It cannot be overstated the extent to which the lack of disaster in Trump's first term seems to have been the result of people who work for him simply ignoring him most of the time, nor the fact that there seems to be *literally nobody* in the current administration doing the same thing.

like civil servants are extremely limited in publicly expressing political opinions in a context where their identity can be tracked down - in practice, if not in the letter of the law - but now "political opinions" includes defending the notion that their jobs should exist at all.

I resonate with this thread - speaking as a municipal govt employee, not federal - but there is a very real tension between the need to maintain "detached subject matter expert" professionalism and the ongoing attack against the ideas of subject matter expertise and civil service in general