The Trump administration is working diligently to eliminate bureaucratic bloat and save taxpayers money.

According to individuals identifying as bureaucrats in Reddit's top haunts for American federal workers, these efforts — long championed by a democratically elected president who presently enjoys record-high approval ratings — are apparently comparable to the Holocaust, to the 9/11 terrorist attacks in New York City, and to a "coup." One user stated in a post, again without a trace of irony, "We're at war."

Besides affording the American public a window into the kinds of derangement and delusion that plague elements of the federal workforce, the increasingly popular Reddit community r/fednews has furnished left-wing publications with supposed evidence of deep-staters' "fighting spirit" as well as with the hope that the "resistance" that undermined the first Trump administration is back.

It is clear from a closer look at the users, engagements, rhetoric, and strategy that appear on r/fednews — which at the time of publication had over 375,000 members — that if reflective of a broader resistance movement, the Trump administration likely has little to worry about this time around.

Cleaning house

President Donald Trump has expressed a desire for nearly a decade to "drain the swamp" in Washington. He revisited and campaigned on the proposal ahead of an election he won handily and is now delivering the goods.

Upon retaking office, Trump ended remote work for federal employees, which is expected to ultimately prompt a great many voluntary exits; took an ax to the federal DEI regime, shuttering race-obsessive offices nationwide and putting multitudes of bureaucrats on administrative leave; ordered a freeze on the hiring of federal civilian employees; and reinstated his 2020 executive order establishing the Schedule F employment category for federal employees, which makes it easier to remove insubordinate and useless bureaucrats from an estimated pool of 50,000 eligible candidates.

These steps alone had bureaucrats, Democratic lawmakers, and other establishmentarians throwing a conniption, but then the administration went a step further and offered buyouts to millions of federal workers in an effort to expedite the downsizing process.

Even though a Clinton-appointed federal judge recently imposed a restraining order against the buyout — which approximately 3% of the federal workforce reportedly had accepted by Feb. 10 — bureaucrats know that the writing is on the wall.

When pressed on how the administration is presently faring in its efforts to address bureaucratic bloat and inefficacy, Donald Devine, senior scholar at the Fund for American Studies and former director of the U.S. Office of Personnel Management during the Reagan administration, told Blaze News, "I think they are doing very well in the first phase, letting the employees know who is in charge."

Weeping and gnashing of teeth

While bureaucrats may not want to admit who is in charge, they appear to at the very least understand that it's no longer them. That has not, however, stopped federal workers from trying to undermine the Trump administration at every turn.

Some bureaucrats have begun plotting petty ways to impede the work undertaken by the Trump administration, particularly by members of the U.S. Department of Government Efficiency.

The Washington Post reported, for instance, that General Services Administration staffers created an encrypted chat where together they could scheme how to hide sensitive defense data. Other federal workers reportedly marked emails from the Trump administration as spam "just to piss them off."

Meanwhile, at r/fednews and r/feddiscussion, where paranoia about infiltrators and spies is rampant, there have been calls to:

• "hold the line" and reject buyout packages;
• kick theDOGE requests and orders up to senior management and then waste time waiting for approvals in writing;
• "develop" medical conditions to get around return-to-work orders;
• defecate in chairs;
• shield probationary personnel from accountability or termination;
• slow-walk communications and tasks; and
• seek involvement in lawsuits challenging Trump's policies.

Other commentators who have taken the governmental house cleaning personally have proposed targeting Elon Musk and others in Trump's orbit with boycotts in hopes of teaching them a lesson.

For instance, one user who goes by Oldschoolfool22, a top commenter on the subreddit, implored his fellow travelers to abandon X, sell their Teslas or let them "self drive off a cliff," sell off Crypto, and avoid watching SpaceX videos "unless it is a crash."

'Punch the s*** out of their f***ing f*** faces.'

Another top commenter, Doubledsmcgee, indicated that she cannot sell off her Tesla but in an act of defiance put a small sticker on its back window condemning Elon Musk.

Doubledsmcgee appears to be one among a great number self-identified bureaucrats on the subreddit primarily outraged over the mandated return to work.

According to the user's comment history, she started work for the Department of the Interior as a grant specialist around 2022. The trouble is that she lives in California, thousands of miles away from her Virginia office where there is now an expectation she'll turn up.

While angry over a matter of personal inconvenience, Doubledsmcgee, like others on the subreddit, suggested that her fight to avoid leaving home is really about honor, stating, "We'll fight for our place because we know the service we provide and the steadfast dedication that we do it with. Civil service isn't always glamorous but it will forever be more respectable and honorable than what [M]usk, Trump and his supporters will ever do in life. Keep the faith."

'Most administrations give in too easily.'

A self-identified Internal Revenue Service employee and Kamala Harris voter who goes by titaniumlid is similarly upset about the return to work. While he alternatively suggested that he can manage the two-hour-and-fifteen-minute commute that it'll take to try to keep his job, he "will absolutely put up any and all posters / propaganda I can to fight this bulls*** if they make me come back and sit at my desk."

Not all self-identified feds on the subreddit appear to think of resistance in terms of poster campaigns and petty schemes.

A frequent poster in the bureaucratic haunt, Informal-Fig-7116, has referenced violent fantasies. When responding to a post by an apparent non-straight fed telling people not to quit, Informal-Fig-7116 wrote, "I'm ready to go back into the closet to sharpen my knife."

On another occasion, the user suggested that they put pictures of Elon Musk and "Comrade Amanda," a possible reference to Amanda Scales, the new chief of staff at the OPM, on a boxing bag "so I can punch the s*** out of their f***ing f*** faces."

Lawsuits, not Reddit fantasies

When asked about the prospect of another "resistance" and presented with some of the suggestions on r/fednews, Donald Devine, who helped cut 100,000 bureaucratic jobs while at the OPM and co-authored the Project 2025 "Mandate for Leadership" chapter on how to manage the bureaucracy, told Blaze News, "It is nothing new and Reagan faced as much and kept up the pressure."

"Most administrations give in too easily. Trump, Musk, [Office of Management and Budget Director Russell] Vought, the agency heads and the rest are proving they are the exception so far," added Devine.

Devine indicated that the greatest challenges in the weeks and the months ahead will be for the administration to "keep up the initial pressure," adding that the "unions are the biggest problem and they need a plan to confront them."

Thousands of bureaucrats have rushed to join the American Federation of Government Employees and other unions in recent weeks with the hope of securing some modicum of protection against accountability. Brimming with new members, the AFGE and other unions have filed lawsuits, trying to hamstring the Trump administration's efficiency push and corresponding policies.

In fact, the AFGE was among the unions whose lawsuit prompted U.S. District Judge George O'Toole Jr.'s restraining order against the federal buyout.

'Such behavior undermines democracy, as it enables government power to be wielded without accountability.'

Harrison Fields, White House principal deputy press secretary, said in a statement to Blaze News, "Slashing waste, fraud, and abuse, and becoming better stewards of the American taxpayer's hard-earned dollars might be a crime to Democrats, but it's not a crime in a court of law."

While the Trump administration has its fair share of court battles to fight, it continues to press forward on other fronts.

The OPM formally submitted draft regulations on Monday that will reportedly make it easier to can bureaucrats who push back against presidential orders.

"It is well documented that many career federal employees use their positions to advance their personal political or policy preferences instead of implementing the elected President’s agenda," said a copy of the draft text obtained by Politico. "Such behavior undermines democracy, as it enables government power to be wielded without accountability to the voters or their elected representatives."

The draft regulation would reportedly also strike at the heart of former President Joe Biden's efforts to shield deep-staters from losing their civil service protections should their positions be switched to an exempt category.

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