When it comes to staffing the federal government, President Donald Trump says he wants the best people, but what he really wants is blind devotion.
The most recent target of Trump’s demand for complete fealty: those in the hiring pipeline for the Foreign Service. One of the requirements to join the Foreign Service is to pass the Foreign Service Officer Test. These particular people already did that and passed the test—but they now have to take a new version, and it's a new version that revolves around how much the potential employee loves Trump.
The Daily Caller, ever the mouthpiece for the administration, blared that changes to the FSOT were “merit-based” and not “DEI principles.” Conservatives were furious that the existing FSOT asked questions about how often the applicant had done things like seeking out people from other countries and cultures, and working with people whose first language is not English.
Far from being forbidden DEI, those are questions that are actually relevant and necessary for Foreign Service officers, whose jobs consist of integrating with, and talking to, people from other countries.
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Instead of those questions, the “Merit Hiring Plan” promulgated by the Trump administration now asks every federal job applicant things like how they would “advance the president’s executive orders and policy priorities” and to name “one or two executive orders or policy initiatives that are significant to you.”
Good lord. They could have just handed the applicants a note saying, “Do you like Donald Trump? Yes or Yes?”
Those fawning questions have replaced the six personal narrative essays that applicants used to be required to write, which covered substantive knowledge and intellectual, communication, and interpersonal skills. Yeah, you wouldn’t want your applicants to display any of those skills, nosiree.
Fun fact: There is no passing score on this new test. Instead, the State Department will move people forward based on having the highest score and meeting the entirely vibes-based “needs of the foreign service.”
The new hiring policy is pretty much the same as the administration’s policy for Foreign Service promotions, announced back in July. To move up in the Foreign Service, employees now have to display “fidelity” to Trump’s policies. This includes, explicitly, “protecting and promoting executive power.” So people at the Foreign Service won’t be assessed on the foreign or service part of their job, but on how much time they spend yelling about domestic matters—namely, how Trump should have even more power.
The Foreign Service is only the latest target in the administration’s comprehensive push to turn the federal government into a captive cheering section for Donald Trump. Last month, the Environmental Protection Agency fired several people who had signed a public letter of dissent in June that criticized the administration’s policies.
Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy is also currently heading up NASA.
This isn’t an administration interested in hiring the best people or ensuring the best people stay in their jobs. Trump is far more interested in employees with a sort of blind, vicious loyalty, and a willingness to do anything Trump says. However, this means that Trump gets stuck with people who have no acumen, education, or training for the job they are in, but who are nonetheless convinced that they are absolutely killing it.
So that’s why we have messes like former “Real World” star Sean Duffy heading up NASA, which is playing out about as well as if you let a bear drive a semi. Duffy’s combination of whininess and bullying does not cover up the fact that he has no idea what he is doing.
It’s also how we got Dan Bongino as deputy director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation despite his never having worked for the FBI or having any other relevant qualifications. Bongino did have, though, some qualities Trump adores, like being a right-wing podcaster and fellow conspiracy theorist. Bongino is apparently doing such a bang-up job that Trump has given him a babysitter, former Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey, who will serve as his co-deputy director.
Hiring all of these wildly unqualified people also means that the administration has to constantly try to inflate their resumes to pretend that they were chosen for legitimate reasons. Take Paul Ingrassia, who now heads the Office of Special Counsel. Ingrassia is only 30 years old and only finished law school in 2022. His only legal work seems to have been representing accused human trafficker Andrew Tate, but whoopsie, he wasn’t admitted to the bar yet, which didn’t happen until July 2024. According to Trump, though, Ingrassia is a “highly respected attorney, writer, and Constitutional Scholar.”
Come on, man. This is just embarrassing.
None of these people would be employable at any level in any functioning administration. But the Trump administration is building a non-functioning workforce, eliminating the people who actually know how to do their jobs in favor of a staff of do-nothings with a unique combination of malice and utter lack of qualifications. They’re malleable and they’re mean, and that’s all Trump really wants in an employee.
