The Return of Loyalty Tests and the Decline of American Democracy

Remember when loyalty oaths were used to ferret out and punish people suspected of being Communists? They were a potent and terrifying tool, designed to produce conformity and compliance at the height of the late 1940s, early 1950s Red Scare.

Today, they are back, but in more subtle, if no less coercive, forms. The Trump Administration is using them in hiring and retaining federal employees, in dispensing federal grants, and in passing out perks.

Earlier this month, Politico reported that “More than a dozen high-ranking officials across the administration have been forced to leave their jobs or had their nominations or promotions derailed in the first six months of Trump’s return to Washington. Nearly all of the ousters have come after individuals were targeted by outside allies who convinced the president that they weren’t sufficiently loyal.”

Conservative activist and Trump whisperer Laura Loomer has encouraged people throughout the federal government to report on others who seem insufficiently loyal to the president and his agenda. She says that she is “happy to take people’s tips about disloyal appointees, disloyal staffers and Biden holdovers…And I guess you could say that my tip line has come to serve as a form of therapy for Trump administration officials who want to expose their colleagues who should not be in the positions that they’re in.”

ABC News offers the following example of one of the ways Loomer works. “In mid-July,” it says “far-right activist Laura Loomer fired off a lengthy post on X targeting a senior Customs and Border Protection official (Monte Hawkins), accusing him of having ‘Anti-Trump, pro-Open Borders, and Pro-DEI Bias,’ and demanding his removal from the federal government.”

“Less than 48 hours later,” ABC notes, “after also sending an appeal directly to the Department of Homeland Security, Loomer says an official personally contacted her, thanked her for amplifying the information, and later informed her that Hawkins had been removed.”

Loyalty tests, secret informants, anonymous tips, welcome to the world that the Trump Administration has brought back to life. In this world, fear replaces freedom, whether it is in school, workplaces, or political organizations.

Last May, the federal government’s Office of Personnel Management (OPM) provided a vivid example of the administration’s approach to loyalty tests. It mandated that “all [f]ederal job vacancy announcements graded at GS-05 or above will include four short, free-response essay questions,” including one that asked: “How would you help advance the President’s Executive Orders and policy priorities in this role? Identify one or two relevant policy Executive Orders or policy initiatives that are significant to you, and explain how you would help implement them if hired.”

“Applicants,” OPM said, “will be required to certify that they are using their own words, and did not use a consultant or AI (such as a large language model [LLM]). To reduce the burden on candidates, the responses cannot exceed 200 words per question.”

Asking people to show their loyalty to the president’s executive orders, as Jacque Simon, public policy director for the American Federation of Government Employees, noted at the time the OPM issued its directive is “a glaring violation of merit principles and seems practically Maoist…Glorification of a political leader cannot be a prerequisite for obtaining a federal job. Even at its most benign, requiring candidates to muse positively about Donald Trump’s EOs and policies is contrary to everything the apolitical civil service stands for.”

In late June, OPM retreated a little. It issued new guidance about the use of the four questions, including the one about the president’s executive orders.

OPM told federal agencies that they should continue to ask them as part of the hiring process, but they should include the following disclaimer: “The following four narrative questions provide an opportunity for you to highlight your dedication to public service for the hiring manager and agency leadership (or designee(s)). While your responses are not required and will not be scored, we encourage you to thoughtfully address each question.”

As the expression goes, “A rose by any other name is still a rose.” Anyone wanting a job in the administration will surely take advantage of that “opportunity”

And if that were not enough to signal the revival of loyalty tests, since January 20, many recipients of federal grants have been notified that their grants were being terminated in order to allow government agencies to repurpose their funding allocations to advance the President’s agenda. For example, National Endowment of the Arts grantees were told, "The NEA is updating its grantmaking policy priorities to focus funding on projects that reflect the nation's rich artistic heritage and creativity as prioritized by the President. Consequently, we are terminating awards that fall outside these new priorities."

Now it’s true that the administration has not rolled out loyalty oaths for federal employees, grant recipients, or ordinary citizens. Not yet.

But ss law professors Erwin Chemerinsky and Catherine Fisk point out, “No modern presidential administration has undertaken such an effort to staff the entire government with political loyalists. It is plainly inconsistent with good government, with federal law, and with the Constitution.”

And it is clear that in the world the president is creating, implicit loyalty oaths are very much the order of the day. As I noted at the start, we’ve seen this act before.

In 1947, President Harry Truman issued an Executive Order entitled “PRESCRIBING PROCEDURES FOR THE ADMINISTRATION OF AN EMPLOYEES LOYALTY PROGRAM IN THE EXECUTIVE BRANCH OF THE GOVERNMENT.” That order asserted that it “is of vital importance that persons employed in the Federal service be of complete and unswerving loyalty to the United States” and that “the presence within the Government service of any disloyal or subversive person constitutes a threat to our democratic processes….”

Like a Laura Loomer looking for tips, Truman’s program was justified as necessary to afford “maximum protection….(to) the United States against infiltration of disloyal persons into the ranks of its employees.” To accomplish that goal, it required “a loyalty investigation of every person entering the civilian employment of any department or agency of the executive branch of the Federal Government.”

The Executive Order made clear that an applicant would be disqualified for “Membership in, affiliation with or sympathetic association with any foreign or domestic organization, association, movement, group or combination of persons, designated by the Attorney General as totalitarian, fascist, communist, or subversive….”

As pernicious as Truman’s loyalty test was, at least it focused on loyalty to the Constitution, not the president or his policy agenda. In the Trump era, that seems almost quaint.

At the time Truman launched his loyalty test program, Congressman Chester E. Holifield said, “It is only police states that desire the growth of fear in the hearts of their abject subjects. If we continue these practices, people will fear that their jobs will be jeopardized, or that their security will be threatened, or that they will be publicly attacked….”

“They will be afraid,” Holifield continued, “to express or to listen to any ideas, whether radical or conservative. These are the things, therefore, that we must guard against.” One of them is loyalty tests, which Holifield said “destroy democracy.”

What the congressman said almost eighty years ago is as relevant and important today as it has ever been.

In a true democracy, loyalty cannot be coerced or commanded. "Loyalty must,” as former Supreme Court Justice Hugo Black explained, “arise spontaneously from the hearts of people who love their country and respect their government."

Austin Sarat is the William Nelson Cromwell professor of jurisprudence and political science at Amherst College.