patrick.net

Some methods and examples:

Career employees at DOL consistently told political appointees they could not take actions that were, in fact, within their legal discretion. One career employee repeatedly told political appointees that they could not issue Direct Final Rules (DFR)—a method of issuing rules without going through notice-and-comment proceedings. On the first day of the Biden Administration, DOL used a DFR to rescind internal regulations governing DOL’s rulemaking process. That DFR was signed by a career staffer who repeatedly told Trump political appointees that “you can never do a DFR.”

NLRB career employees “misstated” the dates the agency’s union contract could be reopened for renegotiation. Had political appointees taken their word for it, the deadline would have passed, and they would have been stuck with the contract negotiated under the Obama Administration. Fortunately, they double-checked the contract themselves, found that the career staff had given them the wrong dates, and reopened the contract.

Career lawyers at the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) routinely gave political appointees misleading legal analyses. They would only cite cases supporting their preferred position and omit contrary precedents. Some career lawyers refused to draft documents reflecting positions with which they disagreed.

Career staff at the Department of Education (DoEd) assigned to work on politically sensitive regulations, including the Title IX due process regulations, would either produce legally unusable drafts that would never withstand judicial review or drafts that significantly diverged from the DoEd’s policy goals. As a result, political appointees had to draft the regulations primarily by themselves.

https://americafirstpolicy.com/issues/20222702-federal-bureaucrats-resisted-president-trump