AFGE President Everett Kelley is calling for new leadership in the government after a new poll by the Pew Research Center showed public trust in the federal government is at near-record lows. 

In a viral op-ed originally published in The Hill, Kelley pointed out several examples of mismanagement under the Trump administration during the past four years that have eroded public trust in our government and damaged morale of the highly talented federal workforce.  

Examples of the administration’s gross mismanagement include: 

• Routine tasks like forecasting the weather have become the subject of political drama.  

• Agencies doing basic research to help American farmers have been relocated and gutted for producing scientific results the president chooses not to believe.  
•  Scientific authorities are undermined in the midst of a global pandemic. 
• The tragic stories of federal workers on the front lines of the pandemic have been repeatedly denied by top agency officials. 
• The worst elements of our politics and culture are empowered, spreading hate like the wildfires engulfing our west coast. 
• Three government shutdowns in just four years, including the longest in our nation’s history. 

• Trump told reporter Bob Woodward that he purposefully downplayed the threat of the novel coronavirus to the American people, keeping important information from our citizens.  
• While telling the American people the virus was under control, Trump’s top advisors were secretly delivering a very different picture to wealthy investors.  
• More than 217,000 Americans are now dead because Trump did not tell us the truth. 

“But I want to assure my fellow citizens that what’s missing from our government right now isn’t skill and expertise in the ranks. It’s not know-how and can-do spirit. We have a federal government that mirrors our country — full of proud Americans ready to overcome the biggest challenges of this generation and the next. We can tackle this pandemic and beat it, together. The only thing that’s missing is leadership,” Kelley wrote. 

“This pandemic has shown us all the importance of leadership — of having a government we can rely on, that’s led by people we can trust, who will give us the facts and tell us the truth so we can make informed decisions in our own lives. This president hasn’t lived up to that obligation, but Joe Biden will,” he added.