President Donald Trump and Elon Musk’s frontal assault on the federal bureaucracy is a particularly intense manifestation of a strategy Republican presidents have pursued since at least the 1980s.
Since Jan. 20, 2025, the Trump administration has fired tens of thousands of federal employees. This has gutted the capacity of federal agencies like USAID, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, and the Department of Education. Civil service unions, the media, and Democratic politicians have been quick to sound the alarm.
Trump’s strategy, however, is not a wholesale departure from the strategies previous Republican presidents have used upon taking office. Here’s the story.
Tracing the growth of the federal workforce
In late 2024, the federal government employed about 3 million people. A century ago, in the years before the Great Depression, the federal workforce was relatively small. In 1929, for instance, the executive branch had 568,000 civilian employees. By the end of World War II, that number had ballooned to 2,212,000. The plan by President Franklin D. Roosevelt and his New Deal Democrats to combat the Great Depression involved large-scale public works and jobs programs, along with a social safety net through programs like Social Security. Roosevelt’s New Deal – and the U.S. entry into World War II – greatly increased the scope and size of the federal government.
Another expansion came in the 1960s when President Lyndon Johnson and his Democratic allies in Congress passed a series of bills focused on eliminating poverty and racial discrimination. Johnson’s Great Society added the Medicare and Medicaid safety nets, and expanded federal-level support in areas like education, housing, and consumer protection.
Much of the overall expansion of the federal bureaucracy occurred during periods of Democratic Party governing coalitions. Economic regulators like the National Labor Relations Board, for example, were created to support New Deal programs in the 1930s. And social regulators like the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission were created during Johnson’s Great Society initiative in the 1960s. During both of these periods, Democrats held supermajorities in both the House and the Senate – and could pass legislative packages without much need to compromise with the Republican Party.
Reagan sought to reshape the federal bureaucracy
The public’s mood shifted in the 1970s. This shift ushered in a new conservative governing coalition headed by President Ronald Reagan, who had campaigned on massive spending cuts and reducing the scope of government work. Upon taking office in January 1981, Reagan inherited an administrative state largely constructed by Democratic coalitions. And he understood that keeping his campaign promises meant drastically changing the priorities of the bureaucracy he was now tasked with leading.
Reagan’s strategy was twofold. First, the White House politicized government agencies by inserting loyal appointees throughout the federal government – and removing bureaucrats they perceived as hostile to the administration’s preferences. Second, Reagan centralized power in the presidency by requiring agencies to submit regulatory policies and plans to the White House for review. The second strategy supported the first by providing a mechanism to ensure that White House appointees stayed loyal to Reagan, rather than to the departments to which he assigned them.
Reagan also instituted a hiring freeze and lowered the ceiling on the number of civil servants an agency could employ. The Reduction in Force (RIF) effort forced out thousands of bureaucrats during Reagan’s presidency, and politicized those agencies by tilting the balance toward Reagan loyalists. Sound familiar?
Trump has intensified the bureaucratic transformation
By 2025, the scope of the federal government had broadened. Federal agencies are responsible for implementing a wide range of programs including Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, education, workplace anti discrimination, regulating highways, consumer protection, securities and finance, veterans care, environmental and energy regulation, and so on.
Trump, particularly in his second term, has built upon the groundwork laid by Reagan. And conditions today are remarkably similar to the conditions Reagan inherited in the 1980s. Democrats created new agencies after the market crash in 2008, including the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and the Financial Stability Council, among others. Notably, Trump inherited a federal workforce that is decidedly more liberal than the median member of Congress.
After taking office in January 2025, Trump appointed Elon Musk to head a new Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE). The DOGE assault on the civil service began immediately, with dismissals across several agencies. A recent analysis by political scientist Adam Bonica showed that liberal-leaning agencies, like the Environmental Protection Agency, were more likely to be targeted. This is exactly in line with Reagan’s strategy back in the 1980s.
Differences in degree, not kind
Trump’s latest efforts to reshape the bureaucracy go beyond what previous presidents have attempted. Fired employees and leaders of affected departments and independent agencies have filed at least 25 lawsuits contending that Trump’s executive orders are illegal, if not unconstitutional. It is important to recognize, however, that Trump’s strategy is not wholly new. It’s a strategy that Republican presidents have found useful in their pursuit of their preferred policies.
To be sure, Trump’s motivations don’t appear to be exactly the same as his GOP predecessors. Like other Republican presidents, his assault on the bureaucracy represents an ideological skirmish against liberal policies like the USAID’s global mission and the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission’s mission to end discrimination in the workplace. But the current assault also represents a more vengeful mission to punish government employees – along with people outside the government – he perceives to have wronged him.
But in general, Republican presidents in the modern era have inherited a civil service that is measurably more liberal than they are. They face the challenge of directing a civil service that is implementing programs enacted by past governing coalitions, and spending funds allocated in previous budget cycles. This means an incoming GOP administration may see these programs as out of line with Republican policy priorities.
And Republican presidents want to fulfill their campaign promises. Working with Congress is time-consuming – and potentially impossible at times, given political polarization and slim governing majorities. But presidents have some unilateral control over the appointment and removal of civil servants. Therefore, presidential power over the civil service can be an easier way for conservative presidents to shape the contours of federal policy.
Trump is no exception. His campaign promises were at odds with much of the work of the contemporary civil service. The Republican Party does not have a filibuster-proof majority in the current Senate. Thus, using the White House’s unilateral power to reshape the bureaucracy and undercut programs misaligned with Trump’s goals is an unsurprising development.
Nicholas G. Napolio is a 2025-2026 Good Authority fellow.
