Breaking Down the Breakdown

“Although Trump and Musk insist they are fighting fraud, they have not yet provided evidence for their sweeping claims. Although they demand transparency, Musk conceals his own conflicts of interest. Although they do say they want efficiency, Musk has made no attempt to professionally audit or even understand many of the programs being cut. Although they say they want to cut costs, the programs they are attacking represent a tiny fraction of the U.S. budget. The only thing these policies will certainly do, and are clearly designed to do, is alter the behavior and values of the civil service. Suddenly, and not accidentally, people who work for the American federal government are having the same experience as people who find themselves living under foreign occupation.” So what’s the point of all this? It’s been clearly spelled out in Project 2025 and described during speeches previously made by Trump and Vance. It’s not about saving money. It’s about breaking the system. The stories about firings and department destruction are so plentiful that they can be overwhelming. So le’ts narrow things down to what all of them have in common. The always excellent Anne Applebaum is especially so here. The Atlantic (Gift Article): There’s a Term for What Trump and Musk Are Doing. How regime change happens in America. “The new system, whatever its ideology, will in practice represent a return to patronage…But before it can be imposed, the administration will first have to break the morale of the people who believed in the old civil-service ethos. Vought, at a 2023 planning meeting organized in preparation for this moment, promised exactly that. People who had previously viewed themselves as patriots, working for less money than they could make in the private sector, must be forced to understand that they are evil, enemies of the state. His statement has been cited before, but it cannot be quoted enough times: ‘We want the bureaucrats to be traumatically affected,’ he said at the time. ‘When they wake up in the morning, we want them to not want to go to work because they are increasingly viewed as the villains … We want to put them in trauma.'” She ends with: “There is still time to block this regime change, to preserve the old values. But first we need to be clear about what is happening, and why.”

+ “I don’t think we’ve ever felt hunted for sport before.” TPM: NIH and Its Agencies Are Being Smothered.