Remember back in Trump’s first term, when the New York Times published an article from an anonymous low-level government bureaucrat who boasted of doing everything he could to impede Trump’s agenda instead of implementing it? The deep state, the Times told us in May 2024, was “kind of awesome,” in that it imposed far-left policies upon the American people no matter who the president was and what he wanted. But Trump moved decisively as he began his second term, firing numerous government employees who were determined to obstruct his agenda. There’s just one problem: many of them are still on the job.
Politico, which profited handsomely from Deep State subsidies before Trump’s second term began, reported happily on Monday that “Trump has fired a host of Democratic appointees at independent boards and commissions across the government,” but “there’s just one catch: Some of them are still working.” It seems that “many of them decried Trump’s summary termination notices as illegal and made various attempts to remain in their posts, including suing.”
These efforts, Politico admits, “have proven largely futile against the administration’s brute force strategy: The overwhelming majority have in fact left, accepted new jobs, dropped their lawsuits, or been otherwise forced out — quite literally locked out of their former agency offices in some cases.” And even worse for the Deep Staters, “the Supreme Court, meanwhile, has signaled that it will continue to expand the president’s power to fire board members who run regulatory agencies.”
There are, however, a few plucky heroes in this story, or at least that’s how Politico tries to portray them: “Yet a handful of officials have successfully resisted, either because they were reinstated — at least temporarily — by lower-court judges, or because they have simply managed to maneuver around the White House’s orders and directives. Those officials’ resistance” — resistance! — “could end up shaping how courts view crucial, pending questions about the hiring-and-firing powers of the presidency, and whether Congress can create federal agencies with some degree of independence from the chief executive.”
Politico seems confused about the basics here. Federal agencies are part of the executive branch. Their job is not to throw up “resistance” to the president’s policies, but to enact them. In encouraging “resistance” to the president among federal employees, the left, in its typical short-sighted way, is not thinking this through. If a Democrat president were in office and suddenly a number of patriotic federal bureaucrats started talking about “resistance,” Politico and its fellow leftist propaganda organs would be falling all over themselves to explain how bureaucrats had no right to obstruct the president’s agenda.
This is akin to the left’s enthusiasm for National Popular Vote legislation, which would compel states to award their electoral votes to the winner of the national popular vote. This was meant to prevent any more Republican victories akin to George W. Bush’s in 2000 and Trump’s in 2016, but then Trump won the popular vote in 2024. If the National Popular Vote law had been the law of the land at the time, Kamala Harris would have won zero electoral votes. Oops.
Related: Final Court Showdown Begins Over Whether Trump Can Get These Gang Members Out of Here
In the Deep Staters’ battle to hang on to the jobs and keep on putting roadblocks in the way of Trump’s agenda, Politico notes that “three members of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which oversees PBS and NPR,” have continued on their jobs despite having been fired by Trump, as Rochelle Garza, “the Biden-appointed chair of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights whom Trump purportedly demoted in March.” They have done so, says Politico, “by simply resisting the White House’s directives — and with the support of some colleagues.” Others have beaten the administration in court.
Nevertheless, Politico admits that “ultimately, the White House appears poised to win the fight — judging by the experiences of the broader group of appointees Trump has already removed, and the early signs from the Supreme Court.” And that’s the way it should be. No one elected these arrogant leftists. No one gave them power to overrule the decisions of the president of the United States. The persistence of the Deep State is one of the foremost threats not just to the Trump administration, but to our republic itself. Do we elect our officials, or are we ruled by a gaggle of unaccountable, unelected policy wonks? The question has yet to be definitively answered.
To Politico, the Deep State bureaucrats who are defying Trump are heroes. Here at PJ Media, we know better. Become a PJ Media VIP today—use code FIGHT for 60% off—and you’ll get free and unfettered access to all of our content, without any ads. Do yourself a favor and join now!
