(iPoster) Defining Loyalty: Biden and Trump Appointees to the U.S. Department of Education

• In Event: Poster Sessions: Candidates and Elections; Education Politics and Policy; & Creating Spaces for Civic Engagement
  In Poster Session: Poster Session: Education Politics and Policy

Abstract

Many news reports suggest that the second Trump administration (Trump 2.0) prioritizes loyalty in political appointees (e.g., Sanger et al., 2024). What remains empirically unexamined, however, is whether this emphasis represents a substantive departure from prior administrations. To address this issue, we look at the relationship between executive appointments and political loyalty across two presidential administrations—one Democrat and one Republican—during a period of shifting political alignment (Pew, 2024).

Our analytical framework centers on two core constructs of loyalty: politicization and authoritarianism (e.g., Landa & Pevnick, 2025; Shih et al., 2012). Politicization refers to the extent to which political factors like party affiliation and ideological alignment shape administrative appointments. Authoritarianism refers to the concentration of decision-making authority within the executive and the expectation of personal loyalty to the leader. Loyalty in the first case might be signaled through shared policy beliefs, and, in the second case, through responsiveness to executive demands.

We utilize two-mode, inter-organizational network analysis to operationalize constructs of political loyalty and test the empirical relationship between loyalty—modeled as a bipartite network linking individuals to organizations—and the likelihood of appointment to the U.S. Department of Education (ED). We compare political appointees’ backgrounds for both the Biden and Trump 2.0 administrations, using prior organizational affiliations as indicators of political alignment.

Data comes from ED’s press releases, which describe appointees’ prior organizational affiliations (i.e., employers and/or board memberships; cross-checked with LinkedIn.com profiles). Next, we describe ED appointees’ most common organizational affiliations.

For Trump 2.0, 14 of 52 appointees (31%) have backgrounds in ED (primarily under Trump 1.0), and 12 have prior connections to the U.S. House of Representatives (most often to Republican legislators). For the nine appointees with state government experience, it was most often in Virginia or Florida. Twenty-one individuals (40%) worked for a conservative think tank; nine worked for the pro-Trump America First Policy Institute. Six appointees had prior experience on the Trump campaign or transition.

For the Biden administration, almost half of the 95 appointees had prior affiliations with the Biden campaign or transition. Like Trump 2.0, many had prior experience within ED, often under the Obama administration, or prior affiliations with the House or Senate. Though many appointees had formal government experience at the federal or state levels, no state stands out as sending a high number of appointees. If appointees came from a think tank, it was most often the Center for American Progress.

Our current findings suggest that loyalty under the Biden administration was expressed primarily through politicization, differing from patterns under Trump 2.0. Trump appointees exhibited relatively loose ties to traditional political party structures, while Biden appointees were deeply embedded within established party networks. These early findings raise questions about how network embeddedness in political and organizational structures conditions access to executive appointments. Moving forward, we will examine whether authoritarian loyalty reflects a realignment of political loyalty away from party-based networks and toward personalistic allegiance to individual political leaders, and whether such realignment differentially predicts appointment across administrations.

These findings connect to the theme, “Democracy under Threat: How to Understand, Protect, and Rebuild,” in Trump 2.0 appointees are often framed as endangering democracy, loyal to the president and not to professional norms, evidence, or ethics. However, both administrations engaged in distinct types of loyalty, with Biden appointees exhibiting a greater proportion of political affiliations. These findings suggest that loyalty is a nuanced concept and that other conceptualizations of loyalty, such as those that are predicated on authoritarian or autocratic tendencies, might provide greater explanatory power to understand how the Trump administration’s loyalty tests may threaten democracy.

References

Landa, D., & Pevnick, R. (2025). Political meritocracy and democracy. Annual Review of Political Science, 28(1), 253-271.

Pew Research Center. (2024, April 9). Changing partisan coalitions in a politically divided nation (Report). Pew Research Center.

Sanger, D., Swan, J., & Haberman, M. (2024, Dec. 7). Want a job in the Trump Administration? Be prepared for the loyalty test. The New York Times.

Shih, V., Adolph, C., & Liu, M. (2012). Getting ahead in the Communist Party: Explaining the advancement of central committee members in China. American Political Science Review, 106(1), 166–187.

Authors

• Emily Hodge, Virginia Commonwealth University

• Unregistered Participant

• Raquel Muñiz, Boston College

• Bailey J. Bontrager, Virginia Commonwealth University