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.
U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio speaks with U.S. President Donald Trump during a Cabinet meeting in the Cabinet Room of the White House on May 27, 2026 in Washington, D.C. Trump met with his Cabinet days after saying a peace deal with Iran was“ largely negotiated” amid expectations around the re-opening the Strait of Hormuz.
The worst deal in the history of deals
As a former Republican, sometimes it’s fun to look back on the things we — I was part of a “we” at one time — criticized Democrats for, and not all that long ago.
Remember, if you will, when Republicans condemned former President Bill Clinton for pardoning his brother and his corrupt donor friend Marc Rich?
Or, remember when Republicans wagged their fingers at former President Barack Obama’s golf outings? Or his executive orders? Or his Syrian “red line”?
Or all the times Republicans went after former President Joe Biden’s gaffes?
While those criticisms may have been justified at the time, they look patently ridiculous next to our current president’s cartoonish and downright dangerous offenses.
Offenses like pardoning Jan. 6 insurrectionists — nearly 100 of whom have gone on to be arrested for, charged with, or convicted of crimes separate from the events of that day.
Or wreaking havoc on the global economy by instituting reckless tariffs on friends, neighbors, and enemies alike?
Or taking a proverbial sledge hammer to countless government agencies that have put every American in danger, whether on airplanes, in hospitals, at job sites, or in natural disasters.
That’s just a few, but nothing looks worse next to his predecessors than Donald Trump’s supposed Iran deal, at least as it’s outlined in the Memorandum of Understanding, the details of which Trump was loath to share.
And for good reason — they are shockingly bad and humiliating for the U.S.
I remember Obama’s Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action or JCPOA from 2015 very well. I, along with many Republicans as well as a cadre of foreign policy experts, criticized that deal for its obvious and problematic concessions to a very bad actor who we’ve long known could not be trusted. But trust was what we gave the Iranian regime, as well as sudden access to a boatload of cash — $100 billion, to be exact.
All of Obama’s provisions were temporary, which would allow Iran to restart enriching uranium upon their sunset; the deal didn’t address Iran’s ballistic missiles, or its funding of terrorist proxies like Hezbollah and Hamas; the supposed “anytime, anywhere” inspections came with a 24-day delay, if Iran so chose, giving them ample time to hide any suspect materials; and it didn’t require any congressional authority.
In short, I’d argue it wasn’t a great deal. But as bad as it was, it looks like the Magna Carta next to Trump’s.
Trump’s deal would give Iran immediate sanction relief and access to $300 billion, presumably to use to fund terror proxies; it doesn’t secure any upfront limits on uranium enrichment or missile development; it allows Iran to charge for safe passage through the Strait of Hormuz in the future; and it calls for Israel to stop its attacks on Hezbollah, another win for Iran.
Neither Americans nor the Middle East are safer than we were 100-plus days ago when Trump decided to pursue this folly. And in fact, our economy is weaker for it. But Iran is unquestionably stronger and more emboldened.
They’ve seen Trump’s weakness, unseriousness, and frighteningly limited appreciation for history. They’ve seen him retreat on most of his core threats to the regime, from bombing their cultural sites to ending a civilization overnight. And they’ve taken notice as he’s abandoned the promises that were supposedly central to his justification for war in the first place — regime change, liberating the Iranian people, and removing Iran’s nuclear materials.
What a waste of blood and treasure, not to mention American might and power, only so that our enemies can watch us limp desperately toward a conclusion that’s being described — by the right — as “unthinkable,” “appeasement,” and “the worst foreign policy blunder in decades.”
S.E. Cupp is the host of "S.E. Cupp Unfiltered" on CNN.