One part is what I call "The Great Defederalization". In a myriad of ways, the federal state that was erected between FDR and LBJ is being torn down. That state existed on a group of decisions that allowed independent agencies outside of the direct oversight of the president: the Humphrey's Executor agencies, NLRB, FCC, FTC. The Supreme Court and Congress are very happy to work on rolling them back, and they were constructed on pretty awful jurisprudence to begin with. That can work-- we should engage in creative destruction, the administrative state did restrict economic growth, and it did create carve-outs out of the Constitution. If it made us a more reliable partner, that did come at the cost of flexibility.
But at the same time, this executive isn't defederalizing to defer power to the states-- it's doing it to grant more immediate power to the president, who is in effect weaponizing the armed forces and police forces against non-compliant localities and personal enemies. News like this happening the same week as the president sends the Army to a passive American city in order to plainly provoke a conflict, and directing his DoJ to enact a case on paper thin justification, is troubling, to say the least.
The highest level of economic growth (GDP), and total factor productivity growth, was between 1929 and 1973. It was also the time period when income inequality plummeted (post Gilded Age).
All three metrics have gone down hill since 1980 and the mainstreaming of neo-con economic thinking.
That's also the time period that immigration to the US was at its lowest. The Immigration Act of 1924 strictly limited the number of immigrants allowed. That law was reversed by the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965. Only 5% of the population were immigrants by the 1970 census, the lowest in US history. It's close to 15% now, a level which hasn't been reached since around 1900.
Income inequality plummeted because immigrant labor wasn't allowed to enter the US to drive down the wages of US workers.
H1B labor drives down the wages of US workers. Illegal immigrant labor drives down the wages of US workers. If you care about income inequality, then maybe consider supporting enforcing the immigration laws, and maybe consider supporting ending the H1B and other programs that drive down the wages of US workers and increase income inequality.
What’s more, that time period includes recovery from the crashes of the early 30s, the massive war production of the 40s, and the massive boost that was having the rest of the world’s manufacturing and demand still in ruins in the 50s and 60s.
You could be right— but the data sure is confounded.
A consequence of centralizing governance in a giant federal bureaucracy is that it’s become dominated by one party: https://www.govexec.com/pay-benefits/2016/10/federal-employe.... That was a predictable result of federalization. If the government is run by unelected bureaucrats insulated from the elected officials, then it’s completely unsurprising it will become dominated by the party that prefers bigger government.
In classic Trump fashion, he doesn’t care about federalism per se, hence his inconsistent actions on law enforcement and crime. But he has a brain stem level reaction that it’s crazy he got elected President and is expected to cajole a federal workforce of 1.8 million democrats into executing his policies. And he’s not wrong about that.
Regarding the DOJ, Thomas Jefferson personally directed the prosecution of Aaron Burr: https://constitutioncenter.org/blog/the-great-trial-that-tes.... So that part isn’t anything new. As to the merits of the case, 18 USC 1001 is astonishingly (and I’d argue unconstitutionally) broad. I think prosecuting people for “obstruction” without an underlying crime is bullshit, but the government does it all the time. And Comey vociferously defended the practice.
I think you've assumed the conclusion here. One could equally say that if one party becomes overrepresented by people with higher education, that party will become overrepresented in any administrative position.
> Aaron Burr
I find myself more and more often in the position of having to look back many decades for precedent of things that are currently happening. Again, that's not necessarily a bad thing. But the variance of what to expect is wider, and I think it's fair to cast out one's net of expectations wider, and possibly darker.
Burr was a complicated man, doing complicated things, in a newly defined nation that was still defining norms. His trial was no stellar example of how to find truth and remonstrate wrongdoing. And I agree, "Lying to a federal officer" is absolutely ripe for misuse. A critical component of any subjective human system is integrity and adherence to justice. I don't think many people will look at Comey's prosecution and see it as the clear-headed and honest pursuit of justice.
Also, if you're saying that the past 100 years of American history, with all its various technocrats, was the result of a single ideology operating the government... maybe that ideology actually works pretty well?
As recently as 1880s the US was still assigning important civil service roles to whomever donated the most money to election campaigns.
The 1880s - 1970s generally featured a more protected civil service, with both advantages (insulation from changing presidents / legislators, maintaining institutional knowledge and competence) and disadvantages (insulation from performance-based hiring / firing, optimizing for bureaucratic rules became more effective than doing a great job).
The latter of which and anti-government sentiment post-Nixon drove deregulation and more direct executive control of the bureaucracy (e.g. the OPM).
As with all pendulums, we're now again seeing the excesses of affording too much power to the presidency (firing institutional knowledge because their role/expertise isn't currently politically en vogue).
Hopefully post-Trump this will spur reinforcing and insulation of civil service expertise.
It’s also not clear how to recover from something like this.
As a side effect, if they're to lose the next election they leave a corpse on the doorstep of the next administration. That makes it so much easier to pass on the blame.
Aligns perfectly with these people's views that a country is best led like a company not like a democracy. The realistic outcome will be formally (rather than the informal one as until now) corpocracy.
No matter who wins the elections, most of the actual decisions are being made by adherents of the same party. Trump had four times the support in AOC’s district in the Bronx than among federal employee donors. This is not a sustainable situation in a democracy.
Not really sure ANY government service runs well. There are maybe one or two but as a whole government run anything never seems to be done well or at a decent cost. Just scan the comments about the massive overspending and poor service we already get as taxpayers.
Trying to get a properly run government program or service has been going on since the country was founded.
Moreover, the vast majority of federal workers don't have anything to do with the kind of consumer-facing services that people think of when they think "government". More than half of all federal employees comprise: the Defense departments (Army, Navy, DoD, etc.), the Department of Homeland Security and the VA [3].
The federal workforce continues to get bigger and bigger, there's absolutely no practical incentive to stop it, and congress has abjectly failed to do its job in controlling the budget.
To be clear, this is not the right way to reduce the size of the federal government, but I'm not "terrified" of losing 100k employees in a government of this size. We need more cutting, not less.
[1] https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2025/01/07/what-the-...
[2] https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2025/01/07/what-the-...
[3] https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2025/01/07/what-the-...
> The federal workforce continues to get bigger and bigger, there's absolutely no practical incentive to stop it, and congress has abjectly failed to do its job in controlling the budget.
Most of the budget increase (~80-85% depending on whose projections you look at) comes from entitlements (social security, medicare/medicaid) and interest payments on the federal debt rather than any new spending. Of course interest payments are caused by past irresponsible spending, but it's hard to avoid debt if whenever the "party of fiscal responsibility" is in power, it does loud and flashy budget cuts that don't meaningfully reduce federal spending, followed by massive tax cuts to juice the economy. This is basically the equivalent of quitting your job and buying a ton of stuff on a credit card because you won $1000 on a scratch-off.
That's less than it seems though, given that the US population has grown with over 0.7% per year for most of those years.
https://www.macrotrends.net/global-metrics/countries/usa/uni...
You pretty much have to double spend to get out. Same way ICE is handling recruitment shortfalls.
Government jobs have never had great salaries (but decent benefits) vs the private sector. You need to make those jobs actually competitive.
Well, yes. That's what the DRP was, they were put on administrative leave through 30 September. It's kind of hard to work when you're on admin leave. Are you surprised by the fact that this group of DRP folks are resigning on 30 Sept when that was the agreement they signed under the DRP? Did you expect something else?
The same goes for the other DOGE employment initiative of firing probationary employees. These are mostly either people you have just hired or those that have been promoted. Of course, these are the employees you would most want to keep.
Since Reagan, the Republican party's stance has always been that government can't do anything right, so we should get rid of as much of it as possible, and every time Republicans have had the power to do so, they've sabotaged various agencies, then pointed to the inevitable problems that arise as proof of their claim.
An example of this was decommissioning mail sorting machines during Trump's first term, resulting in mail delays.
If you get rid of the most competent government workers, then obviously, government services will function less effectively, which will serve to bolster claims that those services simply don't work and should be shuttered anyway.
So they're getting out because "it's time I guess. Not much else I can do."
It perhaps says a lot about the current situation in academia in the US that they had to go _outside the US_ (albeit to an American working outside the US) for comment.
As for motive, it's a way for the Trump admin to clear out the federal workforce and install loyalists to make it easier for him to carry out his agenda.
> The resignations—which come as part of a program drawn up by President Donald Trump at the start of his second administration—will happen on Tuesday as Congress is facing a deadline on the same day to authorize more funding or risk a government shutdown.
> If there is no deal, the White House has ordered federal agencies to make plans for the large-scale redundancies.
Genuine question, because I don't know the answer. Was it actually voluntary at the time?
Flagged as misleading/inflammatory. Most of the comments here are probably bots.
