Trump doesn’t want to hear about Russian election interference. So Congress must step up.

THERE ARE plenty of good people in government who want to protect this country’s elections. The problem is that President Trump may not let them.

The replacement of Joseph Maguire with Richard Grenell as acting director of national intelligence was already part of a concerning post-impeachment pattern: the purging of public servants deemed too independent and the installation of blind loyalists to supplant them. But the change became more concerning still when The Post reported that Mr. Maguire’s odds of securing a permanent position plummeted after his staff told Congress that Russia is trying to get Mr. Trump reelected. The president describes this finding as a “hoax.”

The administration’s antipathy toward the so-called deep state is familiar and enduring. “My guess is 1,690 of them voted for Hillary Clinton for president, and 1,600 of them came to work every single day trying to make sure the president failed,” groused White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney last Wednesday about the 1,700 or so civil servants at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau under his leadership. But these are the same professionals who are trying to make sure that our democracy continues to function, and in the case of the intelligence community, they’re the ones trying to deliver honest assessments of an enemy power’s attempts to meddle with this nation’s right to self-determination — whether by aiding Mr. Trump or by aiding Bernie Sanders in the Democratic primary, as U.S. officials have briefed the Vermont senator.