The Role of a Professional Civil Service

Why Apolitical Expertise Is the Backbone of Effective Governance

Campaign Briefing: Structural Governance and Reform

2028 Presidential Campaign of Martin A. Ginsburg, RN

June 15, 2026

I. The Unelected People Who Make Government Work

Most of what the federal government does on any given day is not done by the President. It is not done by Cabinet secretaries or political appointees. It is done by the roughly two million career civil servants who process benefits claims, conduct inspections, enforce regulations, manage contracts, administer grants, maintain infrastructure, and perform the ten thousand other functions that constitute the actual work of the executive branch.

These are not bureaucrats in the pejorative sense. They are professionals — people who have spent careers developing expertise in specific domains, who understand the statutory basis of their agencies' authority, who know which approaches have worked in the past and which have failed. They are the institutional memory. They are the continuity. And they are, in the current political environment, under sustained attack from a political culture that has decided that 'the deep state' is a threat rather than a resource.

II. What the Civil Service Actually Does

It executes the law. Not interprets it — that is for the courts. Not makes it — that is for Congress. Executes it. The career professional who processes a veterans' benefits claim is executing the Veterans Benefits Act. The inspector who cites a food processing plant for a sanitation violation is executing the Federal Food Safety Modernization Act. The contracting officer who reviews a procurement is executing the Federal Acquisition Regulation.

When political appointees direct career professionals to deviate from the law in individual cases — to produce a particular outcome rather than apply the applicable standard — they are not exercising legitimate policy discretion. They are corrupting the execution function that the Constitution assigns to the executive branch.

III. This Administration's Commitment to the Civil Service

Career civil servants will be protected from political direction in individual cases. They will have clear, published guidelines for when they may appropriately receive direction from political appointees and when that direction crosses into improper interference.

Whistleblower protections will be robust and enforced. And this administration will publicly and repeatedly make the case that a professional civil service is not an obstacle to presidential power — it is the mechanism through which presidential power is responsibly exercised.

The ballot chooses the direction. The civil service carries the nation forward. We cannot reach our destination if we dismantle the engine.

Martin A. Ginsburg, RN

2028 Presidential Campaign of Martin A. Ginsburg, RN