Trump’s better-known adversaries were expecting payback, but more intense vengeance felt by civil servants

Federal government workers have been left “shell-shocked” by the upheaval wrought by Donald Trump’s return to the presidency amid signs that he is bent on exacting revenge on a bureaucracy that he considers to be a “deep state” that previously thwarted and persecuted him.

Since being restored to the White House on 20 January, the president has gone on a revenge spree against high-profile figures who previously served him but earned his enmity by slighting or criticising him in public.