Late last month, an alarming email landed in the inboxes of American diplomats stationed around the world.
"We are operating in uncharted territory," it began. "The environment facing the Foreign Service today is unlike anything we’ve seen."
The message was sent by the union that represents the State Department’s workforce, and it warned of the risks of offering candid advice or objective assessments in the second Trump era.
Diplomats posted at embassies abroad are being called back from their assignments "after providing less-than-positive analysis or unwelcome recommendations to leadership," according to the Aug. 28 email, which has not been previously reported.
"Even if offered discreetly, any statement, verbal or written, can be politicized and used against you," read the message from the American Foreign Service Association. "That is the reality we face."
The union’s warning to its members marks the latest example of how federal civil servants – at the State Department and across the government – are facing growing pressure from Trump’s White House to downplay information or views that do not strictly adhere to the president’s partisan agenda, according to current and former federal employees.
For decades, presidents have relied on experts in the federal government to try to stay ahead of looming natural disasters, economic downturns, risks to public safety, public health hazards, geopolitical shifts and credible terrorist threats. But an administration that ignores or muzzles the federal workforce runs the risk of flying blind, making decisions with incomplete or skewed information with potentially disastrous consequences, former officials and experts say.
"What we’re seeing in the diplomatic corps right now is fear," John Dinkelman, a retired career diplomat who is now president of the American Foreign Service Association, told NBC News.
All presidents have valued loyalty, particularly among Cabinet members and senior officials who work in jobs set aside for political appointees. But Trump and his team have pushed for political allegiance in an unprecedented way, demanding career civil servants jettison impartiality for a more partisan stance backing the administration’s agenda, according to current and former officials and experts.
“I am getting reports from literally all over the world of individuals who are reticent to offer up their well trained and well experienced opinions regarding the situation on the ground, the way in which foreign interlocutors will view our positions, and even to propose — heaven forbid — an alternate course of action,” Dinkelman said.
He declined to say how many diplomats have been reassigned for offering candid assessments, to avoid exposing his colleagues to potential further retaliation.
State Department spokesperson Tommy Pigott said Secretary Marco Rubio "values candid insights from patriotic Americans who have chosen to serve their country."
"In fact, this administration reorganized the entire State Department to ensure those on the front lines — the regional bureaus and the embassies — are in a position to impact policies,” Pigott added. “What we will not tolerate is people using their positions to actively undermine the duly elected President’s objectives.”
A White House spokesperson, Anna Kelly, defended the administration’s approach.
“It’s appropriate and expected for unelected officials across the administration to ensure all actions align with President Trump’s America First agenda that people voted for,” Kelly said in an email.
A series of recent firings across federal agencies have shocked current and former career civil servants and members of Congress.
In May, the administration fired two of the country’s most senior intelligence analysts after they presided over an assessment that contradicted the administration’s assertion that the Venezuelan regime of Nicolas Maduro exerts direct control over the Tren de Aragua cartel.
On Aug. 1, the head of the Bureau of Labor Statistics was fired after her office delivered a report on employment statistics that indicated a weakening jobs market. Trump claimed without evidence the numbers were “faked.”
And late last month, the three-star general leading the Defense Intelligence Agency was abruptly dismissed after his agency produced an initial intelligence assessment that found U.S. strikes on Iran’s nuclear sites had a limited effect, seeming to contradict Trump’s claim at the time that the facilities had been “obliterated.”
“The demand for loyalty that we seem to be seeing is deeper and broader than almost at any other time in the history of the country,” said Austin Sarat, a political science professor at Amherst University.
Prizing 'fidelity'
The civil service was created in the late 1800s to stem corruption and create an apolitical government workforce based on merit instead of doling out jobs to reward partisan favors. Since then, these federal employees have toiled in relative obscurity, performing the kind of behind-the-scenes work that insiders and experts say is crucial to a functioning government.
During Trump's first term, he frequently railed against "deep state" actors in the federal government. But Trump and his aides did not fire or demote large numbers of career civil servants.
That has become a focus of his second administration. Since his inauguration in January, Trump and his deputies have carried out a purge of career civil servants who they deem insufficiently loyal to his agenda, and have placed a heightened priority on political allegiance to the president when hiring new government employees, current and former officials say.
Trump’s political appointees at the State Department have rewritten the foreign service’s criteria for promotions, adding a new category: “fidelity.” Among a list of skills and traits, including communication, leadership, management and knowledge, fidelity is listed at the top, according to the department’s new scorecard for employees.
U.S. diplomats will be evaluated on how closely they follow “the priorities and guidance of department leadership,” including “protecting and promoting executive power” and “zealously” executing government policy, the State Department document says.
Under the revised standards, employees hoping to advance to senior positions must show how they are pursuing current administration goals and "resolving uncertainty on the side of fidelity to one’s chain of command."
Last week, at a town hall-style gathering for the foreign service union in Washington, leaders expressed grave concern over the potential chilling effect on how diplomats carry out their work.
Rohit Nepal, a career diplomat and vice president of the American Foreign Service Association, addressed the new emphasis on fidelity, which he described as a "prioritization of us telling folks what they want to hear rather than what we're actually seeing."
"I’ll tell you right now that good policy, whether it’s in a Democratic or Republican administration, always starts with good information,” added Nepal, who served as the No. 2 ranking diplomat at the U.S. embassy in Jordan from 2022 to this past January of this year.
The administration’s approach runs the risk of depriving the president and his deputies of crucial information needed to make sound decisions, Nepal said.
“I’m afraid right now that there’s a lot of folks out there who are afraid to hit send on an email or hit send on one of our reporting cables, because they’re worried that someone in Washington is going to read it and see it as disloyal,” Nepal said. “And what that means is our leadership is not getting the information that they need to make decisions in a complex and difficult world.”
Pigott, the State Department spokesman, said the new promotion criteria would produce better results for the country instead of focusing on promoting diversity.
“Under the leadership of President Trump, the U.S. government has finally rid itself of destructive DEI metrics and replaced them with competency, results, and commitment to advancing the interests of America,” Pigott said. “Our nation is safer and more prosperous as a result.”
Even before he entered politics, Trump has spoken of loyalty as the key trait he looks for in staff and in potential business partners.
“I value loyalty above everything else,” Trump wrote in his 2007 book “Think Big” — “more than brains, more than drive, and more than energy.”
Donald Kettl, a professor emeritus at the University of Maryland, said Trump appears to want to turn the clock back to a time more than a century ago when government workers had no legal protections and no union to represent them.
If the administration muzzles civil servants, the president and his aides will be making decisions based on an incomplete picture and without experts asking tough questions, Kettl said.
Trump and his administration “run the risk of blinding themselves to things that they ought to know before they do something," Kettl said, leading to actions that "end up causing implications that they never would have dreamed of."
