President Trump has spent nearly three years trying to bend the vast federal bureaucracy to his whims and demands, pushing out dissenters at the top levels while molding a Cabinet that caters to his obsessions as well as his political agenda.

The whistleblower complaint that helped launch the impeachment storm engulfing Washington is the starkest example yet that Trump has not prevailed.

At least some of the civil servants who make government work — law enforcement officials, intelligence operatives and others he derisively calls the “deep state” — are fighting back.