On the anniversary of President Donald Trump’s second term inauguration, here are four ways he has dismantled the deep state in Washington.
1. Reinstating ‘Schedule F’
On his first day in office, Trump signed an executive order to reinstate Schedule F, which makes it easier for the president to fire bureaucrats.
This reclassified about 50,000 career civil servants in “policy-influencing” roles as at-will employees.
The executive order said that accountability was lacking in the federal bureaucracy.
“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,” the order said.
“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.”
2. DOGE
The Department of Government Efficiency reportedly reduced federal employment by about 271,000 jobs.
DOGE also provided a list of 9,474 contracts and vehicles that have been terminated by the department.
In the spirit of DOGE, the Trump administration cut off the funding streams for immigration groups that moved illegal aliens across the country. The Environmental Protection Agency clawed back extravagant grants to climate alarmist groups. The State Department shuttered the U.S. Agency for International Development. Congress finally cut off funding for National Public Radio and the Public Broadcasting Service.
3. Shutdown Cuts
During the recent government shutdown, Office of Management and Budget Director Russ Vought cut $8 billion of blue-state energy projects.
“Nearly $8 billion in Green New Scam funding to fuel the Left’s climate agenda is being cancelled,” Vought said.
In addition, the Department of Transportation sent letters to the Chicago Transit Authority informing it that two projects receiving a total of $2.1 billion in federal funding were under administrative review, for race and sex-based contracting practices that potentially violated the Constitution.
4. Investigating ‘Deep State’ Abuses
In July, a CIA report found that John Brennan, the agency’s director in the Obama administration, overrode internal concerns to claim that Russia interfered in the 2016 election.
The agency’s current director John Ratcliffe ordered the review. It found that evidence used by Brennan to show that Russian President Vladimir Putin was aiding Trump in the 2016 election was rushed, restricted in its access, and disseminated too widely for a highly classified report.
“Central to the judgment that Putin ‘aspired’ to help Trump win was one highly classified CIA report,” the report said. “Brennan had tightly restricted access to this information within CIA; it had been collected in July but not disseminated in CIA serialized reporting until the week of 19 December.”
The review notes that “media leaks” indicated intelligence agencies “had already reached definitive conclusions risked creating an anchoring bias” before “work on the assessment even began.”
