Trump and Musk Declare War on Bureaucracy—But Americans Trust Civil Servants More

As President Donald Trump and his cohort Elon Musk target huge cuts in the federal bureaucracy, the public trusts bureaucrats more than politicians. In an interesting 2024 survey by the Partnership for Public Service, 63 percent of Americans said they did not trust the federal government while only 31 percent said the federal government had a positive impact on the United States. However, 91 percent believe competent civil servants are important to a strong democracy and 95 percent believe civil servants should be hired based upon merit rather than politics. On this edition of Next Witness…Please, Dr. Stephen A. Goldman, psychiatrist, author, and historian, delves into the reasons for this dichotomy. He discusses the importance of federal regulation and the non-partisan civil service in the wake of Trump’s executive orders targeting thousands of federal workers. He explains the regulatory process in simple, understandable terms. Dr. Goldman spent several years at the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) as a medical product safety and risk management expert and regulator and speaks from first-hand knowledge about the importance of regulations. He also explains the importance of the oath that federal workers take pledging their allegiance to the U.S. Constitution and not to any one political leader. This independence is vital for the neutral functioning of government and has served our country well, he says. Dr. Goldman warns that getting rid of a non-political civil service has been the target of authoritarians and fascists throughout history. He fears that, if left unprotected, ridding the government of so many trained professionals will do irreparable harm to the United States and the damage may be irreversible.