Looking through the Constitution, there are three branches of government: judicial, legislative, and executive. They are supposed to be equally weighted, allowing for checks and balances at the top, with most of the power flowing to the states under a system called federalism. In theory, the organizational chart should reflect this.
Over the course of 130 years or so, however, the power of these branches of government became wildly distorted. The Supreme Court became cautious about policing the legislature and the executive. The legislature gave up vast amounts of its power to agencies operating under the executive. Today the overwhelming part of what we call the federal government rests with the executive.
Then we had the new innovation that was birthed in 1883 (the Pendleton Act that created the civil service) and grew without limit through wars and economic crises. This was the birth of the independent agency. Over the decades, especially after the income tax, it came to be widely understood that the elected president could have no real power over them, even though they operated under the aegis of the executive branch.
This reality has disenfranchised voters from the operations of government itself. It means that the whole point of post-Enlightenment government has been upended. No longer do the people have a means of influencing the regime under which they live. Gradually through the decades, the ancient idea of government detached from the people became the living reality.
Did we know this? Not really. It was not part of the consciousness of the public mind. It crept up on us slowly. We meanwhile kept going to the voting booths and pushing buttons for this or that person. Meanwhile, no one overtly admitted that most of the authority of government had been transferred outside the elected branches toward something that is not even mentioned in the Constitution at all.
Generations have been in the dark on this. What began to draw back the curtain on the real power in Washington was the treatment of Trump starting in 2016. They first claimed he was an illegitimate president because he was helped by Russia. Investigations went on for years and turned up nothing. Then the flurry of assaults came hard with lawfare and other dirty tricks.
The COVID response was related to this, particularly as it drove the economy into depression and unleashed mail-in ballots that were directly ordered by the CDC on March 12, 2020. That set the stage for the sketchiest presidential election in U.S. history. Trump left office and had four years to scope out a return. They did it but in those four years, Americans got a graduate-level education in the depredations of the administrative state. We know today what we did not know.
Two weeks before Trump left office that last time, he issued an executive order that would have given the people through their elected president new powers over the bureaucracy. It asked agencies to reclassify all employees that deal with policy as Schedule F. To my way of thinking, it was the most brilliant and visionary executive order in a century, because it was the first giant step to give government back to the people.
That order was instantly reversed once Biden took office, on day one. The Biden administration spent four years building in protections for the administrative state that would make President Trump’s future attempts to control the bureaucracy null and void.
“Accountability is essential for all Federal employees, but it is especially important for those who are in policy-influencing positions. These personnel are entrusted to shape and implement actions that have a significant impact on all Americans. Any power they have is delegated by the President, and they must be accountable to the President, who is the only member of the executive branch, other than the Vice President, elected and directly accountable to the American people. In recent years, however, there have been numerous and well-documented cases of career Federal employees resisting and undermining the policies and directives of their executive leadership. Principles of good administration, therefore, necessitate action to restore accountability to the career civil service, beginning with positions of a confidential, policy-determining, policy-making, or policy-advocating character.”
To be sure, the public-sector unions immediately filed suit and this action will face a court challenge. I have no idea how it will end up. Whatever the decision, it can be appealed all the way to the Supreme Court. There is simply no way the highest court is going to side with the administrative state, simply because no such thing exists within the Constitution. It will side with the U.S. president.
Meanwhile, as this issue winds its way through the courts over years, President Trump’s executive order remains in effect, barring an actual injunction that would fast forward the process. Regardless, Trump is going to win this eventually because the administrative state as currently constituted is contrary to the U.S. Constitution, contrary to freedom, and contrary to the whole point of government for the last 500 years, which has been to give power to the people.
For many decades, the reform agenda of many presidents has been buried under the administrative state. This happened to Nixon, Carter, Reagan, the Bush family, and Clinton until Obama finally came on board and more or less gave up fighting the system. The Biden administration merely continued in this tradition, given the example of what happened to Trump.
Now that Trump is back, he has decided that this is only worth doing if he is the president as described in the Constitution. He is the first president in living memory who has dared to take on the powers that be and exercise his powers in the office on behalf of the interests of the people.
To be sure, the corporate press is already decrying all of this as a return to the “spoils system” whereby each new president fires the old guys and hires loyalists instead as a return on favors. First, this new order does not abolish the functionaries and their job security; it only says that those people involved in policy-making are hired and fired at will. Second, the so-called spoils system was always a smear: the system before 1883 served very well to make sure that government did not leave the people’s control. We need that same system back again.
The order even clarifies that the civil service can consist of people who do not personally support Trump. “Employees in or applicants for Schedule Policy/Career positions are not required to personally or politically support the current President or the policies of the current administration. They are required to faithfully implement administration policies to the best of their ability, consistent with their constitutional oath and the vesting of executive authority solely in the President. Failure to do so is grounds for dismissal.”
What Trump has done is nothing short of genius. It assures that his agenda can be enacted and not subverted by the bureaucracy. In that sense, everyone benefits, including the next president from the other party if that should happen. It is in everyone’s interests to restore government of, by, and for the people. This executive order takes us a long way toward that ideal.
