Chris Hayes And Jen Psaki On Federal Workers: They’re Apolitical, Nerdy Experts

Chris Hayes and Jen Psaki defend civil servants as neutral “nerdy experts.” History shows a very different story.

Before Jen Psaki’s show began, Chris Hayes said to Psaki:

“I mean watching those CDC workers today, it was part of the history of this moment when we read history books is gonna be all of these federal employees who were standing up, I think I have no doubt about it.”

Chris Hayes responded by praising federal workers and framing them as victims of unfair attacks. He told viewers:

“It’s really, it’s brain breaking sometimes the distance between the reality of who the civil servants are across all sorts of different agencies and all different kinds of places, why they do the work they do, how committed they are, how apolitical a lot of them genuinely are, how much. That. And then the vision of them that is being sold about these sort of like radical subordinate saboteur leeches that, you know, it just, it’s really crazy.”

Psaki followed his lead, describing federal workers this way:

“They are nerdy experts in the best way possible. Most of them are not political at all. And I think that sometimes is not seen or understood.”

That may sound comforting on cable news, but the record tells another story. The Treasury Inspector General found the IRS used “inappropriate criteria”—including terms like “Tea Party” and “Patriots”—to select certain applicants for extra scrutiny when evaluating tax-exempt status (TIGTA Report PDF).

In December 2019, Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz released a report that documented serious errors and omissions in the FBI’s Carter Page FISA applications — identifying 17 significant inaccuracies, including withheld exculpatory information. The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court followed with a rare public rebuke, saying the FBI’s conduct was “antithetical to the heightened duty of candor” owed to the court (FISA Court Order). For broader context, the DOJ IG’s 2019 review outlines the errors in detail (DOJ IG Report).

The Government Accountability Office concluded the EPA violated anti-lobbying and publicity/propaganda prohibitions in its social-media campaign to promote the “Waters of the United States” rule. This finding was issued in December 2015 under President Barack Obama, when GAO determined that the agency’s online campaign crossed the line into covert propaganda and grassroots lobbying — activities federal agencies are prohibited from using taxpayer dollars to conduct. GAO specifically found that the EPA’s use of Thunderclap and other messaging tools amounted to undisclosed government propaganda, and that encouraging the public to pressure Congress was an unlawful form of lobbying. In short, the watchdog said the EPA broke federal law by blurring the line between providing information and pushing political advocacy (GAO Report B-326944).

The Supreme Court has repeatedly slapped down agency overreach: it ended the CDC’s nationwide eviction moratorium as beyond statutory authority (SCOTUS Opinion, Aug. 26, 2021); stayed OSHA’s sweeping vaccine-or-test mandate for 84 million workers as beyond statutory authority (SCOTUS Opinion, Jan. 13, 2022); and ruled in 2024 that the ATF exceeded its statutory power when it banned bump stocks by regulation (SCOTUS Opinion, Garland v. Cargill, June 14, 2024).

Inside the CDC, congressional oversight and released emails revealed that the American Federation of Teachers had direct input on school-reopening guidance in early 2021, and the union publicly defended its role (New York Post).

And during the four years of the Trump administration (2017–2021), federal employees openly bragged about being part of the “resistance.” A senior official published an anonymous New York Times op-ed confessing there was a “steady state” of bureaucrats working from within to block the president’s agenda (NYT “Anonymous” Op-Ed). At the State Department, roughly 1,000 career officials signed a dissent memo against the administration’s 2017 travel-ban order, an extraordinary internal revolt (VOA / AP Coverage).

Chris Hayes and Jen Psaki may want Americans to imagine federal employees as harmless “nerdy experts” just doing their jobs. But inspector general reports, court rulings, watchdog findings, and even the words of bureaucrats themselves prove otherwise. Washington’s sprawling bureaucracy is not above politics—it is politics.

Sources
IRS: Treasury Inspector General Audit Report on IRS Targeting (2013)
FBI / DOJ:
DOJ Inspector General Report on Carter Page FISA Applications (2019)
FISA Court Order Rebuking FBI (2019)
EPA: GAO Report B-326944: EPA Anti-Lobbying Violation (2015)
Supreme Court:
SCOTUS Opinion: CDC Eviction Moratorium Ended (2021)
SCOTUS Opinion: OSHA Vaccine-or-Test Mandate Stayed (2022)
SCOTUS Opinion: Garland v. Cargill (ATF Bump Stock Rule, 2024)
CDC / Teachers Union: New York Post: Teachers Union Collaborated with CDC on School Reopening (2021)
“Resistance” Bureaucracy:
New York Times: Anonymous Op-Ed (“Steady State” Resistance, 2018)
VOA/AP: Over 1,000 State Department Officials Dissent on Trump Travel Ban (2017)
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