Justin Fox, Columnist

The Bureaucrats' Legitimacy Crisis

How do you work for an administration that is actively undermining you?

February 7, 2017 at 6:28 PM UTC

Justin Fox is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist covering business, economics and other topics involving charts. A former editorial director of the Harvard Business Review, he is author of “The Myth of the Rational Market.”

He can't fly alone.
Photographer: MANDEL NGAN/AFP/Getty Images

Provide news feedback or report an error

Site feedback:

Take our Survey

This article is for subscribers only.

These are interesting times to be a federal bureaucrat. You know, in the “may you live in interesting times” sense.

President Donald Trump’s executive order on immigration unleashed a wave of dissent in the State Department -- and a warning from White House press secretary Sean Spicer that dissenters should “either get with the program or they can go.” U.S. Representative Patrick McHenry, a member of the House Republican leadership, sent a letter to Federal Reserve Chair Janet Yellen last week demanding that the Fed stop negotiating agreements with foreign bank regulators “until President Trump has had an opportunity to nominate and appoint officials that prioritize America’s best interests.” Other House Republicans want to resurrect an 1876 rule that allows them to dock the pay of individual federal employees to $1.