Federal employees’ lives are affected day in, day out by Donald Trump and his policies—often, they’re tasked with executing administration policies. Now they’re being told that, while at work, they can’t talk about resisting him or whether he should be impeached. That’s according to a new guidance from the federal agency that enforces the Hatch Act, the law that prohibits federal employees from engaging in partisan politics at work.
Because Trump launched his 2020 campaign unusually early, the guidance says, talking about him is automatically election-related and partisan:
“We understand that the ‘resistance’ and ‘#resist’ originally gained prominence shortly after President Trump’s election in 2016 and generally related to efforts to oppose administration policies,” the guidance said. “However, ‘resistance,’ ‘#resist’ and similar terms have become inextricably linked with the electoral success (or failure) of the president.” [...]
“Advocating for a candidate to be impeached, and thus potentially disqualified from holding federal office, is clearly directed at the failure of that candidate’s campaign for federal office,” the guidance said. “Similarly, advocating against a candidate’s impeachment is activity directed at maintaining that candidate’s eligibility for federal office and therefore also considered political activity.”
This is a more extreme gag order than has usually been slapped on federal workers—another sign of how not-normal things are in the age of Trump. And it has the potential to have a chilling effect on discussions about policy issues that should be fair game.
What’s particularly funny-not-funny about this is how often members of Trump’s inner circle have violated the rules that apply to them without real sanction.