Bill Glahn noted yesterday that the Trump administration has laid off a modest number of State Department employees, totaling less than two percent of State Department staff. Yet the wailing and gnashing of teeth on the Left were extraordinary:
The fact the State Dept. can’t go through a two percent staff reduction without making a scene and patting each other on the back about fighting “fascism” should be nauseating to normal people. https://t.co/SBF1bCJbGK
— Mark Hemingway (@Heminator) July 12, 2025
Some of the departing employees used the opportunity to express their political opinions:
These are signs left by fired State Department employees inside the offices where they worked. Your tax dollars were subsidizing far left activists who use our government to push leftism all over the world. The Trump Admin and @marcorubio are doing INCREDIBLE work by firing them. pic.twitter.com/OVQNnrIy8A
— Robby Starbuck (@robbystarbuck) July 12, 2025
A few thoughts on this. First, anyone who thinks that the Trump administration’s modest efforts to control the growth of the metastasizing federal budget constitute “fascism” is an idiot. We should not have idiots working in the State Department.
Second, these employees evidently had no understanding of their constitutional role. Under Article II, the entire executive power of the United States is vested in the president. The role of executive branch employees is to carry out the policies of the elected president, not to try to frustrate them for political (or other) reasons.
We have written many times over the years about the difficulty faced by any Republican president: nearly the entire federal bureaucracy consists of Democrats, many of whom are determined not to carry out the president’s policies, but to counter them. This is one of the most serious flaws in our system of government, and the reaction of these State Department employees to the election of a president from the other party illustrates what we have long maintained.
Third, the hysteria over this rather minor layoff reveals a mentality that is much too common among public sector employees–the idea that a government job is forever. In the real world, layoffs happen. Every private company sometimes lays off employees; often, more than two percent of its staff. No one in the private sector believes that, having once been hired, he is entitled to that job for the rest of his life.
Ann Bauer, a Minnesota writer, addressed that aspect of the State Department story:
Back in Feb, J was laid off from his longtime job as a director of Data Security.
Here’s what didn’t happen:
*News anchors didn’t show up
*The NYT failed to write an article
*No one showed up to picket
*J did NOT cry on cameraHere’s what did..(1/3)https://t.co/G0ekhUflFK
— Ann Bauer (@annbauerwriter) July 12, 2025
I applaud Donald Trump and Marco Rubio for their efforts to reorganize, downsize and make more effective the federal bureaucracy. I can only add that they have a very long way to go.
