Ahearn is policy director of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, or CREW, a nonpartisan group that works to expose ethical violations and corruption by federal officials and agencies.
This is part of a series advocating for parts of legislation soon to be proposed in the House, dubbed the Protecting Our Democracy Act, designed to improve democracy's checks and balances by curbing presidential power.
Throughout Donald Trump's four years as president, nearly every federal government ethics and anti-corruption law suffered immense public damage. But among his administration's flagrant and unrepentant disregard for such laws, the serial flouting of the Hatch Act may have been the most obvious — and among the most damaging.
The Hatch Act became law in 1939 with a simple purpose: to prevent federal employees from engaging in partisan politics while performing official government duties. Despite its low public profile, the Hatch Act codifies fundamental tenets of American democracy, ensuring "federal programs are administered in a nonpartisan fashion" and government officials do not abuse taxpayer funds to hold political power.
Our government should provide service to all people, regardless of their partisan or personal affiliation. Such a guarantee is the bedrock of a government by and for the people. Government employees of both parties have abided by the Hatch Act's principle of nonpartisan service for more than 80 years.
That tradition, and its guarantee of equal governmental service, ended within hours of the 2017 inauguration. For almost the entirety of his presidency, Trump political appointees engaged in a "persistent, notorious, and deliberate" attack on the Hatch Act, an institutional disregard that eroded "the principal foundation of our democratic system — the rule of law."
It is of critical and immediate importance that Congress address this issue before it further erodes public trust in our government. The Protecting Our Democracy Act is an important step in that direction.
It would patch some of the most problematic cracks in the Hatch Act exploited by the previous administration exploited.
The most important improvements would be strengthening the Office of Special Counsel, the agency in charge of enforcing Hatch Act compliance. The Trump administration vividly demonstrated how OSC's weaknesses created two tracks for executive branch employee compliance: Civil service and lower level appointees face standards adjudicated by the independent Merit Systems Protection Board, but higher-level employees appointed by the president are exempt and so may avoid consequences if the president chooses.
The bill would take significant steps to address this inequity between rank-and-file and politically connected appointees.
First, it would allow the OSC to fine senior political appointees $50,000 when the president fails to hold them accountable for violations. This addresses the loophole glaringly exposed, for example, when Trump refused to take any action to address senior adviser Kellyanne Conway's flagrant violations of the Hatch Act.
Second, it would increase transparency surrounding Hatch Act violations by senior political appointees. Not only did Trump repeatedly refuse to discipline political employees who violated the act, but he provided no rationale for his decisions. The bill would require presidents to provide a written statement to the OSC in response to that office finding a political appointee violated the act. At a minimum, this would make the president's choice to avoid disciplining political appointees politically toxic.
The bill also addresses a problematic loophole created by the OSC. It says the law requires an independent complaint about a potential violation before beginning an investigation. This interpretation limits any ability to proactively enforce compliance with the Hatch Act. The new legislation would end this problem by authorizing the OSC to start Hatch Act violation inquiries on its own.
While the bill is an important step in the right direction, more improvements are needed. For instance, the proposed $50,000 penalty would only be a deterrent for officials of normal financial means. It would mean little for somebody like former Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos, whose fortune is in the hundreds of millions of dollars. To bolster deterrence, Congress should include language in spending bills to prevent salary payments to political appointees with multiple Hatch Act violations. That would be a stronger disincentive than individual fines, because loss of a salary indicates a shameful betrayal of public trust.
Additionally, the Hatch Act is unclear about some aspects of executive branch officials becoming candidates for partisan office. While explicitly defining who is an employee and which elections are covered, it does not explicitly address whether an employee may use federal funds to explore a potential run for office. The OSC has interpreted the law as applying only after someone "officially announces" a candidacy, a loophole that allows abuse of taxpayer funds to go unchecked. No member of the Trump administration abused this more than former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, whose numerous taxpayer-funded visits to conservative donors allowed him to "quietly" nurture plans to someday run for senator in his Kansas or for president.
Congress should start applying Hatch Act restrictions as soon as executive branch officials hold themselves out as exploring a candidacy — either stating they are considering a run or not denying they are considering a run. Similar to how employees may not use federal funds for partisan purposes, Congress should clarify the Hatch Act applies to those who use federal funds or official travel to meet with prospective political donors and allies.
The guarantee of unbiased government service is a necessary condition in building a government by and for the people. By flagrantly disregarding and decimating the Hatch Act, the previous administration undermined this bedrock of our government. Without immediate and bold congressional action, public trust in the rule of law may be permanently damaged. The Protecting Our Democracy Act represents the most immediate and important step towards avoiding such lasting damage.
Eric Trump, the newly appointed ALT5 board director of World Liberty Financial, walks outside of the NASDAQ in Times Square as they mark the $1.5- billion partnership between World Liberty Financial and ALT5 Sigma with the ringing of the NASDAQ opening bell, on Aug. 13, 2025, in New York City.
Why does the Trump family always get a pass?
Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche joined ABC’s “This Week” on Sunday to defend or explain a lot of controversies for the Trump administration: the Epstein files release, the events in Minneapolis, etc. He was also asked about possible conflicts of interest between President Trump’s family business and his job. Specifically, Blanche was asked about a very sketchy deal Trump’s son Eric signed with the UAE’s national security adviser, Sheikh Tahnoon.
Shortly before Trump was inaugurated in early 2025, Tahnoon invested $500 million in the Trump-owned World Liberty, a then newly launched cryptocurrency outfit. A few months later, UAE was granted permission to purchase sensitive American AI chips. According to the Wall Street Journal, which broke the story, “the deal marks something unprecedented in American politics: a foreign government official taking a major ownership stake in an incoming U.S. president’s company.”
“How do you respond to those who say this is a serious conflict of interest?” ABC host George Stephanopoulos asked.
“I love it when these papers talk about something being unprecedented or never happening before,” Blanche replied, “as if the Biden family and the Biden administration didn’t do exactly the same thing, and they were just in office.”
Blanche went on to boast about how the president is utterly transparent regarding his questionable business practices: “I don’t have a comment on it beyond Trump has been completely transparent when his family travels for business reasons. They don’t do so in secret. We don’t learn about it when we find a laptop a few years later. We learn about it when it’s happening.”
Sadly, Stephanopoulos didn’t offer the obvious response, which may have gone something like this: “OK, but the president and countless leading Republicans insisted that President Biden was the head of what they dubbed ‘the Biden Crime family’ and insisted his business dealings were corrupt, and indeed that his corruption merited impeachment. So how is being ‘transparent’ about similar corruption a defense?”
Now, I should be clear that I do think the Biden family’s business dealings were corrupt, whether or not laws were broken. Others disagree. I also think Trump’s business dealings appear to be worse in many ways than even what Biden was alleged to have done. But none of that is relevant. The standard set by Trump and Republicans is the relevant political standard, and by the deputy attorney general’s own account, the Trump administration is doing “exactly the same thing,” just more openly.
Since when is being more transparent about wrongdoing a defense? Try telling a cop or judge, “Yes, I robbed that bank. I’ve been completely transparent about that. So, what’s the big deal?”
This is just a small example of the broader dysfunction in the way we talk about politics.
Americans have a special hatred for hypocrisy. I think it goes back to the founding era. As Alexis de Tocqueville observed in “Democracy In America,” the old world had a different way of dealing with the moral shortcomings of leaders. Rank had its privileges. Nobles, never mind kings, were entitled to behave in ways that were forbidden to the little people.
In America, titles of nobility were banned in the Constitution and in our democratic culture. In a society built on notions of equality (the obvious exceptions of Black people, women, Native Americans notwithstanding) no one has access to special carve-outs or exemptions as to what is right and wrong. Claiming them, particularly in secret, feels like a betrayal against the whole idea of equality.
The problem in the modern era is that elites — of all ideological stripes — have violated that bargain. The result isn’t that we’ve abandoned any notion of right and wrong. Instead, by elevating hypocrisy to the greatest of sins, we end up weaponizing the principles, using them as a cudgel against the other side but not against our own.
Pick an issue: violent rhetoric by politicians, sexual misconduct, corruption and so on. With every revelation, almost immediately the debate becomes a riot of whataboutism. Team A says that Team B has no right to criticize because they did the same thing. Team B points out that Team A has switched positions. Everyone has a point. And everyone is missing the point.
Sure, hypocrisy is a moral failing, and partisan inconsistency is an intellectual one. But neither changes the objective facts. This is something you’re supposed to learn as a child: It doesn’t matter what everyone else is doing or saying, wrong is wrong. It’s also something lawyers like Mr. Blanche are supposed to know. Telling a judge that the hypocrisy of the prosecutor — or your client’s transparency — means your client did nothing wrong would earn you nothing but a laugh.
Jonah Goldberg is editor-in-chief of The Dispatch and the host of The Remnant podcast. His Twitter handle is @JonahDispatch.