Federal employees are working against President Donald Trump – shocker. If anyone is confused or skeptical about the existence of the deep state, a group of federal workers has banded together to actively resist Trump’s campaign to root out fraud, waste, and abuse, protecting taxpayers’ dollars. These anti-good government dissidents are found on social media as #AltGov. The real focus of the unhappy workforce is the Department of Government Efficiency’s (DOGE) leader, Elon Musk.
DOGE Gives Deep State Stressful Task
It seems DOGE’s admirable endeavor to find and eliminate wasteful government spending and the practitioners of this assault has garnered the ire of those most likely to be the culprits. Nonetheless, there was a visceral and over-the-top reaction to an email from the Office of Personnel Policy supporting DOGE sent to the entire federal workforce asking for “five bullets describing what you accomplished last week and cc your manager.” Additionally, the email asked, “Please do not send any classified information, links, or attachments.” However, this request was more than the psyches of the recipients could handle. Keep in mind that in the private sector, providing employers with weekly or monthly reports of accomplishments is common.
The Guardian reported, “Government employees fight the Trump administration’s chaos by organizing and publishing information on Bluesky,” where the left-leaning news source explained that a cadre of federal employees had organized “a clandestine network of employees and contractors at dozens of federal agencies [that] began talking on an encrypted app about how to respond … Within hours, the network had agreed on a recommended response.” They decided to take the oath to the Constitution and break it into five accomplishments. “’1. I supported and defended the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic … 2. I bore true faith and allegiance to the same,’ and so on.”
Their purpose was, The Guardian said, “to ‘expose harmful policies, defend public institutions and equip citizens with tools to push back against authoritarianism,’ according to the network.” The reality is that the network-recommended response did two things. One, it validated, as Elon Musk had hoped, the employees were employed and alive. And, two, it provided a written deposition identifying the employees who may not be the brightest bulbs and whose further service to the nation may be questionable.
Such activities are emblematic of what the deep state is all about. There is more to this phenomenon than identifying recalcitrant and disaffected federal bureaucrats. The deep state operatives are nestled within a larger institution, the administrative state. The administrative state comprises the nameless, faceless bureaucrats responsible for implementing the laws and presidential executive orders. This extension of the executive branch turns legislation and directives into regulations that can be applied as appropriate. These federal workers, as a whole, are necessary and, for the most part, do not wake up in the morning thinking, “How can I screw up today what the president has directed?” However, when they work against a sitting administration, it can slow down and possibly grind to a halt what the American people elected the president and his appointed staff to accomplish.
Administrative State an Unelected, Unaccountable Force
In his book, Unmasking the Administrative State: The Crisis of American Politics in the Twenty-First Century, John Marini provided an insightful description of what has become an unelected, unaccountable force in the government:
“The rational, or administrative, state and its social science, although incapable of recognizing tyranny, had opened up the prospect of the greatest tyranny of all … By attempting to understand the theoretical origins of the administrative state, it was necessary to examine the fundamental transformation in American politics brought about the intellectual and political victory of Progressivism. It revealed a complete break with the American Founding and total rejection of constitutionalism.”
As the administrative state operates today, it embodies the attributes of a separate and fourth branch of government and embodies the fears of the founding fathers. James Madison, in Federalist 47, explained, “The accumulation of all powers, legislative, executive, and judiciary, in the same hands, whether of one, a few, or many, and whether hereditary, self-appointed, or elective, may justly be pronounced the very definition of tyranny.” Left unattended, the administrative state has become the tyranny the Founding Fathers had hoped to avoid.
Consequently, when the Trump administration took on the task of reducing the size and inefficiency of the administrative (read deep) state, a level of dissatisfaction was inevitable. The inertia of the federal bureaucracy was not to be denied. However, Trump and Musk have disrupted that momentum. It is necessary not only to achieve some modicum of efficiency and good stewardship of taxpayer dollars but also allow for the survival of America as an economic global power. The re-establishment of the Executive Branch’s responsibilities over its agencies that 77-plus million voters said they wanted is essential.
RealClearPolitics explained why DOGE is not just important but critical to the United States continuing as a viable enterprise. In its reprint of The Wall Street Journal article, “America’s Future Depends on DOGE,” RCP reveals that Trump has established the way forward by bringing the administrative state under control. He is not following the lead of the Biden administration, during which, as the WSJ explained, “We didn’t even need a conscious or active president, only a figurehead. Behind the scenes, institutions ran everything.” There is new management in the White House. “In his second term, [Trump’s] determined to slay the bureaucratic beast he knows all too well from his first term and the Biden years. DOGE’s efforts are epic, breaking more than a century of acquiescence to the deep state,” the WSJ article continued.
Bringing the deep state and the administrative state in which it resides to heel has been the dream of many administrations. Now, after decades, Trump is realizing the dream. He and Musk should be celebrated.
The views expressed are those of the author and not of any other affiliate.