Fired State Dept bureaucrats reportedly using their regime change skills to sabotage Trump

Current and former USAID and State Department officials are using their expertise in undermining authoritarian regimes abroad against President Donald Trump and his agenda at home, according to a new report Monday.

The Trump administration is still in the process of terminating thousands of United States Agency for International Development (USAID) workers by September as the agency restructures to fall in line with the president's "America First" policy.

NOTUS reporter Jose Pagliery reported, however, that "Some of the democracy-building experts President Donald Trump fired this year from the U.S. Agency for International Development and the State Department are now reapplying the skills and knowledge they built up over decades to undermine Trump’s power."

One anonymous current federal official warned to NOTUS, "Take it from those of us who worked in authoritarian countries: We’ve become one." He added, "They were so quick to disband AID, the group that supposedly instigates color revolutions. But they’ve done a very foolish thing. You just released a bunch of well-trained individuals into your population. If you kept our offices going and had us play solitaire in the office, it might have been safer to keep your regime."

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President Trump faces resistance from many of the same bureaucrats he once fired. (REUTERS/Nathan Howard)

"Former officials" reportedly told the news outlet that they are "holding workshops on a tactic called ‘noncooperation.’ They’re building a network of government workers willing to engage in even minor acts of rebellion in the office. And they’re planting the seeds of what they hope could become a nationwide general strike."

"Some in the informal network of Trump opponents are sharing an old CIA pamphlet with allies who still work in the government: It’s called ‘Simple Sabotage,’" the reporter added.

This community, NOTUS reported, "is composed of diplomats and human rights activists who were once on the U.S. government payroll encouraging Latin American dissidents to fight dictators and supporting African independence movements. They were involved to varying degrees with an ultimately successful uprising in the Middle East." 

One group that NOTUS cited was "DemocracyAID," which has no formal website or legal entity so far, but is "already hosting invite-only workshops with federal employees who hear about them from friends, vetting each person before they’re allowed into a trusted circle and teaching them case studies, like the Danish underground insurgency against Nazi occupation."

Ro Tucci, the former director of the USAID Center for Democracy, Human Rights and Governance who co-leads DemocracyAID, teaches workshops on what she calls "Authoritarianism 101" and the ways to resist it, starting with small community organization and ideally ending in a massive strike.

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President Donald Trump arrives to speak at a rally at the Iowa State Fairgrounds, Thursday, July 3, 2025, in Des Moines, Iowa. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)

Deputy White House press secretary Anna Kelly condemned such efforts in a statement to NOTUS, saying, "It is inherently undemocratic for unelected bureaucrats to undermine the duly elected President of the United States and the agenda he was given a mandate to implement."

While supporters within the administration are resolute they will accomplish their agenda despite internal resistance, NOTUS claims that "several" rebellious insiders are making Star Wars references about their attempts to disrupt Trump’s agenda.

"Fascism is not creative," a former government expert in conflict told the outlet. "There’s only so many ways to do it. That’s why it’s almost cliché to the point where we ask, ‘What are we, Darth Vader? The Empire? The Nazis?’ The comparisons draw ridicule because people who don’t know enough about it don’t realize there aren’t too many ways to do it. So, the tactics to counter them will still work, and there’s way more ways to be creative."

A Star Wars movie poster. (Photo by: Universal History Archive/UIG via Getty images)

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A senior State Department official told Fox News Digital, "The State Department is not aware of these reports but always takes our national security seriously. We will continue to take every precaution to protect the State Department from internal and external threats."

Fox News Digital also attempted to reach out to Tucci.

Fox News' Emma Colton contributed to this report.