The Resistance Inside the Machine

Trump’s new opposition.

A new poll has revealed a deep partisan divide inside the federal bureaucracy, driven by resistance toward President Donald Trump’s agenda, especially among employees who voted for Kamala Harris in 2024. The report, published by the Napolitan Institute on Thursday, showed many Democrats within the federal workforce are prepared to subvert the current administration’s actions and policies. Some even suggested they would not follow lawful orders from the president if they disagreed with them. These are unelected people who are not beholden to voters and wield incredible power. Fault lines have shifted. A week ago, the resistance was seemingly out in the open, but now it appears it also resides inside the machine governing the country. In other words, the call is coming from inside the house.

The New Resistance

The report is titled “The Resistance: The First 100 Days.” Participants in the surveys, conducted in March 2025, included “Federal Government Managers, members of the Elite One Percent, and Registered Voters nationwide.” One of the biggest findings was the “significant levels of disagreement between Republican and Democratic Federal Government Managers on key policy initiatives,” revealing a “highly partisan divide within the federal bureaucracy that confirms that the Administrative State is neither neutral, nor non-partisan in its efforts to govern.”

Indeed, 76% of Federal Government Managers who voted for Kamala Harris say they will “resist the Trump Administration,” and 92% of Trump voters in the same cohort say they “will support the administration.” That is not a divide but a massive crack in the foundation of the democratic process. Even worse is that only 16% of managers in the group “would follow a legal order from the president if they disagreed with it. Seventy-five percent would ignore the order and do what they thought was best.” It gets better (not really): A combined 72% of these employees would either “strongly resist” or “somewhat resist” the president’s agenda, using their own “political efforts.” Only 16% would remain neutral.

The idea that so many unelected officials believe following a president’s orders is optional might indicate a problem unimagined until now. A resistance like this could be insidious, too, because it is inside government buildings where few outsiders visit, so there’s no telling what’s really happening. At least when it comes to the elected politicians who oppose Trump, they do so in the open, with filibusters, signs, social media posts, astroturfed protests, and cringe videos.

Perhaps Trump’s opposition should take a peek at a recent Harvard-Harris poll, in which 61% of respondents said they don’t believe Democrats should be so quick to resist the president but instead take a “wait-and-see attitude.” Only 39% think Democrats should “oppose everything” the president does. Yes, sharing these percentages might be futile because the resistance is unlikely to listen to Americans’ opinions. Oh, that’s right – federal workers don’t have to worry about what voters think. Still, their actions will likely reflect on the Democratic Party and, in turn, affect the public’s perception of it. And at this point, the left’s downward trajectory is so close to hitting bottom that it could be one wrong move away from lying in the fetal position until memories fade.

More importantly, though, these bureaucratic detractors have the ability to disrupt Americans’ lives. Yet many only seem concerned with their own agendas, not the health and prosperity of America. Maybe this should be a wake-up call for people interested in preserving a functioning government. It could happen. “[W]ith such high levels of chaos in this bureaucratic ‘civil war’,” said Scott Rasmussen, founder of the Napolitan Institute, “there may be an opening for the common sense voice of the American people to rise above the political noise and once again become the shaping force of the nation’s dialogue.”

All we can do is wait and see. As the administration pushes forward, though, it will no doubt enact more policies with which the opposition disagrees. Then what? Will these bureaucrats serve the public or their own interests?