EXECUTIVE SUMMARY: 95% of Career Federal Employees Who E-mail About Politics at Work Express Liberal Views

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The U.S. civil service is based on the principle of nonpartisan expertise. The vast majority of federal employees are career staff hired on a non-partisan basis who keep their jobs between presidential administrations. Their tenure allows them to gain experience and develop expertise. In turn, career employees are expected to leave their political beliefs at home. They are called upon to impartially and diligently implement elected officials’ policies, no matter their personal preferences.

Recent research suggests that the civil service has nonetheless developed a significant partisan lean. Voter registration and campaign finance data shows career federal employees are predominantly liberal. This study adds to this research, documenting that career employees who share their personal political views at work overwhelmingly express left-wing views.

The America First Policy Institute (AFPI) submitted Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests to multiple agencies seeking official e-mails sent by senior career employees containing politically relevant keywords during and after the 2020 Presidential election. These requests uncovered many “watercooler” conversations where employees expressed personal political views.

Of those career employees who expressed personal political reviews in e-mails covered by these requests, 95% expressed left-wing views. With only a few exceptions, career employees expressed opposition to President Trump and his policies and support for President Biden and his policies. They also expressed strong views on agency policy, almost exclusively preferring liberal policies. For example:

• Career employees rejoiced over President Trump’s defeat in the 2020 election. One career employee in the Interior Department stated that “It feels like I can breathe again” while a career employee in the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) described “relief to know the orange guy is gone”. A career attorney in the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) described his plans to a colleague to “crack open some champagne at lunch to celebrate Joe Biden’s inauguration!”
  
  
• Multiple EPA employees expressed their joy at removing pictures of President Trump and Vice-President Pence from the agency buildings following President Biden’s Inauguration.
  
  
• A career attorney in the EEOC General Counsel’s office described the career deputy General Counsel as the official who was actually “at the helm” during the Trump Administration, while other career attorneys mocked a federal appeals judge.
  
  
• Career employees also expressed strong views on policy. Career employees across multiple federal agencies expressed opposition to both Schedule F, which would make employees with influence over agency policy functionally at-will, and to President Trump’s executive order prohibiting agencies from training employees to embrace critical race theory. Career EPA officials similarly celebrated President Biden’s newly issued climate directives and condemned the Trump Administration’s approach to environmental policy.
  
  
• Career attorneys in the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission’s General Counsel’s office expressly described themselves as being “part of a movement” that needs “to play the long game” while expressing hope President Biden would rapidly appoint more liberal judges.
  
  
• Only five employees expressed conservative views in these e-mail exchanges. One of those employees was also anti-Trump.

A representative sampling shows career employee conversations lean overwhelmingly to the left.

This does not necessarily mean that 95% of career employees are liberals; many employees did not engage in political conversations at all. It does show that career employees who hold moderate or conservative views rarely feel free to express them at work. The career federal workforce appears to have become so dominated by liberals that employees with different views feel the need to self-censor.

These findings suggest that the nonpartisan norms that the civil service relies on are eroding. many career employees do not leave their personal politics at home, and the career bureaucracy has developed a strong partisan lean. In some cases, career employees openly discussed advancing their own policy agendas through their official duties. The government must do more to foster both the appearance and reality of non-partisanship in the career civil service.