Entrenched Federal Bureaucracy Uses “Malicious Compliance” to Shame Trump and DOGE Over Job Cuts
“This is very standard fightback from the bureaucracy whose interests are at stake.”
I’ve seen a lot of insane stories from the mainstream media in my time but one of them that absolutely takes the cake is one from the Washington Post on the job cuts that hit the National Park Service this week.
The headline blared “Long lines and canceled rentals: Firings bring chaos to national parks,” the subheadline read “Trump’s purge of federal employees is already harming the visitor experience at national parks across the country.” Right off the bat, we know this is going to be your typical MSM doom and gloom story about how actions taken by the Trump administration have allegedly been harmful to America.
In it, we learned right off the bat that there was only one employee among all Yosemite National Park employees who had access to the keys and that he was relied upon to rescue people from, among other things, getting locked in bathrooms:
At California’s Yosemite National Park, the Trump administration fired the only locksmith on staff on Friday. [Nate Vince] was the sole employee with the keys and the institutional knowledge needed to rescue visitors from locked restrooms.
[…]
Yosemite, which is roughly the size of Rhode Island, has hundreds of locked buildings and gates. Sometimes visitors get locked inside vault toilets or restrooms. Sometimes employees get locked out of their houses in the middle of the night.
“We have a federal court, administrative buildings, toilets, closets, gun safes,” said Vince, who started working as a permanent employee at the park in March after four years as a seasonal employee. “We have endless things that need to be secured in various forms, and I’m the sole keeper of those keys, the one that makes the keys, the one that fixes the locks, installs the locks, and has all that knowledge of the security behind the park. And so it’s a critical role. And without it, everyone else in the park is handicapped.”
In almost every story you read about the cuts being made to federal agencies, there is a heavy emphasis on how essential those being let go allegedly are. For example, this one from the Associated Press made sure to quote advocacy groups on how the cuts would supposedly impact the American people:
“Fewer staff means shorter visitor center hours, delayed openings and closed campgrounds,″ said Kristen Brengel, senior vice president of government affairs at the National Parks Conservation Association, an advocacy group.
Trash will pile up, restrooms won’t be cleaned, and maintenance problems will grow, she predicted. Guided tours will be cut back or canceled and, in the worst cases, public safety could be at risk.
In many articles, critics of the DOGE cuts to the federal workforce follow the same script: these people are vital to your safety, well-being, and everyday life, and you will be inconvenienced and could face safety issues if they are let go. Further, there is a concern implied in the news reports about the futures of the employees that you don’t often see when private sector layoffs are announced:
People in the private sector get fired every day, and the media never does stories like this. https://t.co/dxdpC03Hn9
— Tom Bevan (@TomBevanRCP) February 21, 2025
If you’re thinking “This messaging sounds suspiciously coordinated,” you’re not far off the mark. It’s part of what is known as “malicious compliance,” where the entrenched bureaucracy makes strategic decisions on who gets fired and what services become limited to draw the media into shaming lawmakers and other leaders on Capitol Hill to reverse course.
It’s something we saw happen in 2013 during the Obama administration:
Flashback to 2013: Obama and the Deep State wanted to make spending cuts hurt normal Americans, so they shut down National Parks first, including barricading Mt Vernon’s parking lot, which is PRIVATELY OWNED.
Malicious compliance. Don’t fall for it!https://t.co/E9W6DFNLQ1
— Andrew Kloster (@ARKloster) February 21, 2025
Previously, it was known as “Washington Monument Syndrome”:
Before "malicious compliance" there was "Washington Monument Syndrome", where government agencies would go along with budget cuts by cutting the things the public is the most likely to get upset about. pic.twitter.com/6RVLKcNTvS
— Crémieux (@cremieuxrecueil) February 20, 2025
The “malicious compliance” term was used a lot on the Twitter/X machine in response to the absurd WaPo story about the locksmith:
Who's in charge of National Parks? @PressSec team should clip all stories & give agency heads to fire those responsible for bad management during downsizing, such as not ensuring staff has keys. Prompt firing of inept managers will end any malicious compliance real fast. https://t.co/oUXLPHbGqv
— Margot Cleveland (@ProfMJCleveland) February 21, 2025
In the winter, Yosemite has 451 people directly employed by the National Park Service, according to government records. In the summer, it has 741.
But they fired the only locksmith.
Grand Canyon National Park has 382. But they couldn’t find anyone to work the most popular… https://t.co/t41vLB6hf7
— John Carney (@carney) February 21, 2025
Pretty clear the plan is for the mid and lower levels of admin staffing to engage in malicious compliance. Firings of these people need to be accelerated and proposed. You wrote the memo shutting down the major entrances to Yosemite despite still having 300+ people on staff? Yeah…
— John Esten Cooke (@jestencooke) February 21, 2025
So our media is at Trump is a dictator because Yosemite National Park employees did not know how to duplicate keys to a gate.
— Stephen L. Miller (@redsteeze) February 21, 2025
FULL EXCERPT from Just Asking Questions: @RandyEBarnett on "malicious compliance" by bureaucrats: "This is very standard fightback from the bureaucracy whose interests are at stake." @TheAbridgedZach @OsterhoudtJohn pic.twitter.com/NwjcAFd4sx
— Liz Wolfe (@LizWolfeReason) February 21, 2025
Former Park Ranger here.
All Park Rangers either carry or have access to all keys needed for parks.
Yosemite has more than one Park Ranger. Then there’s the manager, office staff, maintenance (who definitely have all of the keys)…
Obstructive Obedience in play.— Michelle_Benavidez (XX) #AdultHumanFemale (@Michelle_B_76) February 20, 2025
We’ve also seen malicious compliance over the last month in other ways:
Malicious compliance reveals that there are a lot of bureaucrats willing to cause massive pain and suffering among the most vulnerable in our society just to win a single news cyclehttps://t.co/JJQOZzMsH6 https://t.co/8c2X8p7RWL
— PoIiMath (@politicalmath) January 28, 2025
Never should have been pulled in the first place. It’s called malicious compliance.
It’s the 2025 version of the Obama admin barricading open-air war memorials during the shutdown. It’s to make a point as petulantly as possible. https://t.co/dNSx8vkPFc
— T. Becket Adams (@BecketAdams) January 28, 2025
And it was more or less admitted by the National Science Foundation (NSF) that some of their firings were part of a deliberate strategy:
I think the civil servants who fire their fellow employees against the President's orders in order to make a statement should be jailed.
Congress needs to pass a law to punish civil servants for this sort of extreme, life- and program-threatening violation of the public trust. pic.twitter.com/FcdW2IY9uw
— Crémieux (@cremieuxrecueil) February 20, 2025
Plus, coming soon to the DoD?
BREAKING: Hearing reports from within DOD that command elements are denying waivers to mission critical personnel including special agents to cut them in acts of malicious compliance. Command seniors are letting go of the people who do the job to protect themselves from being cut
— Jack Poso
(@JackPosobiec) February 21, 2025
And some final thoughts:
Government cuts showed:
1. Only 1 person could "rescue" people from faulty restrooms at Yosemite.
2. The Gettysburg staff operated so inefficiently that it had to cancel event reservations indefinitely.
This proves either malicious compliance or ineptitude. Choose. https://t.co/PEo208r6r2
— David Chavous (@DACDAC4DAC) February 21, 2025
Choose? I say both.
-Stacey Matthews has also written under the pseudonym “Sister Toldjah” and can be reached via Twitter/X.-
DONATE
Donations tax deductible
to the full extent allowed by law.
Comments
Yeah, if these reports are true, it shows massive managerial incompetence. In the private sector, we have something called cross-training, so the whole shebang doesn’t come to a stop when someone is absent. What this also highlights is the inverse (perverse?) incentives in public sector employment. FAILURE is the path to bigger budgets, more staff, more rewards and advancement. All public sector failures are by default blamed on lack of resources, so in the face of cutbacks, they seek to maximize the impact on the public. In the private sector, cutbacks are typically done to minimize impact on paying customers.
It reminds me of some of my grandfather’s stories about working at Chrysler as a union man. Everyone had one job. If you worked on the assembly line, you weren’t allowed to pick up a piece of trash on the floor because that was someone else’s job. It was designed to be inefficient to protect everyone’s’ job security. If only one person knows how to do something, guess you can’t fire them.
Good points. A large facility such as a national park or an industrial campus requires a single locksmith (with as many assistants as he needs) so that the system of master keys and families of secondary keys can be maintained. Unitary control is essential. Typically these are restricted-use keys that are cut by proprietary equipment; these are not your residential keys cut at the hardware store. This makes the locksmith indispensable. A good nexus for malicious compliance.
Had a key for federal fire roads. Was stamped DO NOT DUPLICATE. Was a standard key with one extra groove in it. I duplicated it with a standard key cutter and a tiny bit of creativity
Paraphrase by Paula
“The president cannot do anything. Period! Everything must remain as it is. Only bureaucrats know what’s going on—no one else is supposed to know anything. If the president attempts to do anything we will cry bloody murder and obstruct everything he does. And together, with our friends in the media, we will make it look like the sky is falling.”
Sounds about right.
Pretty much every national and state park I know of can and does utilize volunteers (usually seniors in their RVs) as “camp hosts”, answering questions and doing cleaning and maintenance chores in the campgrounds, in exchange for a free campsite for the summer
These volunteer spots are few and are fiercely competed for.
Simply expand these roles somewhat, and I bet you could even teach these volunteers how to run the key-cutting machine in the back office.
Everyone who engages in this sort of malicious compliance should be immediately fired with no severance and no pension.
Public schools do this, threating to cut sports. I have watched the negative impact of sports for a long time. It is corrosive to school operations, and I do not think taxpayers should be paying for elaborate facilities for sports.
There is no reason that sports can’t be operated privately.
My local school district did not served my children well. since 1998 I have been killing their bond requests, last year a $60 million one was defeated. It really is not that hard to do.
I am sure they will be happy to see me move out of state, though I might continue to haunt them.
“Were you the manager who was so stupid that she fired the only locksmith?
Bye, Felicia.”
Yes – essentially if management at Yosemite has created a situation where if The One calls in sick, people stay locked in bathrooms until The One feels well enough to come to work… that’s incompetence worthy of termination.
I didn’t know how to use a key to open a lock was an essential skill needed in the government. Where do I apply? I can lock and unlock doors, and even know how to turn the handle to open the door. In addition, I can walk and breath at the same time.
You are severely overqualified
No Kidding, with a C.V. like that he/she should run for high office.
And I’d like to know how a person can get locked in a bathroom in the first place. Why wouldn’t they have a simple knob/latch on the inside that could be turned/engaged from the inside to release the lock if a patron got locked in the bathroom. Why does the Park Service need to have a special key of all things to rescue a person if caught in one of their bathrooms. The claim that people will remain locked in bathrooms seems to be just a ridiculous when you think about it.
Because national park and forest bathrooms are all keyed from the outside only with no way to open the locked door from inside – and these are steel doors on concrete buildings. So, if a ranger locks up the bathroom at 5 PM without properly checking to see if someone is inside, a person will be locked in.
Oh there should be severance but of a different kind.
What kind of “institutional knowledge” is required to know how to drive to a locksmith and pay to get key copies made? What type of IK is required to know how to lock or unlock a lock? I know how to do both of those, the average teenage dropout knows how, can either of us qualify for a cushy govt job with benefits?
I’m not even a locksmith and I’m pretty sure I can install lock and doorknobs plus find someone to make duplicate keys. Are these jackasses really trying to make people, all of whom have locks on their doors at home and the vehicles they drove to the park in, believe no one but a professional can unlock a door?
The managers doing this need to be terminated immediately.
This is one of the arguments in favor of smaller government. The inability to respond to even small changes is a sign of inefficiency. But we never ever need more inefficiency!
The government needs to be populated by people who know how to get things done, NOT people who think that having only one guy who knows how to use a key makes sense.
Fire them all. Hire back the guy with the keys. Make sure he knows that his pay and pension are entirely dependent on his actually using those keys in a timely manner.
Would love to see Trump come to the rescue every time with, “Don’t worry. I got a guy.”
Or, “I’m firing three incompetent managers to hire a WAY better line worker.”
I really cry for them. It looks like they’re gonna have to get jobs as producers, not economic parasites.
They ought to be firing mid level managers who are over paid, essentially useless, and spend their time publishing memos no one reads and going to meetings that accomplish nothing. All bureaucracies become filled with these people who are either treading in place because they like their current gig or empire building by building out unnecessary depth below themselves in order to get promotions. Flatten the organizations.
The purpose of deep management trees is to make sure bad news never gets to the top.
Ive watched the creation of such trees. If I’m a manager and I want to be a director I elevate myself by hiring managers. If I’m a director and I want to be a VP I hire directors. If I’m a VP and I want to be a senior VP I hire VPs. And so on….
I’ve been to many of the nation’s National Parks—-including Yosemite—-and I’m here to tell you that you’ll never see more disgusting bathrooms that rarely get cleaned than in a National Park. At Yosemite, my family hiked up to Glacier Point on 4 mile trail only to find a bathroom that reeked like a dead body was in there. My wife and daughter opted to pee on the trail instead because it was so disgusting. Ditto for Sequoia. Ditto for Zion. Ditto for Grand Canyon. Ditto for Yellowstone. And so on. Overflowing trash is the norm. Smelling like the inside of a dead man’s colon is the norm. The National Parks were already neglecting the bathrooms, so it’s hard to go down from there. Cry me a friggin River.
How often are people getting locked in bathrooms? How are they getting locked in bathrooms? Sounds like this locksmith is incompetent because the locks he is responsible for keep malfunctioning somehow. Fire him and hire someone competent. It also sounds like Yosemite is violating fire codes and endangering visitors. The entire command structure should be evaluated to see who needs to go.
DEI
They are not malfunctioning. National park bathrooms are universally designed with steel doors that can only be locked from outside, and no way to open from inside. Often they are padlocked from outside. This is done to make life hard for burglars who want to wreck bathrooms at night, or use them to shoot up drugs. This is a standard design feature. Notice the next time you visit a National Park or National Forest – I have noticed this. People get locked in when incompetent rangers don’t properly check the bathroom for occupants before they lock it at the end of their shift.
Simple solution to deal with malicious compliance. Whoever signed off on this petulant stupidity + their supervisor + that person’s supervisor (assuming those two higher levels didn’t catch it and correct it immediately) take these bureaucratic drones to Ft Richardson Alaska for further movement to the Arctic to count snowflakes. They can resign instead, their choice.
Fire all the park service workers and privatize the operation of the park.
Simple: “If the person fired was key to the mission, then you are not. Bye, bye.”
As far as I am concerned fewer visitors and crowds at our national parks would be a good thing. It might even mean I get to see one in my dwindling remaining life.
The bureaucracy has done this in the past, but not to a President who is trying to shrink the federal workforce and seeking to establish his authority to fire members of the executive branch in court.
I do not think this will turn out the way the bureaucracy expects.
Turn the parks over to the states, and let the states manage them. If the parks cannot be sustained by the states, sell the property to developers and make them useful. The only rule.
NO HOAs can own the land.
I am looking at buying a home out of state, the first thing I look for is HOA, I absolutely will not buy if they have an HOA.
FWIW I’m a Hard No selling the Nation Parks and National Forests. Those are assets we should keep in the hands of the Nation to preserve for future generations to enjoy.
The BLM land and other Federal property is fair game. Though there’s probably gotta be some restrictions put on ownership to keep it from being snapped up by Blackrock or foreign buyers.
You have forgotten that the best land was taken a long time ago by homesteaders. The remaining BLM land is largely either not useful for anything at all, or only for grazing cattle. No sane state government would want all of it or even more than a little of it, notwithstanding what this or that grandstanding “sagebrush rebelli0n” dork will say to get votes.
We are made to believe that this fellow was let go and he is still in possession of all of those keys?
He would also have us believe that there are hundreds of things that need to be secured in a park the size of Rhode Island and that he, and only he, personally locked and unlocked everything?
There other curious things here. Apparently it is impossible to open a locked bathroom from the inside in some places but it is possible to lock that bathroom from the outside without any keys. It must be possible to do this, because with him gone, how are these places getting locked? For that matter, if everything must remain secure, how were they unlocked for use with him gone, or are they simply left unlocked unless and until someone accidentally or maliciously locks them using this somewhat hilarious feature which no teenage boy would ever exploit on a daily basis?
There are far too many absurdities and contradictions to this tale for it not to be mostly a lie.
Churlish and childish drama.
Sample letter justifying a job. “ my boss either says something really stupid or outright lies. I have to spin it something that makes some sense. It ain’t easy with this lying moron. I mean just last week he said ukraine started the war with Russia. Fortunately his cult following ain’t too bright and don’t care if he lies” – karolyn leavitt….LAFfRIOT
Sample letter justifying job. “i’m trying to get all the fags and dykes out of the military. Ni…..s too. Not sure exactly what i did last week…blackouts…” – pete hegseth” ps- you know any chicks with big knockers desparate for a job LAFFRIOT
Resident Marxist weighs in again with another diseased take.
Every time I see one of these fed workers’ groups I’m reminded of a stint as far back as the late 1970’s where CPA people were hired to straighten records for the Navy Dept.
Our firm was paid very well but if one listened to the group of full-time Navy staff, on the other side of the divider, conversation didn’t appear to be about work, rather what they did in the previous weekend and what they would be doing the upcoming weekend. Long lunches. I just can’t worry about this. DOGE is finding abuse everywhere but apparently leftists and feds aren’t bothering to recognize it.
The root of ‘malicious?’ Evil. Progressives in one word. Evil.
Yosemite also postponed all campground reservations for the summer. They are likely the most sought after reservations in U.S. National Parks.
Sample letter:
” I’m trying to figure out some way to charge Liz Cheney, Jack smith and Latetia Jones with a crime but I can’t come up with anything ” -Pam Bondi
sample letter.
” I’m busy with the enemy list my boss told me to come up with. So far it’s Adam Schiff, Pelosi, JAck Smith , Latetia James, And Biden. then I’ll ask my boss to figure out some crime I can charge them with”- Patel
Sample letter:
” I’m doing some background research on my Dept. Did you know Medicare is part of HHS? WOW! When did that happen?” – Robert Kennedy Jr.
LAFFRIOT
Guaranteed there are hundreds of bootleg keys floating around that park.