Former President Donald Trump renewed his pledge on Tuesday to purge the unaccountable and unelected administrative state that creates and directs vast amounts of far-left policy in the federal government.
In a lengthy Time Magazine feature article, Trump outlined many of the initiatives he would enact if he wins reelection. Perhaps the most important but also perhaps the most difficult to implement among the various initiatives is a thorough detox of the administration state, or the “swamp” and “deep state,” as Trump puts it.
“We will demolish the deep state,” Trump vowed in 2023. “We will expel the warmongers from our government. We will drive out the globalists. We will cast out the communists, Marxists and fascists. And we will throw off the sick political class that hates our country.”
The term “administrative state” specifically describes the phenomenon of unaccountable and unelected administrative agencies, including the national security apparatus, exercising power to create and enforce their own rules. The administrative state uses its rule-making ability to essentially usurp the separation of powers between the three branches of government by creating a so-called fourth branch of government not formed by the Constitution.
Nearly two million federal government employees in federal agencies comprise the administrative state. When presidential administrations turn over after a Democrat or Republican candidate wins the presidency, the vast amount of the two million federal employees retain their positions of power and rule-making authority. The federal bureaucracy remains in place with the capacity to thwart political agendas championed by the president, who was chosen by the voters.
“When I first got to Washington, I knew very few people,” Trump told Time. “I had to rely on people.”
The Deep State would love this. https://t.co/1LQgDBlBJX
— Breitbart News (@BreitbartNews) November 10, 2020
The administrative state holds significant institutional power because elected federal lawmakers essentially abdicated their responsibility, according to experts at conservative think tanks. Some conservative experts believe lawmakers should accomplish more legislative business and perform fewer public relations stunts that grow their political brand.
Many America First conservatives are working to alter the incentive structure within Washington. “The President never had a policy process that was designed to give him what he actually wanted and campaigned on,” Russell Vought, Trump’s former director of the Office of Management and Budget, told Time. “[We are] sorting through the legal authorities, the mechanics, and providing the momentum for a future Administration.”
Before Trump left office in 2021, he signed an executive order to reclassify federal government employees into Schedule F, which would have allowed the president to enhance accountability and job performance within the bureaucratic agencies. “You have some people that are protected that shouldn’t be protected,” Trump told Time about Schedule F.
President Joe Biden canceled the order when he assumed office in 2021, but if Trump reclaims the White House, he will reportedly reimplement the executive order and purge the unelected technocrats artificially running the federal government. “It would effectively upend the modern civil service, triggering a shock wave across the bureaucracy,” Axios previously concluded about the EO’s impact.
“The mere mention of Schedule F,” added Vought, “ensures that the bureaucracy moves in your direction.”
Wendell Husebo is a political reporter with Breitbart News and a former GOP War Room Analyst. He is the author of Politics of Slave Morality. Follow Wendell on “X” @WendellHusebø or on Truth Social @WendellHusebo.
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