Sorry, no. The constitution matters and democracy matters. We do not have a system of governance by credentialed technocrats. Those people are absolutely necessary. But they must abide by democratic values. Their job is to put their talents to work implementing the agenda of the guy people elected to set policies, no matter who wins. It’s like a lawyer representing a client. You owe the voting public—through the president duly elected to represent it—zealously advocacy, regardless of your personal opinions.

It is unconscionable to have a system where the federal workforce enthusiastically implements the policies of the president from one party, but hinders the policies of the other. And to be clear, I don’t think most federal employees think this way. I think most federal employees, especially the old school ones, see it as their duty to do their job the best they can regardless of who sets the policy. So I was shocked and upset by what I saw in 2017. Not just that a vocal minority of federal employees declared they were bad at their jobs and disloyal to the duly elected president. But moreso because the silent majority of good federal employees stood quiet and didn’t say anything.

Okay. And what if those policies actively hurt people and do more damage than good? Should they just give in? When does it stop? When can they say no? Only when a judge explicitly says it's illegal despite it obviously being illegal?

The whole point of democracy is to have a way for people who don’t agree on what’s “good” or not to live together and make collective decisions. You completely throw that away if you allow federal employees to substitute their own judgment and value system for those of voters. That’s absolutely corrosive to democracy.

And remember the Resistance wasn’t about things that were “obviously illegal.” It was federal workers trying to frustrate immigration and environmental policies they disagreed with. That’s simply way out of the proper lane.

No you don't. Civil servants disagreeing with stupid policy or malicious policy is a feature. It says the policy is bad, full stop. Civil servants generally have more knowledge about what they do and are doing than elected leaders. It's just a consequence of working in it. Blind yes men is corrosive to democracy.

Show me where in the federalist papers it says that civil servants can frustrate policies they think are “stupid.” What you’re talking about is full mask-off “people should be governed by their betters” technocracy.

No one cares about the federalist papers.

I’m beginning to see that. “Ruled by credentialed technocrats” seems to have become the civic religion that has replaced it.

They aren't ruling. Pushing back against bad policies is not ruling. Nor is it a religion.

You're clearly American. The American founding fathers wanted to avoid tyranny of the majority. That is clear. Civil servants pushing back is exactly that! No, it's not documented in the Federalist papers but the world is a lot more complicated than the 18th century.

The founding fathers wanted to prevent tyranny of the majority when it came to individual rights. And they created a very specific system for doing that: specific rights that could be vindicated in the judicial branch. What they didn’t do was empower an unelected, unappointed bureaucracy to have any role in that. And they certainly did not extend that concept to government policies of general application—the “guns versus butter” tradeoffs that governments must make. If a candidate wins the election promising more guns and less butter, the only job of the civil service is to make that happen.

And there hasn’t been any material change since the 18th century. There were fierce debates over policies back in the 1700s, including some of the same debates we’re having today, like over tariffs. The federal government already had thousands of employees even during Jefferson’s time in 1802. Nobody imagined that those employees would have anything more than a ministerial role carrying out the agenda of the elected President.

And yes, the only way to describe what you’re seeing among federal employees today is a religion. I’m in DC. Some people—and again to be clear it’s a minority—are literally crying over changes in government policies related to immigration, defriending people based on who they voted for, etc. These are not detached professionals who deserve the public trust. They’re religious nuts who believe they have the moral high ground and that gives them the right to override the constitutional design.

Again, this is the law and their job. See 'The Administrative Procedure Act (APA) of 1946' which prevents the U.S. executive branch from acting in an arbitrary and capricious manner, and the multitude of case law around it over the last 70 years.

I will give you a little thing to read that might shed another light on the issue, which runs deeper than just doing what you are told https://www.theholocaustexplained.org/how-and-why/why/radica...

This is why people actually speaking out about swooping changes in their administration is important.

I find it very odd that you find that upholding democracy matters, even if it means to enact and act on behalf on people that are actively dismantling it or have a proven track record at effectively ignoring the popular vote, which since you are a fervent democratic believer, I am guessing you are also against various different problems such as: gerrymandering, purging voters of certain groups from the ballots, attempting to manipulate election results and even in some case ignoring the popular vote altogether in a more than dodgy manner (see this description of the 2000 election https://www.uvm.edu/~dguber/POLS125/articles/pomper.htm )

This is without counting that an important number of members of the current administration, refused to acknowledge January 6 or admit that the previous administration was indeed legitimate...

So yes people should do their jobs, but should be held to standards, even a soldier is bound by the oath to the constitution, as does everyone appointed to a Federal position:

"An individual, except the President, elected or appointed to an office of honor or profit in the civil service or uniformed services, shall take the following oath: “I, ___, do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; and that I will well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office on which I am about to enter. So help me God."

Again you pledge not to the administration but to the institution and the constitution, so I do not think your point do really stand here.

You don’t get to take away power from voters and give it to civil servants by waving your hands about the Holocaust. Yes, there is a line when a civil servant has to decline to follow orders. But the line is way over there. Obama blew up plenty of Muslim weddings and I think that the UAV operator was correct to follow those orders.

Look at the Blusky group linked here. What holocaust is the national park service “Resistance Team” preventing? You’re invoking the Holocaust to justify defying the duly elected president’s policy choices on legitimate political issues: the environment, immigration, etc.

And Trump won the popular vote.

> And Trump won the popular vote.

Not in the 2016 election he didn't.

(And AIUI the last one is beginning to look a lot closer than first assumed, too.)

Trump has the power to fire them! Even if I accepted your premise, he still can't require their personal loyalty.

Their job is to do what they were hired to do, not swear fealty to the president. There is a reason why some positions are political and some are career - it's because you do in fact need "credentialed technocrats" if you're trying to run a developed country in the 21st century.

You do need credentialed technocrats to run a country. But the whole premise of “non-political technocrats” is that they do the job they’re hired to do regardless of their political views. Democracy can’t work if non-political appointees feel licensed to put a thumb on the scale of their preferred party. That’s what was happening in the 2017 resistance.

> But the whole premise of “non-political technocrats” is that they do the job they’re hired to do regardless of their political views.

What if their job is against the whims of an administration working in direct opposition to the laws passed by Congress?

Musk has attempted to shut down USAID, which is a Congressionally mandated agency. Are you still going to call it "putting a thumb on the scale of their preferred party" when the employees inevitably resist this?

There is a spectrum. An FCC employee tasked with ensuring a device won't emit interference can easily do their job with very little reference to politics!

But an FCC employee tasked with ensuring free and fair access to broadcast licenses now no longer can, because Donald Trump has put HIS hand on the scale in opposition to the law and Constitution.

The executive branch is not allowed to ignore a law passed by Congress, only interpret it in good faith. This is written into the Constitution (the part that goes "shall faithfully execute"). This means that executive branch employees disobeying the president in accordance with US law are in fact working within the system.

If your suggestion is that in such a case they should kowtow to the president, you are deluding yourself. That is not democracy; Congress is the voice of the people and are the only federal lawmakers.

If the GOP would like to use their majority to undo existing laws, great! They actually have to vote and go through the motions instead of handwaving it away as executive privilege. Historically, this has not worked very well for them - it turns out that a platform of "tear it all down" works a lot better in on the campaign trail than in practice and they've been unable to repeal laws because they simply could not come up with a replacement.

> The constitution matters and democracy matters.

This is pretty ironic in defense of Trump's actions here. He's initiating multiple constitutional crises.

The constitutional crisis started in 2017 when the unelected civil service declared “Resistance” to the elected President’s policies. That goes to the heart of whether the executive branch—the largest and most powerful branch today, to which Congress has unwisely abdicated much of its constitutional authority—is under democratic control.

Whatever arguments people have about whether the President can stop payment on block grants versus earmarks are trifles in comparison.

So... Where do you stand on the 2nd Amendment on gun control, and why? (Yes, trust me, it is relevant.)

Those "credentialed technocrats" are implementing the laws, as written by the Congress of the United States of America.

The President is supposed to execute the laws that Congress passes, and to spend money as Congress appropriates it. He does not have carte blanche to do whatever he would like with the Federal government. There are some areas where the President has more freedom of action (like foreign policy), but when it comes to administering government, he is not all-powerful.

It is literally their job. Since the 1940s.

The Administrative Procedure Act (APA) of 1946 contains the rule that prevents the U.S. executive branch from acting in an arbitrary and capricious manner. Specifically, 5 U.S.C. § 706(2)(A) directs courts to "hold unlawful and set aside agency action, findings, and conclusions found to be arbitrary, capricious, an abuse of discretion, or otherwise not in accordance with law."

I’m familiar with the APA. It’s a statute that allows judicial supervision of executive branch actions. It absolutely doesn’t empower individual executive branch employees to try and frustrate the policies of the president.

If you think an action will be set aside by the courts, there are processes for handling that through in-house as legal departments and ultimate the President’s Office of Legal Counsel. And those lawyers have the job of aggressively representing the elected administration’s interpretation of the law before the courts. But line federal employees have zero role in the APA process.

It does though. It requires federal employees to not behave in an arbitrary and capricious manner. It requires them to move slowly when arbitrary and capricious policies come down. Go read the case law. They can't just to be told to start denying people something because the President wants it so, unless the authorization for what they are doing allows the President that sort of authority. They very much can and should follow the actual law and policies, not 'what the President wants'. What you are talking about is a banana republic, not the USA executive branch as it has worked since the 1940s.

I literally litigate APA cases. The APA is what you invoke if the government grants you a permit and then takes it away without a good reason. But individual executive branch employees cannot invoke the APA to oppose an administrative policy they disagree with.

You also seem to think the President is a dictator that can dictate what people do and they are required to follow those dictates up to an until the courts come back. We do not have a top down dictatorial system of government.

This is basic high school US civics 101 on how our government functions.

Show me a civics textbook that says federal employees have any independence from the president. You won’t find one. The founding fathers created a very specific system, not a general vibe. The government as a whole isn’t dictatorial—there are three branches that check each other. But within each branch it’s close to dictatorial. The Supreme Court justices decide the law. Their staff can privately express their opinions, but have no independent power. Same for congressional staff. It would be unthinkable for a Supreme Court clerk or congressional staffer to declare “Resistance.” The same should be true for federal employees. Express your concerns through proper channels, but otherwise keep your mouth shut and follow the directions of those with constitutional authority.

The branches have to be dictatorships inside themselves. The founders were very deliberate in creating a system with democratic accountability. Everyone with power is either elected or appointed by someone who is elected. Career civil servants are not elected. Voters have no way to influence them other than by electing the president. And so career civil servants cannot have powers beyond the ministerial. Otherwise you end up with a government that isn’t responsive to elections—where people can’t change the course of government by voting.

Trump ordered random water released from dams in California last week. That is a dictate, not sound policy. There was zero documentation on our tariffs on over 40% of goods coming into the country as of this morning. The press secretary last week tried to clarify the freezing that was initiated, ultimately leading the the rescinding of the clarifying order that were given to the entire US government. That is dictatorship, not sound executive policies in line with the office of the President. Those are all dictates from the person on top. Yes, offices would be correct in ignoring them. In fact, the Army Corp of Engineers ultimately did have to stop release water due to potential negative outcomes. And the Army Corps acted correctly. But according to you, they acted wrongly and illegally.

I'm not going to give a basic civics lesson. The executive 'executes' the rules and policies established by the legislative branch. Government employees execute those rules, the President oversees. The only people the President gives orders to are the military. Musk has control of the National Checkbook, with no oversight, protocols or security to limit his actions. That is dictatorial power, not Constitutional executive authority.

Sorry bud, you want blind following of dictates. That is not the American system of government.

Many of those things will be litigated, and some may be overturned. That happens to administrations all the time. That is checks and balances. But federal employees are not at liberty to ignore directives from the President because they don’t think it’s “sound policy.” Nobody voted for them. You’re talking about unelected, unaccountable bureaucrats short-circuiting the operation of the democratically accountable branches.

By the way I’d give the same courtesy to any president. His student loan forgiveness was obviously illegal, as well as being bad policy. But it would’ve been beyond the pale for his Department of Education to ignore the directive.

> The executive 'executes' the rules and policies established by the legislative branch. Government employees execute those rules, the President oversees.

Show me where it says anything like this in Article II: https://constitutioncenter.org/the-constitution/articles/art...

Article II is crystal clear. The very first sentence says: “The executive Power shall be vested in a President of the United States of America.” It’s parallel to the congressmen or Supreme Court justices. The “civil service” are just staff. The constitution doesn’t even bother mentioning them.

What you’re saying is that there’s this key organ of government—the “non-political civil service”—with independent responsibilities exercising their best judgment, that somehow isn’t even mentioned in the constitution!

> What you’re saying is that there’s this key organ of government—the “non-political civil service”—with independent responsibilities exercising their best judgment, that somehow isn’t even mentioned in the constitution!

You're saying that as if it were a real zinger, clinching the argument for you. I don't think it is or does.

Yeah, the constitution may not mention a non-political civil service. So what?!? It ultimately regulates a whole lot of shit that it doesn't explicitly mention. Like, does the constitution explicitly mention Elon Musk's employees installing drives on government computers? No? Clearly unconstitutional, then!

If the President orders a Treasury Department employee to transfer $1 billion to the President's personal bank account in Switzerland, does that employee have the right to say "no"?

According to the theory you're espousing here, that employee is a drone who will have to transfer the money, even though it's obviously illegal.

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