Thousands of federal bureaucrats have lived through one Donald Trump administration. Many are not sure they can or will survive a second.

POLITICO spoke with more than a dozen civil servants, political appointees under President Joe Biden and recently departed Biden administration staffers in the days since the presidential election was called for Trump, who were granted anonymity due to the sensitivity of the topic and the risk to their jobs. Many are bracing for a wave of departures from key federal agencies in the coming months, amid fears that the next president will gut their budgets, reverse their policy agendas and target them individually if they do not show sufficient loyalty. The result is likely to be a sizable brain drain from the federal workforce — something Trump may welcome.

“Last time Trump was in office, we were all in survival mode with a hope for an end date,” said one State Department official. “Now there is no light at the end of the tunnel.”

The former president and his allies are deeply distrustful of the executive branch bureaucracy and the more than 2 million civil servants who staff it — blaming a federal “deep state” for trying to undermine him in his first term and driving the impeachment efforts against him. As president, Trump named political appointees to various agencies with the purpose of cleaning house — and will again have the chance to nominate people for roughly 4,000 political jobs throughout the administration. In 2021, his White House launched an effort to make it easier to fire civil servants and replace them with political appointees, something he is expected to restart when he returns in January. He’s also threatened to move thousands of federal jobs outside D.C.

Trump-Vance Transition spokesperson Karoline Leavitt did not reply directly to a query about the future of the federal workforce, saying, via email, “President-Elect Trump will begin making decisions on who will serve in his second Administration soon. Those decisions will be announced when they are made.”

Trump’s policy agenda is also at odds with core priorities for a number of agencies under Biden.

Several of Biden’s political appointees at Department of Transportation headquarters near Washington’s Navy Yard were despondent at the prospect of a new Trump administration set on undoing much of their work over the past four years, including airline consumer protections and massive investments in infrastructure.

“There’s a lot of anxiety among Biden appointees, like myself, who need to find new jobs — and also among career staff who are worried about Trump trying to remove career civil servants who had a policymaking role,” a DOT official told POLITICO.

“I am glad that I am retiring soon. … EPA is toast,” said a staffer at the Environmental Protection Agency, whose efforts to fight climate change clash with Trump’s “drill, baby, drill” approach to energy policy.

A number of officials, however, are wrestling with the conflicting desire to stay in government and defend the mission of the agencies they work for.

“We do our best to make sure either administration does what’s legal,” said a Department of Homeland Security staffer in a legal office. “If I leave, I’d be replaced with an enabler.”

The alarm over Trump’s return is particularly palpable among national security officials, environmental agencies and the federal health agencies, who fear the president-elect will follow through on his pledge to let noted vaccine skeptic Robert F. Kennedy Jr. “go wild on health.”

In his victory speech early Wednesday morning, Trump reiterated that promise. “He’s going to help make America healthy again. … He wants to do some things, and we’re going to let him get to it,” Trump said.

On Wednesday, Kennedy made the rounds on radio and television, saying that he would not seek to halt vaccinations.

Still, one current staffer at the National Institutes of Health said concerns are building inside the research agency about the future of vaccine research in the next administration.

NIH Director Monica Bertagnolli seemed to hint at those fears in an email sent to agency staff Wednesday that was shared with POLITICO.

“With the 2024 election day now behind us, I want to acknowledge that change can leave us feeling uncertain,” she wrote.

“I do not want to dismiss those feelings, but I do want to remind everyone that throughout our 137-year history, the NIH mission has remained steadfast, and our staff committed to the important work of biomedical research in the service of public health.”

A former Food and Drug Administration official told POLITICO on Wednesday that Kennedy’s assertions that he would have heavy influence over health agencies during Trump’s second term is raising the risk of career staff departing the agency responsible for drug oversight and food safety.

“The agency personnel are concerned, especially in light of Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s statements and his potential role at the agency,” said the former official. “The reality of that is something the agency has to grapple with.”

“They’re worried, they’ve been through transitions before so they clearly understand how to do that, but they read the news, the same as you and me,” said a separate former senior FDA official. “I think it’s a lot of RFK-driven stuff.”

Staffers at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention also fear that under Trump, the public health agency — so central to the Covid-19 response — has “a target on its back,” as one person who works with the agency said.

Republicans have outlined clear plans for changes to the CDC — including the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025, which includes ambitions to split the agency into two. (The Trump campaign has insisted that Project 2025 isn’t its official policy.) And many conservatives, including Trump’s former FDA commissioner, have argued that the CDC should narrow its scope to focus mainly on disease control.

“What is very clear is that in 2016, Trump was completely unprepared, and now he has a plan, and public health is right smack in the middle of it,” the person said.

A national security analyst who recently left the Biden administration shared similar fears and said having lived through a previous Trump administration, many civil servants are even more wary of working for a second one.

“People are sad and frightened. And what makes it worse is this time we know what is coming. It isn’t theoretical. It is real,” the analyst said.

“At State in particular, it is going hard to overstate how targeted people, career officers will be,” they said. “There will be no grace.”

Not everyone shared that bleak outlook. “I actually don’t see the freak-out yet, maybe it will come when the transition begins in earnest, but the folks I’ve talked to seem to have a pretty sober take that Trump’s victory means we carry out his policies,” said another State Department official. “If people disagree with those policies, nobody will hold anything against anyone that opts to leave.”

One Health and Human Services official who has worked under both Republican and Democratic administrations told POLITICO that while individual employees are freaking out about the election results, the overall vibe of her office this week is: “Business as usual. Keep on working. It is what it is.”

She is trying to find a glimmer of hope in the Trump administration’s mixed record on health care.

“There are sometimes weird synergies,” she said. “Like under the first Trump administration, Scott Gottlieb was a very strong tobacco control advocate, and the Center for Tobacco Products was actually able to do more than they could under the Obama administration.”

“So I’m asking myself: Are there pathways to work with people that you disagree with and despise?”

Michael Doyle, Kevin Bogardus and Hannah Northey contributed to this report.

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Donald Trump pledged in one of his final campaign speeches to work with Democratic mayors and governors if reelected. But just hours after the former president was projected to win back the White House, some blue-state leaders were actively plotting against him.

California Gov. Gavin Newsom, one of Trump’s fiercest critics, on Thursday called a special legislative session to funnel more resources toward the state’s legal defenses to preemptively combat Republican policies around immigration, the environment, LGBTQ+ rights and reproductive care.

New York Gov. Kathy Hochul and Attorney General Letitia James — one of Trump’s most aggressive first-term adversaries — pledged to beef up coordination between their offices to “protect New Yorkers’ fundamental freedoms from any potential threats.”

And attorneys general across blue states are prepared to take Trump to court — just as their predecessors did hundreds of times during his first administration.

If Trump’s reelection represented a realignment in American politics, blue-state leaders are choosing to confront it with a return to form, resuming the counterweight roles they played during his first administration as their party reckons with a nationwide repudiation.

“We’ve been talking for months with attorneys general throughout the nation, preparing, planning, strategizing for the possibility of this day,” California Attorney General Rob Bonta said at a press conference in San Francisco on Thursday.

Trump’s two-year campaign to retake the White House — and polls that for months showed he could succeed — gave Democrats the lead time they lacked in 2016 to shore up their defenses against conservative policies. And they are using as a guide his campaign-trail calls for mass deportations and regulatory rollbacks, as well as Project 2025, the conservative blueprint for a Republican administration that Trump has distanced himself from but that dozens of his former administration officials had a hand in crafting.

Governors and lawmakers in several blue states have already passed laws bolstering reproductive rights since the fall of Roe and stockpiled the abortion pill mifepristone in response to further legal threats to reproductive care. While Trump has vowed to veto a national abortion ban, that’s hardly alleviated Democrats’ fears. And as he barreled toward a second term, they raced to address other areas of concern, pushing ballot measures to protect same-sex marriage, labor rights and other liberal causes.

Even as he briefly pledged in the closing days of his campaign to work across the aisle, Trump has also vowed to punish his political opponents — and many blue-state leaders are at the top of his list of adversaries.

And so Democratic governors and attorneys general who have spent months strategizing on how to protect their states’ progressive policies from a possible second Trump term are kicking those efforts into higher gear.

Some governors are discussing how to ensure that federal funding for state projects makes it to their coffers before Trump takes power, potentially with total Republican control of Congress, said one person who works in a Democratic governor’s office, granted anonymity to disclose private conversations. The discussions convey the concerns among some Democrats that Republicans could pause disbursements from, or even repeal, President Joe Biden’s signature programs, such as the CHIPS and Inflation Reduction acts.

Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker also said Thursday that he has spoken with other Democratic governors since the election about how to best Trump-proof their states.

“There are many people whose lives and livelihoods are at risk, and there are many people who cried at the [election] result because they know what impact it may have on their families,” Pritzker said at a press conference Thursday.

He also delivered a warning: “You come for my people, you come through me.”

In California, where Democratic leaders became some of the de facto heads of the Trump resistance after his 2016 election, officials spent months working to shore up the state’s climate policies and disaster preparedness in anticipation of an antagonistic federal government even before Newsom called the special legislative session.

“The freedoms we hold dear in California are under attack,” Newsom, who Trump regularly refers to as “New-scum,” declared in a statement. “And we won’t sit idle.”

In New York, Hochul and James created the Empire State Freedom Initiative, a program that is meant to address “policy and regulatory threats” from the incoming Trump administration, including against reproductive and LGBTQ+ rights, as well as gun safety and environmental justice. The New York governor also signaled she will propose legislation as well as take executive action in response to Trump’s victory, but did not provide specifics.

“New York will remain a bastion for freedom and rule of law,” Hochul said. “I’ll do everything in my power to ensure that New York remains a bastion from efforts where those rights are being denied in other states.”

James could have an outsize impact on how Trump’s policies trickle down to New York. The Democrat, who was first elected in 2018, sued Trump’s real estate business for fraud. She won a $450 million judgment, which is being appealed.

Meanwhile, state prosecutors who often served as the first line of defense against Trump’s most controversial executive orders in his last term — banding together to try to block his travel restrictions from some Muslim-majority countries, challenge his plans to roll back vehicle emissions standards, and more — have long been preparing to again serve as a legal bulwark.

In California, state lawyers have meticulously prepared for Trump’s return — down to crafting draft briefings, weighing specific legal arguments and debating favorable litigation venues, Bonta, the attorney general, told POLITICO.

“If he comes into office and he follows the law and he doesn’t violate the constitution and he doesn’t violate other important laws, like the Administrative Procedure Act he violated all the time last time, then there’s nothing for us to do,” Bonta said. “But if he violates the law, as he has said he would, as Project 2025 says he will, then we are ready. … We have gone down to the detail of: What court do we file in?”

In New Jersey, state Attorney General Matt Platkin cited mass deportations, an “aggressive reading of the Comstock Act” to potentially impose an abortion ban and “gutting clean water protection” as potential sources of litigation.

“If you look at the things that have been said by the president and his associates during the campaign, … if you read Project 2025, there are proposals that are clearly unlawful and that would undermine the rights of our residents,” Platkin said in an interview.

And in Massachusetts, first-term Attorney General Andrea Campbell’s office has been preparing to act against threats to reproductive, LGBTQ+ and immigrants’ rights and student loan-forgiveness programs, among other areas.

In response to a request for comment, Trump’s team said in a statement: “The American people re-elected President Trump by a resounding margin giving him a mandate to implement the promises he made on the campaign trail. He will deliver.”

Democrats’ rush to reform their resistance to Trump is partly self-serving. Governors and state prosecutors who took on Trump during his first term burnished their national profiles in the process.

In some cases they were able to parlay their opposition into higher office: Massachusetts’ Maura Healey leveraged her lawsuits against Trump as attorney general to help win the governorship in 2022; California’s Xavier Becerra, the former state attorney general, is now the Biden administration’s Health and Human Services secretary and is eyeing a run for governor. And for Democrats who’ve been chafing for a chance to get off the party’s deep bench, a second Trump term presents a fresh opportunity for a potentially star-making turn ahead of an open 2028 presidential primary.

That jockeying has in some ways already begun. Several blue-state leaders held press conferences on Wednesday and Thursday to reassure anxious constituents that doubled as ways to establish themselves as leaders in the anti-Trump fight. On Wednesday, Healey was on MSNBC vowing that state police would not be involved in carrying out the mass deportations Trump has promised, seizing a national platform in a way she rarely has since challenging Trump in the courtroom as attorney general.

But there was some acknowledgment among top city and state Democrats that they would have to find ways to work with Trump, too — mainly on infrastructure projects which are often reliant on massive amounts of federal funding.

“If it’s contrary to our values, we will fight to the death,” New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy said during a Wednesday press conference about the election results. “If there’s an opportunity for common ground, we will seize that as fast as anybody.”

New York City Mayor Eric Adams similarly pledged to find ways to partner with the incoming administration, naming infrastructure as a target area for future collaboration.

“I communicated with the president yesterday to state that there are many issues here in the city that we want to work together with the administration to address,” Adams said during a news conference Thursday. “The city must move forward.”

Holly Otterbein, Melanie Mason, Nick Reisman, Daniel Han, Maya Kaufman, Shia Kapos and Kelly Garrity contributed to this report.

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The events surrounding Michael McMonagle’s departure from Sinn Féin have brought an immense amount of scrutiny to the party and its ability to handle child safeguarding issues.

The former party press officer has now been sentenced to 18 months after pleading guilty to a series of sex offences.

The offences occurred on various dates between May 2020 and August 2021when McMonagle was employed by the party.

Since then, Sinn Féin politicians have been pushed to explain how the party dealt with this case.

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During the period in question McMonagle was directly employed in a full-time position by Michelle O’Neill and then Jemma Dolan and paid through the staffing allowance granted to MLAs by the Northern Ireland Assembly.

McMonagle was employed by O’Neill, who was at the time deputy first minister, from 2 March 2020 to 31 May 2020, and then by Dolan from 1 June 2020 to 8 July 2022.

In a previous mandate, McMonagle was employed jointly by former Sinn Féin MLAs Daithi McKay and Mitchel McLaughlin in a full-time position from 6 May 2014 to 31 October 2014.

He also worked as press officer for the party in the north west and at Westminster.

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NI Assembly

In August of 2021 McMonagle was arrested by the Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI) and the next day he informed the party of this and he was immediately suspended from his role.

About a year later in June of 2022, his employment with Sinn Féin was terminated.

In September of 2022 McMonagle got a job with the British Heart Foundation using references provided by Sinn Féin press officers Seán Mag Uidhir and Caolán McGinley.

The charity said neither reference had mentioned the ongoing police investigation nor McMonagle’s suspension from his previous employment.

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It was when these references came to light at end of September this year that people started to ask questions of Sinn Féin.

When the references they had written were revealed, Seán Mag Uidhir and Caolán McGinley resigned from the party.

Stormont’s Economy Minister Conor Murphy said it was “inexplicable” the references were provided and Sinn Féin had only became aware of them the previous week.

“No one was informed, no permission was sought, no advice was sought in relation to dealing with it,” he said.

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Murphy was asked by the BBC why the party had not informed the British Heart Foundation of what it knew about McMonagle.

“Seriously, the BBC asking me these types of questions,” he responded.

He added: “We have a legal responsibility not to interfere with the police investigation.”

Meanwhile, Michelle O’Neill denied knowing that McMonagle had taken up a new job with the charity and said there were lessons in terms of “due diligence for an employer when they take on an employee”.

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Sinn Féin’s stance was that it did not know about the references, did not know about his new job, that it was up to the British Heart Foundation to vet their employees and that it could not have alerted the charity to anything without risking prejudicing the case against McMonagle.

Then at the beginning of October, the chief constable of the PSNI Chief Constable said that warning a charity about a potential police investigation into McMonagle would not have prejudiced the investigation, contradicting Conor Murphy.

Murphy later said he was “happy to accept” the chief constable’s view.

Later that month a photo emerged showing Michelle O’Neill and McMonagle attending the same event in Stormont’s Great Hall while he was working for the British Heart Foundation.

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He carried the charity’s banner as they entered Parliament Buildings and mingled inside taking videos for the charity.

Ulster Unionist Party assembly member Doug Beattie said he found it “hard to believe” that O’Neill “didn’t notice her former colleague” at the Stormont event.

O’Neill maintains that she did not.

And then the British Heart Foundation released a statement.

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The charity said that their head, Fearghal McKinney, had a phone call with O’Neill in which she “agreed recent comments by her and party colleagues questioning the BHF’s due diligence process were unhelpful”.

Additionally, the charity said it told a senior Sinn Féin HR official about the McMonagle references in August 2023, contradicting statements made by Murphy and O’Neill.

O’Neill confirmed this and said the contact between the charity and Sinn Féin’s HR department was not brought to the attention of the party’s leadership at the time.

She described this as “a serious omission”.

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Reuters

So why did so much of what senior Sinn Féin figures initially said about how the party handled the issue change?

Speaking in the Dáil on 15 October, Sinn Féin president Mary Lou McDonald that the case has highlighted “issues and shortcomings” in the party’s internal procedures.

She said she has ordered “a complete overhaul of governance procedures” in the party.

“We will do everything necessary to ensure that an incident like this never arises again,” she said.

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McDonald said that this overhaul would “clarify for the avoidance of doubt, for any member of staff or any member of the party as regards procedures, what needs to be communicated and flagged and to whom”.

BBC News NI offered Sinn Féin the opportunity to give a comment for this article.

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Liam McBurney/PA Wire

Michelle O’Neill has said she understands why some people may feel hurt by her attendance at a Remembrance Sunday event this weekend.

The first minister is to become the first senior Sinn Féin figure to take part in an official Remembrance Sunday ceremony in Belfast.

In a letter published in The Irish News more than 100 relatives of victims of the Troubles from the Republican community in County Tyrone hit out at her decision.

The letter said they felt “deeply hurt, frustrated and angry”.

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O’Neill said she “understands that some people will have difficulty” with her attendance but she is “committed to be a first minister for all”.

‘Devastating’ for families

She was speaking during a visit to a primary school in Magherafelt.

The letter accused the first minister of “populism” and said Sinn Féin had “turned political somersaults into an Olympic sport”.

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‘This is about leadership’

“I want to live up to the pledge that I made to represent everybody here in society,” O’Neill said in response to the criticism.

She added that she will attend on Sunday but “absolutely understands” that people will feel hurt, “because there is nothing to celebrate in the horror of war”.

“Many people will have lost loved ones and will feel that very dearly, so I absolutely understand where anybody is coming from but for me this is about leadership in terms of my role as first minister for all the people that live here.”

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‘Disappointed but not surprised’

Seana Quinn and Angela McKearney are two of those who signed the letter.

They lost family members in incidents they believe involved collusion between paramilitaries and security forces.

Speaking to Radio Ulster’s Evening Extra programme, they said the First Minister’s decision left them “extremely disappointed.”

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Seana, who lost her brother in 1991, told the programme she believes “Sinn Féin are acknowledging British war crimes, we as a family are still very much hurting and the British government have refused to acknowledge the wrongdoings in the loss of my loved ones.”

She added: “I felt so much hurt. I was so disappointed, we have been fighting for justice for the death of my brother who was killed at 17 years of age.

“This language and terminology is used as an excuse to endorse the crown forces and to normalise their presence in our country.”

Angela, who lost both her uncle and brother in 1992, said she was “disappointed but not surprised, given Sinn Fein members over the years have met and greeted with the commander-in-chief of the British police and military.”

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She added: “If she is a first minister for all, I’m included in that.”

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