Please Don’t Resign

Guest post by Jonathan V. Last of the Bulwark

Jonathan V. Last (JVL) of the Bulwark wrote an important post this morning. He's got a fantastic idea on how federal workers can resist Trump. The idea is so new, mechanisms to implement it are just emerging. See more at the end of the post.

JVL's post is behind a paywall, but Bulwark subscribers can share it with whomever they wish. So, that's what I'm doing right now.

Please Don’t Resign

How to stop Elon Musk... and Trump

One of the things people often ask me is, “Well, what can I actually do to help?” Normally I don’t know. If I knew, I’d tell you. I promise.

Well, today I have an answer.

1. Layer Cake

I can make this short: People who are in Trump’s way should not step aside. They should plant themselves and force him to expend time and political capital to remove them.

Yet as Trump attempts to purge much of the federal government, much of the bureaucratic leadership is submitting to Trump. It’s the rank-and-file workers who are refusing to back down.

The leaders aren’t going to save us. That job is falling to normal people, who never asked for it.

What can you do? If you’re one of those people on the line, hold it. And if you’re not on the line, support those who are and get ready to help them when they need it.

That’s the short version. The long version is somewhat more complicated. And it involves shaming some people who failed in their duty to lead.

When Donald Trump was not yet president, he said he would appoint Kash Patel as FBI director. This put the existing FBI director, Christopher Wray, in a tight spot. He had two years left on his term. No incoming president has ever fired the sitting director without cause.

Wray could have stood his ground. Forced Trump to fire him. Gone scorched-earth with Congress and in the press. Put pressure on Republican senators to ask questions about his firing.

The heightened scrutiny about the irregularity of Wray’s termination would have made replacing Wray with Patel more politically painful. It would have made the vote harder for Republican senators. It would have put a cloud over Patel’s entire tenure. Whenever Patel’s FBI did something irregular, it would be presented in the context of Trump having fired a competent, non-partisan FBI director in order to get Patel.

And it would have taken time off the clock.

The Senate could not have started moving on Patel’s nomination with Wray barricaded in his post. Trump had no authority to fire Wray until January 20, so the process of moving Patel through the pipeline couldn’t have started until Trump was sworn in and dropped the hammer on Wray.

But Wray didn’t want to cause trouble. The soon-to-be-autocrat said he wanted Wray to leave. So, Wray left.

We’ve seen that story play out repeatedly at the leadership level of government.

Michael Whitaker, the head of the FAA, quit under pressure from Elon Musk, rather than forcing Trump to fire him.

David A. Lebryk, the highest-ranking career official at Treasury has also now resigned over a conflict with Musk.

Robert Santos, the director of the Census Bureau, resigned because Trump wanted him out, even though he is only halfway through his five-year term.

Trump illegally fired 17 inspectors general—the illegality is just a fact that even Lindsey Graham is willing to stipulate to. Only one of them forced Trump to take his illegal order to its logical conclusion.

So let’s talk about Phyllis Fong.

Fong was the inspector general of the USDA. She’d been a career servant at the agency for 22 years. She was fired by the president in violation of black-letter law.

What did Fong do? She refused to comply. If the president was going to issue orders like a gangster, she wasn’t going to pretend that everything was normal. She forced him to act like a gangster.

Fong stayed in her office—which is what the law demands—and did her work. Trump had to send security to physically remove her. By refusing to be play along with Trump’s illegality, she forced him to take off the mask.

2. The Troops

While the high-level leadership has been obediently walking out the door, my sense is that the people on the front line of the workforce are galvanized.

This is only anecdotal. I know a fair number of people who work for the government. Every one of them has told me they have no intention of going quietly. The subreddit r/fednews, which is usually just a clearinghouse for mundane information, now sounds like the Continental Congress.

These workers on the line have their Irish up. And they seem to understand something that the executives do not:

The bad guys have a lot of power; we should not give them more. And going along with their schemes is giving away your power.

Take Elon Musk. Musk has a lot of money. He is personally close to the presidency. But within the federal government he has not power. None.

Musk is not an employee of the government. He has no authority to hire or fire. If Musk wants, say, the head of the FAA to leave, he can make all the threats he wants, but he, Elon Musk, cannot personally fire him.

Instead, Musk has to go to someone else within the executive branch who does have the authority and tell them to issue the termination. And if the termination is unlawful, or creates legal exposure, that person is then on the hook. It is not hard to imagine a world in which some adverse legal consequences befall the factotums who carry out Musk’s orders—and the result is that other factotums in the administration become reluctant to do what this unelected civilian outsider demands of them.

So all of those executives who resigned at Musk’s insistence? They gave Musk power. They gave him the authority of a rank he does not hold and a legal position he does not occupy.

Why would they do that?

I want to be clear about something. I realize that telling people to hold the line is a big ask. I went through this process myself. It’s easy to be brave when it’s just you. Anyone who has a family is vulnerable to an enormous amount of pressure. To have a family who depends on you is to be vulnerable.

There will be individuals who, because of their circumstances, simply can’t hold the line and have to take whatever deal they can get. I understand this and am in total sympathy.

But Chris Wray isn’t in that class. He’s 58. He has two kids. He went to Phillips and Yale and Yale Law. Before he was entrusted with leading the FBI, his net worth was in the low eight-digits. He is connected enough to be employed instantly and powerful enough to defend himself against whatever retaliation the Trump administration might devise.

He could have held his ground. Instead, he and many of the people who are best positioned to survive getting pushed aside surrendered, while the people who are most vulnerable want to fight back.

Yesterday a number of the FBI’s executive assistant directors were told to resign by Monday or they will be either fired or reassigned.

I hope that these civil servants refuse to go along.

They are career staffers. They cannot be fired without cause. If they are fired, they have legal recourse and can impose political pain on the administration.

And if they are reassigned within the Bureau, they will be a constant source of political pain for Kash Patel. Their example will rally the rest of the Bureau. Their institutional knowledge will remain available for everyone on the inside. They will be able to blow the whistle on whatever wrongdoing they witness.

If you work for the federal government at any level, you have power. Please don’t forget that. Please don’t resign.

That’s how you fight. That’s how you help.

3. How You Help

Why are people in leadership less vulnerable? Because of their networks. The more powerful your network, the more resilient you are to adversity. The GS-15s and people in the Senior Executive Service are going to have the most powerful networks.

The workers further down the GS scale will have less developed networks. Which makes them more vulnerable.

But unlike 20 years ago, everyone now has a giant distributed network. It’s called the internet. We have communities like r/fednews and The Bulwark. We have tools like GoFundMe. We have ways to respond to people’s needs when they take a hit.

So here’s how you help: Start putting away a little bit of money every week. Maybe it’s $5. Maybe it’s $100. Whatever you can spare. Set up a dedicated pool of cash so that if people on the front lines do get pushed out and need help, you can support them.

You or I couldn’t float a family whose breadwinners get fired from the FBI while they look for work. But combine 20,000 (or 20 million) small funding streams, and we can. Apes together strong.

Stop giving money to politicians for the moment. Start preparing a personal war chest to support normal people who are taking a stand. Because if Musk and Trump succeed in firing them en masse, we want to have the resources ready to help.

One other thing: Give them moral support. No matter where you live, you probably have a federal employee or two in your orbit. Let them know that if the worst comes to pass, they’ll have a network to help them land on their feet.

Coda: This is one more example of the reality that if we’re going to turn back this authoritarian attempt, we’ll have to do it ourselves. The elites, the systems, the Constitution, the guardrails—none of them are going to save us. No one is coming over the horizon to the rescue.

It’s all on us. Maybe it always has been.

(JVL’s piece ends here)

4. Practical stuff from Kathleen Weber

At least one organization is taking shape to carry out JVL's vision. Stacey Young, an 18-year veteran of the Justice Department, has begun a new organization called Justice Connection. It’s being organized with the assistance of a well-established group called Government Accountability Project, which has a three-star rating from Charity Navigator. A three-star rating means that a nonprofit meets or exceeds industry standards and performs as well as or better than most charities in its cause. The core mission of the Government Accountability Project is to protect whistleblowers throughout the country, whether in industry, local, state, and federal government.

More groups will probably arise in the next days and weeks. Stay tuned!

Of course, if you happen to know any federal government employees, you can offer them your support on a personal level. You can also ask them to alert you if any employees in their office come under fire.