One of the most consequential questions on the ballot this year is the fate of the federal bureaucracy. To be sure, the starkly different visions of former President Donald Trump and President Joe Biden on such issues as defense, taxes, the border, and other topics will dominate the debate, but the destiny of the administrative state may eclipse all others.

For one thing, this latter issue deals with the very structure of government. And in a year when one side claims that democracy is on the ballot, the matter of the federal bureaucracy goes to the heart of whether government is acting according to the consent of the governed.

The growth in power of this unelected division of our government has come at the expense of the elected ones. Congress, for one, has abdicated much of its responsibility, passing laws now that are basically bare Christmas trees that bureaucrats later fill with ornaments, lights, and tinsel. That makes the agency rulemaking process sadly more consequential than Congress’s lawmaking process. 

My colleagues on Project 2025, an endeavor by the Heritage Foundation and more than 100 conservative groups to depose the deep state, tell me that Congress passes too many laws with the words, “The Secretary shall decide.”

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We just saw an example of this two months ago when the bureaucrats in the Interior Department issued a rule that gave the nation’s some 574 federally recognized Indian tribes veto power over academic research and curation of native artifacts.

The Biden administration said that this woke rule, which will hamper scholarship, was based on a law passed in 1990, which stated that Indian cultural items excavated from tribal or federal lands “shall be disposed of in accordance with regulations promulgated by the Secretary” of interior.

Well, the bureaucrats working for the secretary did exactly that, promulgating a panoply of things that maybe Congress never intended, such as giving tribal leaders final say. And the problem is that, unlike members of Congress, voters cannot fire the workers of the vast federal bureaucracy.

A related matter, and another reason why conservatives have finally gotten serious about the administrative state, is that when a conservative holds the White House, the bureaucracy also hobbles the executive branch.

That is because the federal bureaucracy skews Left—like, really Left.

Figures published by FedSmith, a political news service devoted to topics that interest federal workers—and thus not a publication likely to exaggerate these numbers—show a severe imbalance in political donations by bureaucrats.

The bureaucrats in the Department of Education, for example, gave more than 97% of their donated dollars to Democratic candidates, while at the Federal Communications Commission, it was 99.29%. At the Labor Department, it was 92%; at the Agriculture Department, 88%; Energy Department, 93%; Interior Department, 91%; and the Environmental Protection Agency, 90%. Workers at the Commerce Department (Commerce!) gave to Democrats at an 80% rate.

Much more concerning was the fact that workers at the Justice Department—in charge of enforcing our laws, if not actually writing them, as we saw in the example above—gave nearly 88% of their donated dollars to Democrats. Even workers at Homeland Security and the Defense Department gave to Democratic candidates at a 71% and 66% rate, respectively.

Is it any wonder that 91% of Washington, D.C., residents voted for Hillary Clinton in 2016, and 92% for Joe Biden in 2020?

Now, it is entirely possible that these very liberal federal bureaucrats are also paragons of impartiality when doing their jobs. In fact, I agree with my former colleague James Sherk when he writes, “Most career federal employees honorably serve the American people, diligently following orders and implementing policies of elected officials.”

But I also agree with Sherk when he adds, “However, a significant minority does not.” That significant minority can sabotage policy.

I made the point that the bureaucracy should not stymie conservative policymaking on the show Firing Line last month before a live audience at Hofstra University in Long Island, and the hostess Margaret Hoover asked me for examples.

I told her, for instance, how Trump’s first impeachment had come because a career bureaucrat and active-duty military officer detailed to the National Security Council, Alexander Vindman, took issue with a phone conversation that Trump had had with Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky regarding the investigation into Hunter Biden.

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Hoover thought about it for a second and said, “OK, give me a second example.” I couldn’t come up with another then and there, but I told Hoover that I would give her a list in my weekly column the day the show ran.

It runs tonight on PBS, so I’d like to offer here Sherk’s comprehensive report from 2022. It shows case after case of bureaucrats refusing to implement policies, intentionally delaying priorities, leaking to Congress and the media, withholding information, and even engaging in outright insubordination.

The report includes examples of Justice Department workers refusing to prosecute cases they ideologically disagreed with, Department of Health and Human Services career workers circumventing Trump’s hiring freeze, and many, many others.

Writing in the New York Sun a few months ago, Betsy McCaughey also offered examples of health official Deborah Birx deliberately circumventing Trump’s attempts to moderate COVID lockdowns, the General Services Administration ignoring Trump’s order to choose classical building designs, not modern ones, etc.

And as anyone who’s been in government, I myself witnessed in the Bush administration instances of career officials circumventing political appointees. Since career personnel outnumbers political 2.2 million to 4,000, this is a major problem.

The administrative state has been described as “the fourth branch of government.” But if you look at the Constitution, I promise you, it isn’t there. Whichever way you sit on this issue, it’s right that its fate should be decided at the ballot box.