“Kucinskas argues that the professional culture and ethical obligations of the civil service stabilize the state in normal times but insufficiently prepare bureaucrats to cope with a president like Trump. Instead, federal employees became ensnared in intractable ethical traps, caught between their commitment to nonpartisan public service and the expectation of compliance with political directives.
“Kucinskas shares their quandaries, recounting attempts to preserve the integrity of government agencies, covert resistance, and a few bold acts of moral courage in the face of organizational decline and politicized leadership. …The Loyalty Trap offers a timely and bracing portrait of the fragility of the American state.” The book was published in May 2025.
The Loyalty Trap began as a longitudinal research study during the first Trump administration during which Kucinskas and her co-researcher, Yvonne Zylan, conducted 127 interviews over a three-year period with current and former federal employees from many different agencies. They included the Environmental Protection Agency, the Department of Health and Human Resources, the State Department, the Justice Department, and the United States Agency for International Development (USAID). She detailed how, under threats of political retribution and sidelining of experts under appointees' leadership, parts of the government and appointee accountability deteriorated remarkably quickly.
She also expressed concerns about the vulnerability of the United States government to further democratic backsliding and deterioration under a future more competent autocratic leader. Trump has returned as a more experienced leader. The paper, titled “Walking the Moral Tightrope: Federal Civil Servants’ Loyalties, Caution, and Resistance under the Trump Administration,” was published in the Journal of American Sociology.
