‘Time for It to Die’: The Chaotic Killing Off of the Government
Don’t count on the courts to stop it.
BY DINNERTIME ON MONDAY, the Senate had confirmed Linda McMahon as secretary of education. Within an hour, she was sworn in. And well before midnight, she had sent an email to department employees outlining “our final mission.”
“My vision is aligned with the President’s: to send education back to the states and empower all parents to choose an excellent education for their children,” she wrote. In plain English, Donald Trump’s “vision” is to kill the department, which Congress created in 1979 to administer federal education programs. An executive order has reportedly been in the works for a month, and legal or not, the department could be gone before you know it.
In fact, half the government could be gone, and the half that’s left could be unrecognizable, before most people know it and anyone can do anything about it. It’s all happening at whiplash speed, with little to no transparency. Even court challenges are no match for Trump’s ideological army and Elon Musk’s digital SWAT team.
Federal judge Amy Berman Jackson summed up the threat this week at a hearing on the future of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB), an independent agency created by Congress after the 2008 economic collapse to stop banks and other financial firms from scamming and cheating people, and hold them accountable if they do. She said she feared it would be “choked out of its very existence before I get to rule on the merits.” In other words, Trump and Musk could outrun the rule of law, rendering it irrelevant.
YOU’D THINK THE PAST DECADE would have snapped us out of the fantasy that our institutions—or, even more fantastical, the U.S. electorate—will rescue us. We’re living through the ultimate test right now, and the signs are not hopeful.
Consider the U.S. Agency for International Development, which was running foreign aid and economic development projects that came to less than half a percent of the U.S. budget but represented 40 percent of world foreign aid overall. It was the first blitzkrieg victim—independent, authorized by Congress, and abruptly razed: its employees abroad fired, stranded and sometimes unsafe, its domestic employees clearing out their offices, its funding frozen.
And then, last week, Trump ordered the termination of 90 percent of USAID’s foreign contracts (about 10,000). All this because, according to Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who is USAID’s acting administrator, they were “not aligned with agency priorities” or “in the national interests.” Excuse me? For decades, U.S. soft power overseas has prevented millions of deaths, supported thriving economies, created goodwill, and helped keep the peace. Musk didn’t even pretend to connect with reality in an off-the-rails X post a month ago: “USAID is a criminal organization. Time for it to die.”
It should be noted that throughout the assault, advocates for USAID have been and still are fighting to save it in and out of court. [UPDATE: They scored a temporary reprieve Wednesday when the Supreme Court allowed USAID to resume payments for work already done by foreign aid programs, but the larger existential issues remain to be litigated.]
The saga is an illustration of why Judge Jackson is right to be worried about CFPB, and why the rest of us should be worried as well. The justice system is not saving us, even where it is trying. We are in danger of losing so much—so much capacity and competence, so many skilled public servants, so much institutional knowledge—to Trump and Musk as they rampage illegally, unconstitutionally, and haphazardly through much of the government.
Let’s start with the weather. The Verge reports that the Trump administration is canceling leases for facilities crucial to the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration’s many missions, and plans to lay off half of its employees. One cancellation on the list is the National Weather Service’s National Centers for Environmental Prediction in College Park, Maryland.
There are nine centers specializing in hurricanes, storm predictions, flight safety, weather forecasts, and other essential information (and I hope those nine links are still active by the time you read this). One of them, the Environmental Modeling Center, is the data nerve center that produces daily forecasts for meteorologists and consumers. I’d like to keep those, thank you very much.
Then there is Lee Zeldin, head of the Environmental Protection Agency. He is pressing for a repeal of the 2009 finding that greenhouse gases endanger human health and welfare—the scientific basis for regulating greenhouse gases, reducing carbon emissions, and moving toward renewable energy. He also plans to cut the EPA budget by 65 percent.
What else? The Social Security Administration, which sends monthly retirement, disability, and survivor checks to 72.5 million people, is ending dozens of office rentals across many states, reducing regional offices from ten to four, and cutting 7,000 of its 57,000 employees. Former Social Security commissioner Martin O’Malley told The Bulwark that he expects the agency will “collapse” in the next thirty to ninety days, resulting in an unprecedented “interruption of benefits.” Lovely.
Then there are the roughly 6,700 layoffs at the Internal Revenue Service, which had just in the last couple of years improved its customer service, outdated technology, audit capacities, recovery of taxes owed, and digital offerings such as direct online filing, thanks to a cash infusion from Democrats. That direct-file program may be snuffed out soon if it’s not already gone, the Guardian reports, along with 18F—the now-eliminated digital unit that supported it and many other government efficiencies.
Also on the cancellation list: leases for an enormous Food and Drug Administration office in St. Louis, and regional Securities and Exchange Commission offices in Los Angeles, Philadelphia, and Chicago. What is the impact on food safety? On drug and vaccine approvals? On the SEC, which describes its mission as protecting investors and promoting fairness, and now regulates crypto? I hope we never have to find out.
A GOVERNMENT IN A NATION THIS BIG is going to be big. It is also going to be, for the most part, useful and even essential. And yet, with no vetting or assessment or common sense, a lot of it could vanish in a couple of months—along with livelihoods, data, science, competence, America’s reputation, and much more. That’s even though nearly 100 lawsuits have been filed against the administration so far, and judges have stopped Trump and Musk 35 times, at least for now.
We know by now that laws, courts, judges, and the Republican Congress are no deterrent to Trump, and even less of an obstacle to Musk. And any wins, should we be that lucky, are already belated. They won’t compensate for the personal, global, and structural damage. They won’t make rebuilding any easier. Still, I’d take them. This is a crisis and you know what? It would be nice to get some help.
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