The Post reports:

Officials at the Department of Health and Human Services sent more than a dozen workers to receive the first Americans evacuated from Wuhan, China, the epicenter of the coronavirus outbreak, without proper training for infection control or appropriate protective gear, according to a whistleblower complaint. The workers did not show symptoms of infection and were not tested for the virus, according to lawyers for the whistleblower, a senior HHS official based in Washington who oversees workers at the Administration for Children and Families, a unit within HHS.

Let’s first state that we don’t yet know whether these revelations will prove serious or true. Nor is it fair to say they characterize Trump’s overall coronavirus response, though it has been criticized for many other reasons.

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Nonetheless, having government insiders alert us about such matters is exactly what we want them to feel free to do amid a crisis like this one, because it allows us to determine whether serious maladministration is occurring in response to it.

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But the war that Trump has waged for three years on the “deep state,” which is really a war on accountability in government, is designed to chill exactly this sort of occurrence.

This latest whistleblower is seeking federal protection, claiming she was punitively reassigned after alerting higher-ups, reports The Post. Her lawyers say she has decades of experience in public health.

The core of the allegation is that two teams of HHS personnel were sent to treat quarantined Americans who’d been evacuated from the epicenter of the coronavirus outbreak in China. These personnel were not properly protected for that interaction and were not subsequently tested, yet moved freely among the outside population.

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We still don’t yet have any sense of the damage here. But the complaint, which is being evaluated by an independent federal agency, alleges that HHS staff were alarmed by the moves.

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Whatever is to be with this complaint, there’s a reason this whistleblower is able to come forward and have it evaluated with protection from retaliation. Elected officials created an accountability structure to make it possible.

And Trump wants to tear it all down.

What’s really driving Trump’s war on the ‘deep state’

This tearing down is what Trump’s war on the “deep state" — or, as Stephen K. Bannon put it, the “administrative state" — is really about. After a parade of officials — beginning with another whistleblower — testified to deep internal alarm over Trump’s Ukraine shakedown, Trumpworld argued for months that this was the plot of a permanent government cabal conspiring against him.

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Trump and his propagandists kept attacking the whistleblower, even after everything the whistleblower alleged was borne out and the whistleblower became entirely irrelevant. The obvious goal, helped along by Trump’s ousting of a top Ukraine-gate witness and an ongoing purge of the disloyal, has been to frighten future insiders who might expose more mismanagement or wrongdoing.

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Because bureaucratic insiders and intelligence operatives are not elected, unlike the president, there is a legitimate debate over how far they should go in exposing inside information or challenging the elected leader, since this could have potentially anti-democratic implications.

But we want insiders to be able to come forward for good democratic reasons as well. The scaffolding of whistleblower protections legislated into being after Watergate reflects the idea that bureaucrats should be able to sound the alarm without facing retribution from political appointees — for the protection of the people. This structure was created by elected representatives.

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Trump’s attack on this whole superstructure is an outgrowth of a virulent strain of conservative populism, which casts technocratic governing professionals as obstacles to the true “people’s” will — the true people being the leader’s supporters. In this mythology, no neutral civil servants exist. If anyone exposes maladministration or wrongdoing, they are the leader’s (and his followers’) deliberate enemies by definition.

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Of course, the reality is the opposite: Trump has been relentlessly corrupting the government so it does not act neutrally in the public interest, and instead serves his own.

Epidemics focus the mind on good governance

For three years, skepticism about criticism of Trump’s assaults on governing norms and procedures has reigned on left and right. For skeptics on the left, such criticism missed the deeper rot of corruption eating away at the whole bipartisan neoliberal establishment. For skeptics on the right, such criticism flows from an overactive centrist imagination easily triggered by Trump’s theatrical but empty authoritarian feints.

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But those skeptics are overly dismissive, and nothing focuses the mind on the need for a neutral, good-faith governing corps to be protected from such Trumpian assaults like a crisis does. As Adam Serwer puts it: “Epidemics are one reason you want a meritocratic, apolitical civil service staffing your government, instead of a bunch of toadies, quislings and yes men.”

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Trump wants the latter. But there are still plenty of the former.

This is cause for some optimism: Perhaps remaining governing professionals will manage this outbreak successfully, behind Trump’s back, while he rage-tweets about Fox News’s latest obsession. This might be helped along by revelations such as these from this new whistleblower — should they prove true — which could enable officials to hone their response.

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We can only hope for the best. But if the best does come to pass, it will be in spite of Trump’s efforts to blow up the very inheritance that made it possible.