What in the English 101? Trump Is Asking Federal Employees to Write an Essay Praising Him

Who doesn't like a compliment? Some people don't but those who do, value a compliment more based on its intent. According to the National Library of Medicine, "sincere praise reliably conveys positive or negative feedback, while flattery always conveys positive but unreliable feedback." This was shown using neuroimaging which measured the brain activity of people receiving praise versus flattery after performing a particular task.

While some might argue that praise and flattery are two sides of the same coin, the former is given freely while the latter is used to gain approval. President Donald Trump is someone who appears to enjoy a bit of flattery. There are several documented examples of the president demanding that people say something nice about him. During his second term, Trump told federal employees they had to write a loyalty essay about him.

Here's what we know about this bizarre homework assignment.

In June 2025, former CNN anchor Jim Acosta held a town hall event in Washington, D.C. Towards the end, a federal employee told the shocked crowd about a new addition to her job description. The woman described herself as a military spouse, veteran, and Department of Defense employee who got an alarming email two days prior about updated employee standards for federal workers.

Not only was there a loyalty pledge, but a demand for a two-page essay on why she supports the Trump administration. She went on to say that federal workers take an oath to the Constitution, which was in direct opposition to what was being requested.

The DoD employee said this was definitely something their union needed to address. Jim agreed with her, saying, "Our loyalty is to the United States of America, ma'am. Thank you for bringing that up."

Vince Haley, the White House's head of domestic policy, wrote in a May 29 memorandum that civil service applicants will be forced to answer a series of questions about how they would "help advance" Trump's policies, per Newsweek. These applicants will have to answer four questions in the form of 200-word essays, one of which is specifically about the president's vision of America.

Potential federal employees will be tasked with describing how they would "help advance the President's Executive Orders and policy priorities in this role." The Office of Personnel Management also said in the memo: The American people deserve a federal workforce dedicated to American values and efficient service. "Now it looks like they'll be replacing those folks with partisans," Max Stier, president of the nonprofit Partnership for Public Service, told Axios.

Jim shared a clip of the DoD employee on his TikTok. The responses were predictably outraged. "This is utterly corrupt and evidence of a dictatorship," said one commenter. "Steve Bannon said they were going to do this, and it’s in Project 2025, so no one should be surprised," chimed in another.

Most people demanded something be done about this, though no one knows what to do.