The so-called "Deep State"
Only 1,363 days to go...
"And let every man and woman who works in any area of our national government, in any branch, at any level, be able to say with pride and with honor in future years: 'I served the United States Government in that hour of our nation's need.'"
~John F. Kennedy
I was a Federal Civil Servant for two years. It was an eye-opening experience and made me less than enamored with the effectiveness of government. There were levels of bureaucracy that made no sense to a 22-year-old and I saw a lot of crazy things. At the time scenes from M*A*S*H came to mind. Even today, I still wonder about that particular Bureau and its role in serving the United States…
Later, I was also a contractor for various government entities. Again I saw a lot of things I didn’t like and lot of employees that were just marking their time until they got their pensions.
So I’ll be the first to concede that there is inefficiency in government and probably fraud, waste and abuse (FWA) as well. With that said, I also worked as a contractor at regular for-profit companies. Guess what; there is also FWA in business. I saw the same personnel attitudes in private/publicly held companies, that I saw in government entities.
It’s not about the employer. It’s about the people and whether they want to do a good job or not. I met some fabulous government employees throughout my consulting career, who cared very deeply about their jobs and the importance of the services that were providing to the public.
Trump has frequently referred to parts of the federal workforce as the "deep state," calling them “crooked,” “dishonest,” and “out to destroy the country.”
Nothing like the pot calling the kettle black… (Narcissistic Projection)
#FOTUS aims to reinstate a new federal job classification that would strip job protections from tens of thousands of civil servants, making it easier to fire them and replace them with loyalists. Trump has been clear about wanting a government staffed by people aligned with “his people” and not career civil servants he deems disloyal.
MAGA talks about the Deep State as being something sinister that needs to be dismantled.
But were the people who kept us safe after 9/11 evil? We’ll never know how many terrorists plots there might have been squashed because of the hard work by the folks in the FBI and Homeland Security.
Are the people who clean and manage our amazing national parks devious?
What about the people who oversee our food and water — or manage our skies?
There are so many unsung heroes in the Civil Service, that we will never know or fully appreciate. Thanks to the efforts of these workers, “we don’t have to fear that drinking water will make our children sick, that our boss will try to skim off the top of our paycheck, or that the schools we send our children to are unsafe places for them to learn and grow. We don’t have to worry that our bank will steal our savings, that the food we eat has spoiled, or that our parent’s Social Security check will never arrive.” ~Mark Zuckerman
My 22-year-old self didn’t understand this at all. For years, I was one of those people who felt the Federal government needed to be shrunk. My feelings changed after 9/11. I saw the role of government differently and began to appreciate all the safety and security a strong government can provide.
“To refer to career civil servants in the U.S. government as some form of deep state is a clear attempt to delegitimize voices of disagreement. Even worse, it carries with it the potential for fear-baiting and rumor-mongering, and is really a dark conspiratorial term that does not correspond to reality.” ~Nancy McEldowney, Former Director of the Foreign Service Institute
I read this guest opinion in the Citizen Times by Brad Gutierrez, and want to include it here in my post. I think it’s worth considering….
Opinion: Musk-Trump duo wants to run federal government as a for-profit business
One thing has become abundantly clear since the Musk-Trump show arrived back in town. They see the federal government as a business of which the sum of its parts are worth more than the whole. Their plan to sell off to private investors or simply throw in the trash heap those parts that they see as unprofitable is designed to improve efficiency and increase profits. But therein lies the rub. Government is not and should not be a for-profit enterprise.
The benchmark for government should be effectiveness not efficiency. If efficiency was the goal, the Founding Fathers would have created a much less cumbersome governing structure than the checks and balances built into the U.S. Constitution. They probably would have stuck with a king and a set of nobles that had financial leverage to “control” the king to some extent. Magna Carta anyone?
Musk’s DOGE is currently on a PR campaign to sell its invasion of private information as a coup in rooting out fraud, waste, and abuse within the federal government. Let’s ignore for the moment the fact that they have presented virtually no evidence that they have identified any fraud, waste or abuse. I am not suggesting there isn’t any. I am simply stating that their targets and actions are not designed to find it or be transparent with the American public about where it is and how they plan to end it. They have taken a machete to the federal workforce in the guise of rooting out the FWA demons. If Musk fired every federal employee, the savings to the federal budget would be less than $500 billion. That figure is based on a 2025 $7.1 trillion budget and the estimated cost of 6.6% of the budget going to personnel compensation. Obviously, they are well short of that level of personnel dismissal. The blanket dismissal of all federal employees on a probationary status is woefully counterproductive and, in some cases, dangerous.
To compound matters, Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene is on record as stating that, because government workers are not engaged in bringing in revenue to the federal government, they neither deserve their jobs nor their salaries. Two major issues with this statement. First, Musk and Company had a staff of government employees charged with bringing revenue into the federal government and they promptly fired them. Of the 6,700 IRS employees let go since Trump took office, 5,000 were hired specifically to pursue payment of the $700 billion in tax revenue annually lost through nonpayment by deadbeat taxpayers. Second, government is not a for-profit enterprise. It is a service agency providing services to taxpayers who pay the bills. If there is any entity within the federal government that does not deserve their job or their paycheck it is members of Congress like Marjorie Taylor Greene.
The era of Musk and Trump have redefined the corporate takeover of government. Compassion and empathy are not found in the MAGA glossary of terms. Trump’s Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick said all we need to know about the Trump governing ethos when he stated in an interview with Jesse Watters on Fox News, “Social Security is wrong. Medicare is wrong. Medicaid is wrong. [Musk] is going to cut trillions from the budget.” Words spoken like a true millionaire who sees the world through the “I got mine, screw you” lens of life.
As I have said many times before in these pages, Trump does not care one whit about the people who voted for him. The services that will be paralyzed due to staffing shortages in the federal agencies his MAGA base relies on for so many aspects of their daily life is of no concern to him.
Business runs on the almighty dollar. Profit versus loss. Government is designed to serve the people that constitute it. It is far more than a balance sheet. The level of pain being inflicted on the people affected by Trump’s policy choices, from farmers losing markets due to the shutdown of USAID to federal workers losing jobs, is unnecessary and not well orchestrated. But then again the business professionals running the show have theirs, so why should they care about anyone else. From their perspective, empathy and compassion are wasted on the poor.
Brad Gutierrez, Ph.D., is a retired U.S. Air Force combat pilot, professor of political science, military diplomat, and senior public policy civil servant.
The reality is that as of January 20th, the federal government’s workforce had remained largely unchanged in size for over 50 years, even as the U.S. population had grown by 68% and federal spending had quintupled, highlighting the critical role of technology and contractors in filling the gap. Contractors outnumbered federal employees more than two to one, creating a “blended workforce” that raised pressing questions about accountability, efficiency, and the boundaries of “inherently governmental” functions.
There is always room for improvement in every employment situation, but destroying our government and demonizing career civil servants is just plain stupid. Years of experience and institutional knowledge are being thrown away. Creating chaos in these departments is only going to make the jobs of those, who are still employed, tremendously inefficient and unresponsive to our needs.
Over 260,000 men and women are now unemployed because of this administration — that’s a lot of people who lives have been upended and damaged, who are now looking for work — at the very same time Trump and his idiot loyalists are destroying the economy. That’s a lot of people, who won’t be adding to the revenue of this country, because they’ll be needing unemployment insurance rather than paying Federal taxes.
“Federal employees do not deserve their jobs. Federal employees do not deserve their paychecks, and these are jobs that can be fired at will.” ~Marjorie Taylor Greene
“If there is any entity within the federal government that does not deserve their job or their paycheck it is members of Congress like Marjorie Taylor Greene.” ~Brad Gutierrez
I resent my tax dollars going to incompetents like MTG - folks like Nancy Mace, Jim Jordan, Lauren Boebert or Paul Gosar et al, who spend their days spouting lies and propaganda on FauxNews or on their social media platforms. I resent that my own representatives are so afraid of “being primaried” that they won’t do their job and stand up to these bullies. I resent my tax dollars heavily subsidizing their health care insurance, eventually receiving their generous pensions, paying their airfare, etc. while today they are avoiding their constituents and taking away the basic services of government.
It’s time to fire the performative and cowardly players in Congress and the White House - not the civil servants.
November 3, 2026 can’t come soon enough.
Thought for the day in honor of his birthday…
“The best form of government is that which is most likely to prevent the greatest sum of evil.”
~ James Monroe
Must Read Article:
Federal Workers Are Facing a New Reality
The employees who have so far survived the Trump administration’s federal defenestration project are morose. For some, the new workload is untenable. For others, chaos reigns. Scientists have been unable to purchase mice for research, while human-tissue samples have sat on dry ice, unsent, thanks to worker layoffs. Lawyers at the Education Department are racing through a backlog of complaints from parents of special-needs children. And many employees are learning that teammates have been fired only when they receive an email bounce-back: Address not found.
…In many cases, federal employees are simply unable to do the work for which they are paid by the American taxpayer. “At least 50 percent of my time is devoted to trying to deal with the repercussions, the shock” of having hundreds of colleagues suddenly disappear.
Quote of the day:
“The government is not just this incidental piece of democracy. What has happened and what is accelerating is if you disable the government, like make it even harder for the good people who are in it to do their jobs so they do them less well, through no fault of their own, you just have not given them the tools to do their job, you reinforce the idea that government cannot do anything. You create this vicious cycle of cynicism and make it -- you make the country is essentially ungovernable and that is where it is headed, chaos…. If you want to destroy the society - you destroy the government.”
~Michael Lewis
What I’m reading today…
What Elon Musk Didn’t Budget For: Firing Workers Costs Money, Too
An expert on the federal work force estimates that the speed and chaos of Mr. Musk’s cuts to the bureaucracy will cost taxpayers $135 billion this fiscal year.
How Trump Courts Disaster, And Leaves Us Bracing For It
Trump, by dint of his personality, makes disaster much likelier; but in theory the danger can be contained. We almost made it through his first term without suffering that kind of disaster, until pandemic struck and Trump consigned hundreds of thousands of Americans to preventable death.
Now, though—without any meaningful constraints—it wouldn’t take an act of god for Trump’s know-nothing, predatory decision making to land the country and world in crisis. By some measures, he’s already done that—many economic analysts suspect we’re already in a recession of Trump’s making. Potential disasters lurk basically everywhere, and it’s just a question of when one will strike.
The Trump administration’s attacks on our federal workforce—many of which courts have already declared illegal—are not just rash. These attacks will make Americans less safe, reduce their earnings and savings, and expose them to scams from big corporations.
Many Americans may not recognize the myriad ways the federal government enables us to go about our everyday lives—unless and until it fails to function well. The Trump administration’s indiscriminate layoffs undermine government’s ability to function in ways both large and small. In many cases, people will not be aware of the danger until it’s too late.
The Pentagon Can’t Be Run Like a Business
…the Pentagon is not a business. Inefficient and rigid though it may be, the military represents a fundamentally different challenge for would-be reformers. Not only does it have a mission—protecting U.S. national security—that is shared by no private corporation, but it also has a workforce unlike any in the private sector. Its governance is different, too: it lacks control over its own budget, organizational structure, and some of its most important strategic decisions. Those differences mean that attempts to make the Pentagon run more like a corporation will backfire. If Hegseth and DOGE continue as they have begun, they will fail to achieve their goals—and harm the U.S. military in the process.
Trump to reclassify many federal workers, making them easier to fire
Trump’s announcement, putting into action an executive order he signed on his first day in office on January 20, will likely strip vast numbers of the 2.3 million-strong federal workforce of their job protections by effectively making them employees at will.
Inside a Union’s Fight Against Trump’s Federal Job Cuts
“I can’t compare this to any other time in my career,” the union’s national president, Everett Kelley, said in an interview. “We’ve seen some tough fights, but never have we seen any president” try to “put the federal government into mission failure.”
Mr. Kelley said he saw the administration’s effort as a prelude to privatizing vast swaths of the federal work force. The battle is perhaps most acute on the local level, where union leaders like Mr. Trammel — who also have day jobs in the federal government like cleaning toxic spills, scheduling surgery in veterans’ hospitals and teaching in prisons — are trying to keep their small bargaining units afloat and boost their colleagues’ morale.
Federal workers are dealing with chaotic work environments.
Government workers are experiencing unprecedented change as the current administration fulfills its promise to drastically shrink the federal workforce. Mass layoffs with no contingency plans, sudden and conflicting management directives, and funding cuts are causing federal workers to experience significant stress and other struggles. Layoffs also significantly reduce trust in employers. People are more motivated and committed when they feel their efforts are rewarded with pay, benefits, and job security. When this psychological contract is broken, it increases stress and impedes performance. A similar study found that following mass layoffs, remaining employees struggled with feelings of job insecurity and broken promises. They were also less willing to go above and beyond in performing their work.
The Scramble to Save Rural Health Care From DOGE
In the gray language of the federal bureaucracy, the funding that mattered most was from the Teaching Health Centers Graduate Medical Education Program—THCGME—and it was the reason the clinic in Perry County and others in some of the poorest corners of rural America had any doctors at all…The grant had always been renewed with bipartisan support, but did that Washington exist anymore? Did serious policy arguments matter anymore? Was it better to keep quiet and not risk offending the duly elected president, which he did not want to do, or speak up? If the latter, to whom? Did Congress matter, or only Trump, or only Musk? Was it naive to hope that an innovative billionaire who built space rockets could also understand the complex life of someone who scrounged for a $3.90 copay?
AmeriCorps abruptly removes Helene recovery workers from Western NC amid DOGE cuts
More than 50 young workers in a federal program helping Western North Carolina residents rebuild after Tropical Storm Helene were abruptly pulled from their assignments April 15, leaving local nonprofits scrambling to fill the gaps. The sudden work stoppage was billed as one of the Trump administration’s latest efforts to shrink the federal government.
Coal miners lose safety nets as black lung programs collapse under Trump
That program, which relocates coal miners diagnosed with black lung to safer jobs at the same pay – along with a handful of others intended to protect the nation’s coal miners from the resurgence of black lung – is grinding to a halt due to mass layoffs and office closures imposed by President Donald Trump and billionaire Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency, according to Reuters reporting.
Here’s why Trump’s plan to gut Head Start will hurt you, even if you don’t have kids
Head Start (and its companion program for children below the age of three, Early Head Start) has enjoyed bipartisan support for almost 60 years and serves multiple functions: sites provide important opportunities for child development, offer medical screenings for kids, connect families with local resources, and can serve as community hubs. They are also a critical source of free child care for over 700,000 families. Who are Head Start families? They consist of many of the people we called “essential” just five years ago: grocery store stockers, home health care aides, hospital custodians, even staff in the child care programs that serve middle- and high-income families. They are rural families; in many rural counties, Head Start is literally the only child care program around. They are military families; there is even an on-base Head Start at Fort Carson in Colorado Springs. They are agricultural workers who pick the produce that appears in your supermarket; in fact, over 26,000 children of seasonal farm workers attend a Head Start.
Indeed, it may be helpful to reframe the headline here as “Trump administration seeks to shutter over 3,000 child care programs,” and then to consider just how absurd such an action would be. After all, the United States’ child care shortage is already harming the stability of family life and the economy.
This Midwestern city has long been a federal hub. The pain from DOGE’s cuts is everywhere
The impact of the cuts by Trump appointees and Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency can be found everywhere in the Kansas City metropolitan area, which has long been a major hub for federal agencies about 1,000 miles away from Washington, D.C. Money once promised to the region for public health, environmental, diversity, food aid and an array of other programs has been axed, and thousands of local jobs are in jeopardy.
Trump is crippling the tax police
But the Republican Party has developed a perverse affection for rich tax cheats and as a result, Donald Trump is axing America’s tax enforcement capacity and risking a collapse of voluntary compliance…But the point of this whole long disquisition on voluntary compliance is that cutting enforcement by a third doesn’t just mean you catch fewer tax cheats. It means that next year, more people are cheating because they realize it’s easier to get away with it. The more people cheating, the lower the odds of detection, so yet more people cheat. The next thing you know, anyone with remotely complicated taxes feels like a sucker if they follow the rules and revenue is collapsing.
Fired federal workers say civil service cuts leave Michigan worse off
”How is it efficient to fire workers and then pay them to sit idly while they’re on administrative leave? This is an insult to not only federal civil servants, but to the American taxpayer whose money is being wasted.”
Trump redefines fraud in quest to crush "Deep State"
Bruised by years of civil suits, criminal charges and a historic felony fraud conviction, President Trump is using his second term to delegitimize the very concept of white-collar crime. Trump's belief that he was a victim of "lawfare" has tainted his view of the justice system. Paired with his crusade to crush the "Deep State" regulatory complex, Trump could enable a golden age of financial fraud, ethics watchdogs fear. At an institutional level, Trump's administration has moved swiftly in its first 80 days to narrow the government's mandate for enforcing fraud.
'Everything Is on the Table': Army Eyeing Expansion of Privatized Barracks
"Everything is on the table with the new secretary," he added, referring to Army Secretary Dan Driscoll. "He comes in from the private equity world, so he's a great person to talk to about these types of things."
Rep. Nancy Mace posts video showing her cursing and ranting at constituent in makeup aisle
The Republican lawmaker lost her composure after a voter inquired whether she would be holding more town halls this year, following her recent decision to skip an event due to safety concerns.
“But she was so proud of her obscene, unhinged performance that she posted a video of the encounter herself, writing that an ‘unhinged lunatic, a man, wearing daisy dukes, at a makeup store got in my face today.’ Please let that sink in: She posted the video herself. The woman needs help. But she has a vote in the Congress of the United States. ~Charlie Sykes
What I’m watching…
A book I highly recommend…
Who is Government? Edited by Michael Lewis
Terrific Book!!!
The government is a vast, complex system that Americans pay for, rebel against, rely upon, dismiss, and celebrate. It’s also our shared resource for addressing the biggest problems of society. And it’s made up of people, mostly unrecognized and uncelebrated, doing work that can be deeply consequential and beneficial to everyone.
What I am listening to…
Great podcast about the opioid crisis in the US.
What I read every day…
