In theory, the bureaucracy functions as the steady, apolitical engine of governance, immune to the ideological swings of electoral politics. In practice, however, this ideal has never been entirely realized.
Trump’s return to the White House in 2025, a once unthinkable prospect for the Left, unfolded with a strange and unsettling smoothness. His victory had been hard-fought—surviving four criminal indictments, a battery of civil lawsuits, and even two assassination attempts—but by Inauguration Day, the machinery of government appeared to be functioning as usual.
The protests, while loud, were not paralyzing. For the first time since 1989, not a single Democrat in Congress objected to certifying the victory of a Republican president-elect. To the casual observer, the transition of power proceeded without the bitter chaos of 2016, when Democrats claimed the Russian government hacked the election to install Trump and then spent the next four years proclaiming he was illegitimate.
Yet beneath the surface, a different kind of Resistance was taking shape.
Unlike in Trump’s first term, when Democrats were blindsided by his unexpected victory and were left scrambling for legal and political avenues to challenge his legitimacy, this time the opposition forces had prepared in advance. The response was less about street protests and more about institutional entrenchment.
On December 19, 2024, a month before Trump’s return to office a coalition of federal employee unions and left-wing progressive nonprofits announced the formation of Civil Service Strong, as a combined resource for the Deep State.
The Civil Service Strong coalition is primarily a project of the left-wing advocacy and litigation group Democracy Forward. It also includes major public-sector unions like the American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE) and the National Federation of Federal Employees (NFFE), as well as advocacy groups such as the Government Accountability Project and Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW).
Coalition members financial backers included some of the most influential players in progressive philanthropy: the Sandler Foundation; the New Venture Fund (part of the powerful Arabella Advisors network); the Democracy Fund, founded by billionaire Pierre Omidyar; and even the George Soros–backed Open Society Foundations.
Some of the personalities behind the effort are familiar names, such as Marc Elias and Norm Eisen, both left-leaning activist lawyers.
The stated mission was to protect the integrity of the federal workforce—2.3 million career employees, most of whom are shielded from dismissal by decades-old civil service protections. But beyond the rhetoric of “good governance,” the group’s implicit purpose was unmistakable: to create a fortified network of government employees resistant to Trump’s policies.
In theory, the bureaucracy functions as the steady, apolitical engine of governance, immune to the ideological swings of electoral politics. In practice, however, this ideal has never been entirely realized. The Trump years saw an emboldened bureaucracy that, at times, acted as a counterweight to the elected head of the executive branch.
While Democrats and the media spend much time alleging Trump is a threat to democracy, it’s impossible to imagine what is democratic about unelected bureaucrats who can’t be fired for obstructing the agenda of the elected leader of the executive branch.
Trump and billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk, who headed up the Department of Government Efficiency, set a goal of reducing the work force by 12 percent.
The threat itself has rattled about 260,000 federal workers to quit by the end of the fiscal year either through buyouts or other incentives, Reuters reported.
Trump previously also unveiled an unprecedented offer: a voluntary buyout program allowing career federal employees to resign in exchange for full pay and benefits through the end of the fiscal year, a generous deal the White House says more than 75,000 federal workers gladly accepted.
Still, others were not as eager to give up power accumulated over time in various silos, and the assorted left-wing groups aligned to represent the vast majority who hung on.
Rob Shriver, managing director of Civil Service Strong, bemoaned the public’s attitude toward government employees in a May 16 op-ed published in Roll Call.
“Not since the spoils system of the 1880s has public service been so demonized by the government, nor have civil servants been so cruelly treated,” wrote Shriver, who was President Joe Biden’s acting director of the Office of Personnel Management. “Through firings, forced resignations and hollowing out of agencies, the Trump administration, led by Elon Musk and his so-called ‘DOGE,’ is dismantling the federal government’s ability to deliver services essential to local communities.”
The Civil Service Strong coalition pledged to provide federal employees with legal assistance, union representation, and a “response network” for those facing firing or reassignment under the new administration. They also vowed to track what they called “ongoing attacks on the civil service,” including potential efforts to shrink the federal workforce.
Trump’s administration wasted no time in reviving Schedule F, an executive order he had introduced late in his first term but which was swiftly rescinded by President Biden. The policy sought to reclassify tens of thousands of career employees as political appointees, effectively stripping them of civil service protections. By some estimates, this would affect anywhere from 50,000 to 100,000 federal workers—a fraction of the bureaucracy but enough, in theory, to weaken its institutional resistance.
The Deep State abused Trump in his first term. This time, he was fighting back.
Deep State unions
If any organization seems a natural fit for a coalition dedicated to defending the federal bureaucracy, it is the American Federation of Government Employees . . .
President Donald Trump signed an executive order instructing 18 federal agencies to end collective bargaining. That’s barely a ripple in the federal workforce, but it’s a start.
As might be expected, unions representing federal employees sued.
“The right of federal employees to join a union is protected by the Constitution and has been supported by presidents of both parties for decades,” Randy Erwin, president of the National Federation of Federal Employees said.
“We believe the Trump administration is blatantly violating both the Constitution and federal law in a misguided attempt to bust federal unions,” Erwin continued. “In our view, this is the most anti-worker and anti-union action this country has ever seen.”
The NFFE, a member of the Civil Service Strong coalition, traces its founding to 1917, and the union has long positioned itself as the guardian of government employees.
The NFFE became affiliated with the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers and has long prided itself on being the first union to represent civil service employees—predating even some of the federal protections it now defends. It claims that only postal workers have had an organized presence in government longer.
Over the decades, the union has framed itself as a progressive force within the federal workforce. From its founding, it included women in leadership, and in 1963, it actively pushed for the passage of the Equal Pay Act. By 1986, it had established the Federal Employees Education and Assistance Fund, designed to provide emergency financial relief and scholarships to government workers and their families.
Today, with 110,000 members spread across 200 locals nationwide, NFFE’s influence spans multiple federal agencies. Its strongest footholds lie within the Department of Defense, the Forest Service, the Department of Veterans Affairs, and the General Services Administration—agencies with sprawling bureaucracies and workforces that, in many cases, view Trump’s proposals with apprehension. The U.S. Park Service, the Army Corps of Engineers, and the Department of Housing and Urban Development also count large contingents of NFFE members.
If any organization seems a natural fit for a coalition dedicated to defending the federal bureaucracy, it is the American Federation of Government Employees, the largest union representing federal workers, with a presence in nearly every major agency.
In late April, AFGE was the lead plaintiff in a coalition of unions, nonprofits, and local governments—with counsel from Democracy Forward—in a lawsuit against the Trump administration to stop DOGE’s efforts for reorganizing government.
With more than 320,000 dues-paying members, AFGE’s influence extends deep into the workings of the federal government, particularly within the Department of Justice, the Department of Defense, the Department of Veterans Affairs, and the Social Security Administration. Internally, the union employs about 400 staffers.
The organization and its political action committee (PAC) are funded through dues-paying federal employees.
The AFGE was founded in 1932, the year President Franklin Roosevelt was elected. Yet Roosevelt said, “the process of collective bargaining, as usually understood, cannot be transplanted into the public service.”
However, three decades later, another Democratic president had a different ideal.
President John F. Kennedy’s Executive Order 10988—signed in 1962—solidified the AFGE’s power. JFK is generally viewed as a more conservative president than FDR. But with this executive order, he granted federal workers the right to collectively bargain with government agencies. That order, which institutionalized public-sector unionization at the federal level, remains one of the most consequential victories for organized labor in Washington.
AFGE has never hidden its political leanings. In 2024, AFGE PAC contributed 96.39 percent of its $891,433 in political contributions to Democratic candidates, according to Open Secrets. In 2020, the PAC contributed 95.9 percent of its $1.1 million in donations to Democrats. The spent $1.3 million supporting Democratic candidates in 2016, compared to just $102,000 for Republicans. This financial alignment reflects a broader reality: While public-sector unions technically represent workers regardless of party affiliation, their institutional interests have traditionally aligned them with Democrats.
In 2017, data from the Department of Labor showed that 60 percent of all corruption cases within federal-sector unions involved the AFGE. Just the year before, 10 AFGE officials were either convicted or pleaded guilty to a range of crimes, including embezzlement, wire fraud, bank fraud, and making false statements. These cases painted a picture of a union that, while positioning itself as a defender of federal integrity, was struggling with its own ethical lapses.
Perhaps even more damning was AFGE’s connection to the Department of Veterans Affairs waiting list scandal. The controversy erupted when it was revealed that VA hospitals had manipulated wait times, concealing delays that left veterans without critical health care. Some AFGE employees, rather than focusing on patient care, were working full-time on union business under a provision known as “official time.”
This allowed them to conduct union-related activities while being paid by the federal government. Among their tasks was compiling what became known as a “management hit list”—a document targeting three dozen VA managers the union wanted removed.
For an organization that claims to stand as a bulwark against corruption and political interference, such episodes raise questions.
Lawfare arms of the resistance
Few liberal watchdog groups have wielded their influence as aggressively as Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington . . .
In a less-than-compelling means of proving just how evenhanded and nonpartisan they were, in April five former Justice Department attorneys went to work for Democracy Forward. Another four followed suit in May.
If there was ever a legal entity designed for the express purpose of countering a Trump presidency, it might be Democracy Forward. The organization, a 501(c)(4) litigation and advocacy group, along with its affiliated educational arm, the Democracy Forward Foundation, emerged in 2017 as a direct response to Trump’s first administration. It was the brainchild of high-level Democratic operatives who saw the courts as a battlefield to obstruct and constrain the president’s agenda at every possible turn.
The chairman of the board of directors of Democracy Forward is Marc Elias, an election lawyer who represented Hillary Clinton’s 2016 campaign. Elias became synonymous with the party’s most consequential legal battles, from contesting election integrity laws to leading post-election litigation efforts.
Under his guidance, Democracy Forward took a litigious approach to Trump’s presidency, launching a barrage of ethics complaints and lawsuits. Some cases tackled policy disputes, while others veered into the seemingly trivial—such as an allegation that Ivanka Trump had illegally promoted her fashion line by wearing its apparel at official government events.
As the 2024 election cycle unfolded, the group showed no sign of slowing down. By June, The New York Times and National Review had reported that Democracy Forward was already drafting lawsuits in anticipation of a second Trump administration, preparing to challenge executive orders, agency decisions, and personnel policies before they could even take effect.
In 2023, the largest donor to the Democracy Forward Foundation was the Fidelity Investments Charitable Gift Fund, which gave $4.5 million. Fidelity is the nation’s largest public charity and has disbursed funds across the ideological spectrum.
Another major contributor was the Sandler Foundation, which provided $2.5 million. Founded by billionaire banking couple Herbert and Marion Sandler, the foundation has long funneled money into some of the most influential left-wing organizations in the country, including the Center for American Progress, the American Civil Liberties Union, and ProPublica.
A third key donor was the Susan Thomas Buffett Foundation, which gave $2.14 million to Democracy Forward in 2023. Established in 1964 by Warren Buffett and named after his late first wife, the foundation is widely regarded as the world’s largest private funder of reproductive health initiatives, particularly abortion. Its support for Democracy Forward aligned with a broader Democratic strategy—one that views Trump’s presidency not just as a political setback, but as an existential threat requiring constant legal resistance.
If Democracy Forward’s first iteration was about resistance, its second act is shaping up to be one of relentless litigation, aimed at curbing the power of a presidency.
Few liberal watchdog groups have wielded their influence as aggressively as Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, better known as CREW. At its inception in 2001, the organization was envisioned as a liberal counterweight to Judicial Watch, the conservative group that had spent years dogging the Clinton administration with lawsuits and Freedom of Information Act requests.
Over time, CREW has evolved beyond its initial mission of government accountability, positioning itself as a legal battering ram against Republican officials, with a particular fixation on Donald Trump.
From the start, CREW’s DNA bore the imprint of the Democratic operative class. David Brock—once conservative journalist turned liberal attack dog—wove the organization into his sprawling network, which included Media Matters for America, devoted to targeting conservative media, and American Bridge, a super PAC that meticulously compiled opposition research on Republican candidates.
One of CREW’s early architects, Norm Eisen, would later serve as President Barack Obama’s ethics czar before resurfacing in 2023 as the chair of another Civil Service Strong partner, States Defending Democracy Action.
In November 2022, CREW President Noah Bookbinder issued a stark public warning to Donald Trump: If the former president attempted to return to office, CREW would pursue every legal avenue to block him from the ballot under Section 3 of the 14th Amendment—the rarely invoked provision barring anyone who has “engaged in insurrection or rebellion” from holding public office.
“The evidence that Trump engaged in insurrection is overwhelming,” Bookbinder declared. Yet for all its supposed clarity, no court had convicted Trump of insurrection, nor had he even been criminal charged. His 2021 impeachment in the House ended in acquittal in the Senate.
CREW pressed forward with its 14th Amendment litigation, ultimately securing a big win in December 2023 when the Colorado Supreme Court ruled in its favor, ordering Trump removed from the state’s primary ballot. The decision sent tremors through the legal and political world, raising the prospect of a fragmented presidential ballot where Trump could be blocked state by state. But the victory was short-lived. In March 2024, the U.S. Supreme Court unanimously overturned the ruling.
As with many advocacy groups, CREW’s funding is an amalgam of contributions from deep-pocketed donors on the left. George Soros’s Open Society Institute has been a backer, as have major progressive grantmakers such as the Arca Foundation, the David Geffen Foundation, Democracy Alliance, the Tides Foundation, and the Wallace Global Fund.
More recently, the New Venture Fund, a behemoth in the Arabella Advisors network, contributed $350,000 to CREW in 2023—the same year CREW was pressing its ballot litigation against Trump. That same year, the Fidelity Investments Charitable Gift Fund, which has a history of giving across the ideological spectrum, chipped in $315,708.
The California-based Shared Ascent Fund, which describes itself as a champion of “diversity, equity, and inclusion” and an opponent of “elitism, racism, sexism, ageism, and other forms of oppression,” added another $250,000 to CREW’s coffers.
For all its positioning as a nonpartisan ethics watchdog, its most consequential efforts have been aimed at Republican figures, particularly Trump and his allies.
In 2004, CREW helped circulate a letter in the House of Representatives targeting Republican Majority Leader Tom Delay. CREW later helped push for the Travis County District Attorney’s office to bring criminal charges and convict Delay. The conviction was later reversed by the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals.
Among the constellation of organizations arrayed against Donald Trump and his allies, the State Democracy Defenders Fund is the newest, yet its leadership and mission suggest it was born fully formed, arriving not as a fledgling upstart but as a battle-ready participant in the ongoing anti-Trump legal and political struggle.
Founded in 2024, the organization primarily operates as a legal advocacy group, filing amicus briefs in election law and voting rights cases. Its creation reflects a broader trend on the left: a growing reliance on legal mechanisms—not just political campaigns—to counteract what its architects view as existential threats to democracy.
At the helm of this effort is Norm Eisen, a name familiar to anyone who has followed the Democratic Party’s legal battles over the past decade. Eisen’s résumé is a case study in the modern Democratic operative’s evolution from policy advisor to legal warrior.
During a February interview on MSNBC, Eisen declared, “The lawsuits we’re bringing, I’m planning 100 this year, 100.”
An ethics lawyer in the Barack Obama White House, Eisen later served as Obama’s ambassador to the Czech Republic before returning to Washington’s front lines as special counsel to the House Judiciary Committee during Trump’s first impeachment in 2019. Eisen’s role in crafting the case against Trump over a phone call with Ukraine’s president further cemented his reputation as one of the administration’s most persistent legal antagonists.
But Eisen’s campaign against Trump has not been confined to the courtroom or the halls of Congress. He has taken his case to the court of public opinion, authoring or editing three books that serve as a kind of chronicle of the anti-Trump legal resistance. In A Case for the American People: The United States v. Donald J. Trump (2020) he laid out the argument for impeachment. Overcoming Trumpery: How to Restore Ethics, the Rule of Law, and Democracy (2022) sought to map a post-Trump recovery plan. And in Trying Trump: A Guide to His First Election Interference Criminal Trial (2024), Eisen positioned himself as a kind of public legal interpreter, explaining the stakes of Trump’s ongoing criminal cases to a broader audience.
Yet Eisen is not the only high-profile name attached to the State Democracy Defenders Fund. The board of directors includes former Maryland Attorney General Brian Frosh, a Democrat with a history of litigating against Republican administrations, and Bill Kristol, the former Weekly Standard editor who has become one of the most prominent formerly conservative voices in the anti-Trump camp.
The advocacy arm of the organization, State Democracy Defenders Action, is expected to take a more direct role in shaping policy.
Protect Democracy, formerly the Protect Democracy Project, was established during Trump’s first term to oppose his administration’s policies. It has a partner 501(c)(4) group, United to Protect Democracy. Ian Bassin, a former associate White House counsel in the Obama administration, is the founder and executive director of Protect Democracy, which he started in 2017.
During the first Trump administration, the organization set up a petition signed by several cable news legal analysts calling for Trump’s attorney general, William Barr, to resign after he made a revised sentencing recommendation for the Roger Stone case in the Russia investigation.
After Protect Democracy’s founding, the left-leaning Hewlett Foundation gave the organization $100,000 in 2018.
In 2023, the Vanguard Charitable Endowment Program gave $5 million to Protect Democracy. Vanguard is “cause neutral,” and is the fourth largest donor-advised fund in the United States.
The Silicon Valley Community Foundation, a left-of-center grant maker, contributed $3 million to Protect Democracy in 2023. The organization has donated to far-left organizations such as the Southern Poverty Law Center, the American Civil Liberties Union, and the Brennan Center for Justice. The Fidelity Investments Charitable Gift Fund contributed $2.9 million in 2023.
Whistleblower advocates
While the Government Accountability Project has long fought to protect those who expose misconduct, it has also embraced broader policy battles. It has been an outspoken proponent of transitioning the U.S. energy system entirely to renewables, a stance that has even led it to oppose zero-carbon nuclear power.
Whistleblowers frequently have played a key role in undermining the worst excesses of the Deep State, as we saw during the Biden administration. So, it’s a little disappointing that the Project on Government Oversight (POGO), and the Government Accountability Project (GAP) joined the Civil Service Strong coalition.
GAP and POGO are for the most part center-left organizations that advocate for government whistleblowers. Though, it might well have come from the view that whistleblower protection is among civil service protections.
At its core, the Government Accountability Project brands itself as a champion of whistleblowers, a nonpartisan sentinel guarding against corruption in both the public and private sectors. Its advocacy has often extended beyond the realm of government oversight, aligning it with causes on the Left.
While GAP has long fought to protect those who expose misconduct, it has also embraced broader policy battles. It has been an outspoken proponent of transitioning the U.S. energy system entirely to renewables, a stance that has even led it to oppose zero-carbon nuclear power. The organization has taken credit for halting the construction of nuclear plants in the United States.
To further its environmental mission, GAP established Climate Science & Policy Watch as a subsidiary dedicated to scrutinizing energy companies and their role in climate change.
GAP’s funding reflects its ideological leanings. GAP’s donor roster has included some of the most influential players on the left: the Open Society Foundations, backed by billionaire philanthropist George Soros; the Rockefeller Family Fund, a longstanding pillar of progressive activism; and Democracy Fund, the brainchild of eBay founder Pierre Omidyar. The Democracy Fund frequently supports left-leaning organizations such as Rock the Vote, Common Cause Education Fund, and the Campaign Legal Center, though it has also contributed to right-of-center groups like the Ethics and Public Policy Center.
In 2023, GAP’s most significant financial backers included the Columbus Foundation, an Ohio-based community development organization, contributed $600,000, making it the year’s largest donor. The Marty and Dorothy Silverman Foundation, a New York grantmaker known for its support of Planned Parenthood, People for the American Way, and Earth Justice, followed with $480,000. Another major benefactor was the CS Fund and Warsh-Mott Legacy, a pair of closely aligned nonprofits, which gave $200,000. CS Fund has poured money into progressive outfits such as the American Constitution Society for Law and Policy, Friends of the Earth, and Ceres.
Together, these contributions underscored GAP’s position within a broader network of left-leaning institutions, many of which see government whistleblowing not just as a transparency issue, but as a tool in the fight for progressive policy goals.
The Project on Government Oversight, better known as POGO, fashions itself as a nonpartisan watchdog and has spent decades scrutinizing federal agencies with a focus on rooting out waste, corruption, and abuse.
POGO’s early notoriety came from its almost theatrical exposés of Pentagon spending. Few in Washington could forget its revelations of a $435 hammer or a $7,600 coffee maker buried in the Department of Defense’s procurement budget. Although it was also interesting that POGO chose to highlight one of only a handful of federal agencies that Left doesn’t support.
Beyond its work on military spending, POGO has taken on some of the most controversial national security debates of the past two decades.
Similar to GAP, POGO also defended National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden’s leaking of classified material about government spying. Snowden leaked classified documents exposing government surveillance programs, and POGO was among the groups that came to his defense, arguing that his disclosures were in the public interest. Years earlier, during the Obama administration, it pushed for the declassification of CIA interrogation methods used on terrorism suspects.
A 2016 report by the Washington Free Beacon even revealed a memo from George Soros’s Open Society Foundations outlining how POGO and other advocacy groups could be mobilized to challenge those interrogation policies.
Like many watchdog organizations, POGO’s funding has come from an array of ideologically diverse donors, though the balance tilts left. The Open Society Foundations has backed it, as has Pierre Omidyar’s Omidyar Network Fund, and the Fund for Constitutional Government—all entities that have a history of supporting progressive causes.
In 2021, the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation gave $900,000 to POGO.
However, POGO’s appeal has also extended to libertarian-leaning organizations, particularly those skeptical of government overreach. The Frederick E. and Julia G. Nonneman Foundation, an Ohio-based grant maker, contributed $2 million in 2021. The foundation’s giving history is eclectic, including donations to conservative-leaning organizations such as the Cato Institute, the Goldwater Institute, and the National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation.
Other major donors include the Democracy Fund—the Omidyar-founded group—which gave $950,000 to POGO in 2022. Fidelity Investments Charitable Gift Fund contributed $629,391 in 2023, in keeping with its practice of spreading funds across the ideological spectrum.
Although often aligned with progressive interests, its advocacy against unchecked government power has occasionally found common cause with libertarians and conservatives skeptical of bureaucratic overreach. Yet, as debates over the administrative state intensify, POGO seems to have perplexingly planted its flag on the side of the administrative state.
Nonfederal unions
The AFT was a key player in continuing the closures of public schools long after the COVID-19 pandemic had subsided. The union promotes tenure policies, opposes most education reforms, and opposes any pension reforms.
The American Federation of Teachers (AFT) is long known for its president and consistent Democratic Party surrogate Randi Weingarten. It’s also out of place in the Civil Service Strong coalition, since none of its 1.5 million members are federal employees.
Weingarten blasted Trump’s “draconian” budget proposal in May, asserting,
President Trump’s skinny budget cuts much of what helps poor, working-class and middle-class Americans, seemingly to pay for tax cuts for the rich. You can’t make this up. … Our concern when the president started dismantling the Department of Education was not the bureaucracy but the funding.
The AFT is the nation’s second-largest public school teachers’ union behind the National Education Association, which at least thus far hasn’t joined the Civil Service Strong coalition.
The AFT was a key player in continuing the closures of public schools long after the COVID-19 pandemic had subsided. The union promotes tenure policies, opposes most education reforms, and opposes any pension reforms.
Local AFT chapters have been embroiled in financial and political scandals, including chapters in Washington, DC; New York City; Chicago; Dade County, Florida; and Broward County, Florida.
The union played a leading role in opposing state reforms made by Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker and tried to remove him from office through a failed recall effort in 2012.
AFT also contributed $500,000 to the Clinton Foundation and Clinton Global Initiative before backing Hillary Clinton in the 2016 Democratic presidential primary and general election.
In February 2021, the AFT lobbied and created policies implemented by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) for guidelines in reopening schools, as the New York Post first reported. The newspaper obtained emails between CDC Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky and AFT officials through the Freedom of Information Act. The Wall Street Journal editorial board asserted the AFT’s role was a “non-scientific political intervention,” and claimed that “the Biden Administration is letting a powerful Democratic interest group dictate virus guidelines.”
In 2024, the AFT PAC contributed $3 million to the Senate Majority PAC, for Democrats; $1.95 million to the House Majority PAC for Democratic candidates; $1.5 million to Friends of Brandon Johnson, the Chicago mayor; and $500,000 to the Democratic Governors Association. During the 2020 election cycle, the AFT spent about $20 million supporting Democratic Party candidates. In 2016, it spent $28.6 million backing Democrats.
The AFT has been part of the Democracy Alliance, a group of progressive donors, the Washington Free Beacon reported.
The American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME) is the largest government workers union in the United States, yet its role in this coalition seems unusual since it doesn’t represent any federal workers—as evident from the name.
AFSCME represents 1.3 million state and local government employees and 188,000 retirees, with 3,400 local union chapters across 46 states, the District of Columbia, and Puerto Rico. So it’s easy to see how it’s the largest member of the American Federation of Labor-Congress of Industrial Organizations (AFL-CIO). AFSCME has advocated for government-run health care, higher taxes, an expanded welfare state, and amnesty for illegal immigrants.
The union’s PAC spent $19.7 million on elections in 2024, This included $500,000 to the Senate Majority PAC, a Democratic group; $330,000 to the House Majority PAC, another Democratic group, and $300,000 to the Democratic National Committee.
The union has backed left-wing nonprofits such as the Center for American Progress; Al Sharpton’s National Action Network, the Arabella-sponsored pass-through entity Sixteen Thirty Fund; and liberal judicial policy groups American Constitution Society and Alliance for Justice.
Defending the ruling class
The Civil Service Strong coalition of organizations rallying under the banner of “defending democracy” is little more than a network of entrenched bureaucrats, activist litigators, union bullies, and well-funded advocacy groups working to preserve their own power and the status quo.
While cloaking their efforts in the language of civil service protections and constitutional principles, their real objective is clear: to shield the federal workforce from accountability and insulate the administrative state from elected oversight.
The attitude has been that presidents come and go, but bureaucrats are in Washington for as long as they wish to be.
From litigation campaigns aimed at shaping election rules to whistleblower advocacy selectively applied to advance partisan goals, these groups are operating with a singular purpose—to resist political change, particularly when it threatens their influence.
Their financial backers, a predictable mix of left-wing foundations and donor-advised funds, ensure that this machinery remains well-oiled and ready for battle, whether against a second Trump administration or any future reform efforts. This is not a defense of democracy—it is a defense of an unelected, unaccountable ruling class.
