No president in history has caused more damage to the nation more quickly. As we enter Week 3 of President Donald Trump’s second term, the chaos and disruption of his first look quaint by comparison. The country survived Trump 1. Now, it faces a real threat that the harm he inflicts during his second term will be irreparable. The United States’ standing in the world, its ability to keep the country safe, the federal government’s fundamental capacity to operate effectively — all of these will take years to repair, if that can be achieved at all.
Make sense of the latest news and debates with our daily newsletter
This column will concentrate on the third piece of that trifecta: efforts to undermine the basic functioning of government. A unifying theme of much of Trump’s activity since Jan. 20 has been his unrelenting and broadscale assault on the federal workforce. In his first term, Trump railed about what he termed the “deep state” and its seeming ability to frustrate his plans. In his second, he has unleashed a no-holds-barred attack on career employees — one designed to punish those who dared to counter him or his allies; to oust or neuter those with years of expertise; and to set the stage for a new spoils system, replacing seasoned, nonpartisan career workers with compliant Trump loyalists.
“[Trump] is destroying whatever gets in the way of what he wants to do,” Max Stier, the normally mild-mannered president of the Partnership for Public Service, told me. “That includes having loyalty be the primary screen for choosing his direct lieutenants and crushing the civil service and converting it into a tool for his private agenda, as opposed to a force for the public good and the rule of law.”
Contempt for civil servants — sneering at “unelected bureaucrats in Washington, D.C.” — is not unique to the Trump administration. But Trump 2.0 is unrivaled in its willingness to barrel through the guardrails that have protected government workers since 1883, ignoring legal requirements in its quest to retaliate against some employees and intimidate the rest.
Follow Ruth Marcus
Trump “is the executive of the executive branch, and, therefore, he has the power to fire anyone within the executive branch that he wishes to,” White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt asserted. This is manifestly incorrect, like so many other proclamations since Jan. 20, but that does not make it any less bone-chilling.
And it is a piece of a larger presidential power grab. As I laid out shortly after the election, Trump had a detailed road map to enhance executive power — challenging congressional authority to control spending; putting independent agencies under his thumb; seizing control of the civil service; and abusing his authority to install officials through recess appointments rather than having to endure the inconvenience of Senate confirmation.
We knew this was coming. Trump and his allies trumpeted their plans during the campaign. Still, I had expected this revolution would take months to unfold. Astonishingly, all but the last of these has already come to pass — and we haven’t seen a showdown over recess appointments for the simple reason that the Senate, with the sole exception of the failed effort to install Matt Gaetz as attorney general, has so caved to Trump’s desire to install evidently unqualified candidates in many of the most sensitive positions in government.
The onslaught against government itself has been the most alarming. Some of it involves the operations of Elon Musk’s “Department of Government Efficiency,” operating with unclear legal authority as a kind of roving strike force to terrorize the bureaucracy.
Over the weekend, DOGE operatives forced out a senior Treasury Department official and gained access to the government’s highly sensitive centralized payment system, potentially exposing vast amounts of personnel data. They executed a hostile takeover and shuttering of the U.S. Agency for International Development, an agency that was established by Congress and that can’t be disappeared without congressional action. “USAID is a criminal organization. Time for it to die,” the unelected Musk asserted about an entity that provides humanitarian assistance abroad. Reuters reported that DOGE officials “have locked career civil servants out of computer systems that contain the personal data of millions of federal employees.” And, in an echo of Musk’s “fork in the road” email to Twitter employees after he bought the platform, federal workers have been encouraged to resign en masse, with an email offering inducements of questionable legality.
Make sense of the latest news and debates with our daily newsletter
This column will concentrate on the third piece of that trifecta: efforts to undermine the basic functioning of government. A unifying theme of much of Trump’s activity since Jan. 20 has been his unrelenting and broadscale assault on the federal workforce. In his first term, Trump railed about what he termed the “deep state” and its seeming ability to frustrate his plans. In his second, he has unleashed a no-holds-barred attack on career employees — one designed to punish those who dared to counter him or his allies; to oust or neuter those with years of expertise; and to set the stage for a new spoils system, replacing seasoned, nonpartisan career workers with compliant Trump loyalists.
“[Trump] is destroying whatever gets in the way of what he wants to do,” Max Stier, the normally mild-mannered president of the Partnership for Public Service, told me. “That includes having loyalty be the primary screen for choosing his direct lieutenants and crushing the civil service and converting it into a tool for his private agenda, as opposed to a force for the public good and the rule of law.”
Contempt for civil servants — sneering at “unelected bureaucrats in Washington, D.C.” — is not unique to the Trump administration. But Trump 2.0 is unrivaled in its willingness to barrel through the guardrails that have protected government workers since 1883, ignoring legal requirements in its quest to retaliate against some employees and intimidate the rest.
Follow Ruth Marcus
Trump “is the executive of the executive branch, and, therefore, he has the power to fire anyone within the executive branch that he wishes to,” White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt asserted. This is manifestly incorrect, like so many other proclamations since Jan. 20, but that does not make it any less bone-chilling.
And it is a piece of a larger presidential power grab. As I laid out shortly after the election, Trump had a detailed road map to enhance executive power — challenging congressional authority to control spending; putting independent agencies under his thumb; seizing control of the civil service; and abusing his authority to install officials through recess appointments rather than having to endure the inconvenience of Senate confirmation.
We knew this was coming. Trump and his allies trumpeted their plans during the campaign. Still, I had expected this revolution would take months to unfold. Astonishingly, all but the last of these has already come to pass — and we haven’t seen a showdown over recess appointments for the simple reason that the Senate, with the sole exception of the failed effort to install Matt Gaetz as attorney general, has so caved to Trump’s desire to install evidently unqualified candidates in many of the most sensitive positions in government.
The onslaught against government itself has been the most alarming. Some of it involves the operations of Elon Musk’s “Department of Government Efficiency,” operating with unclear legal authority as a kind of roving strike force to terrorize the bureaucracy.
Over the weekend, DOGE operatives forced out a senior Treasury Department official and gained access to the government’s highly sensitive centralized payment system, potentially exposing vast amounts of personnel data. They executed a hostile takeover and shuttering of the U.S. Agency for International Development, an agency that was established by Congress and that can’t be disappeared without congressional action. “USAID is a criminal organization. Time for it to die,” the unelected Musk asserted about an entity that provides humanitarian assistance abroad. Reuters reported that DOGE officials “have locked career civil servants out of computer systems that contain the personal data of millions of federal employees.” And, in an echo of Musk’s “fork in the road” email to Twitter employees after he bought the platform, federal workers have been encouraged to resign en masse, with an email offering inducements of questionable legality.
