Indeed, there’s conceivably a danger looming in the dynamic between civil servants and political leadership. A year into governing, the administration may prove increasingly capable of imposing its predilections on the often-unwieldy bureaucracy. It has, within the bounds of the law and propriety, a right to do so: The bureaucracy exists, fundamentally, to implement the will of those voted into office. But, if civil servants were to push back more aggressively simply because they disagree with Trump’s policy aims, it would test the boundaries between what it means to educate and guide new political leadership and what it means to undermine it. And civil servants working directly against the elected leadership could lead a White House already predisposed toward insular decision-making to retreat even further, shutting out voices they desperately need to hear before making critical policy calls.

For now, however, these government workers appear to have some influence. Take, for example, the president’s abrupt about-face on sending the suspect in October’s terrorist attack in downtown Manhattan, Sayfullo Saipov, to Guantanamo Bay. Within 24 hours, Trump went from calling for Saipov to be dispatched to the detention camp to declaring that Saipov’s case would be handled within the criminal-justice system—the same one that, a day earlier, he had mocked as “a joke and ... a laughingstock.”

It’s unclear what changed the president’s mind so quickly. But I’d like to think that civil servants played a role—they’ve seen, on the one hand, the effectiveness of the criminal-justice system in taking terrorists off the battlefield and, on the other, the complications associated with detention and military prosecution in Guantanamo. Civil servants who’ve dealt with both firsthand may have gotten the right information to the right people to influence Trump’s thinking.

That’s what the American civil servant does: develop expertise, offer continuity, speak truth to power. The country has perhaps never needed it more than it did during the turbulence of 2017.

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