We’re seeing how partisanship repels high-performing federal workers

With all eyes trained on Iran, it is easy to lose sight of the headway President Trump has made transforming the nonpartisan civil service into a partisan arm of governance.

The last year, however, has shown that a federal workforce made to toe the party line will be unable to attract or retain the talent needed for high performance.

The choice between partisanship and performance is being forced by the pace at which the president is having his way. Civil servants have proved no match for the White House, nor have the courts provided a meaningful check.

The president has kept his campaign promise to shrink the federal headcount quickly and dramatically. Some 300,000 federal workers had left the federal government by the end of 2025. Meanwhile, he has also implemented the MAGA policy agenda, settled personal scores with individual careerists and reset the rules that govern hiring, promotion and job tenure.

But this relentless quest for political advantage has weakened the performance of government. A report published by the Partnership for Public Service, a nonprofit advocate of improving government, marshals evidence that the administration’s push for control has left the federal enterprise in chaos. Examples include the disruption of government-funded clinical trials affecting 74,000 patients, the delay of disaster relief, the slowing of Social Security responsiveness, increased wait times for veterans seeking medical treatment and diminished capacity at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.   

Problems like these each have their own back-stories, but all stem from prioritizing partisanship over performance.  

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