The Unthinkable: Is It Time to Work for the Feds?

According to recent reports, seventy percent of the attorneys working the US Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division are quitting. Why? Because they just can’t stand that Trump’s idea of civil rights includes 1A, 2A, and genuine (non-DEI) equality before the law — they can’t bear the thought of being assigned cases that defend such rights. Those attorney’s will have to be replaced, and fast, because the Trump’s heroic Civil Rights appointee, Harmeet Dhillon, intends to fight aggressively for the civil rights of the American people. And it’s not just the attorneys they have to hire, but support staff as well.

Meanwhile, US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) is hiring 10,000 new agents. Recruitment for these agents has become so aggressive that some are even getting $50K signing bonuses. ICE is hiring support staff as well, all kinds of positions, not just field agents. Trump is actually enforcing the border, and because that hasn’t been done for years, there is a backlog of work to be done — millions of illegals that need to be found, processed, and deported.

Yes, while the Trump administration is cutting the federal workforce overall, it’s also hiring like mad in selected areas. And federal government hiring in this case is not a bad thing.

Like liberty? Maybe it’s time to do the unthinkable. I mean enter the swamp — work for liberty within the system.

Decent people have long looked at the federal government as a sort of bureaucratic Mordor, a place to be avoided, where patriots would be unwelcome and where one could hardly be proud to work, given the corrupt and wasteful things going on there.

That has, historically, been a fair perception, apart from the fed’s few legitimate functions. But for at least the next several years, possibly longer if luck holds out, fed work, at least in some capacities, will be hero’s work, a once in a lifetime chance to effect real change for the better.

Right now, ICE is deporting illegals as fast as it can. The Civil Rights Division is fighting race-based college admissions, petty aggressions against 1A and 2A by local and state governments, and voter fraud. The US Treasury is auditing and investigating a mountain of long-standing financial fraud, saving the country billions. The lefty bureaucracy that Trump inherited is not into any of this, which means they have to be replaced — and that means a ton of new hiring.

You don’t have to. The federal government is a far-flung enterprise, with offices in every state — Hawaii, Maryland, Idaho, you name it.

Additionally, while fully-remote federal jobs are no longer common, partially-remote jobs (that is, remote some days, in-office others) are very common, about 20% by my estimate based on the USAJobs website.

I gather that benefits vary a bit by type of fed occupation, but by the most objective indicator of cushiness, it’s absolutely plush.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics tracks something called the “quit rate.” This is the percent of workers who quit a job in any given month. Right now, the quit rate across all industries is 2% per month, or 24% annually, which means people are staying in jobs about 4 years on average. However, for federal government workers, the quit rate is just 0.5% per month, or 6% annually, which means workers with fed jobs hold them 16 years on average. That’s a long time to sit in one chair, and you wouldn’t do it unless that chair was very, very comfy.

The federal government hires pretty much everything. So rather than try to summarize, I’ll just say put in your criteria and see what pops up. The USAJobs website lists all the openings, and it’s fully searchable.

Don’t see what you want? The feds employ about three million people, and with 6% quitting annually it means that there are 180,000 new federal government job openings every year. That includes many, many occupations, so if they don’t have a job you want today, they may tomorrow. Be sure to enter in your resume so it will appear when their recruiters are looking for you. Also, it will pay to check the USAJobs website now and then.

So often the terrible things you hear about the federal government doing are really just the acts of a few people who had a free hand and used it to a nefarious end. One honest person can break up such a cabal. Even the simple presence of patriots will put the kibosh on treasonous behavior. Be “that guy” (or gal).

Of course, all good people hope that the federal government will one day be cut to a fraction of its current size and returned, and limited to, legitimate Constitutional duties. But meanwhile, it’s important that it not be exclusively owned by the left-wing blob. Their intentions for America’s future are anything but good.

If you’re looking for work and have long thought you would never work for the Swamp, take another look. At this moment in history, reform-minded patriots may be just what the federal government needs.