"The Deep State" has been used as a shorthand for those elements of government that opposed Trump in his first term, but has expanded to encompass the bigger issue of why elections don't actually matter: that there is a core set of bureaucrats and Congress members that are resistive to any meaningful change or reform. And whatever the exact relationship, this bureaucracy is partnered or allied with the Democrat Party.
It is still too early to tell, but Trump and the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) seem to be making some inroads, which is why we see leftist professional protestors specifically protesting DOGE and its nominal head, Elam Musk. We know that these protests are AstroTurf operations because they are being organized by MoveOn.org, which "has taken millions of dollars from George Soros and his Open Society Policy Center in recent years."
MoveOn.org has also taken money from the Sixteen Thirty Fund, which Fox News Digital previously reported has poured tens of millions of dollars into progressive causes in recent years and is bankrolled in part by Swiss billionaire Hansjorg Wyss.
See also:
- "Red-District DOGE Protests, Cited As Proof of Broad Musk 'Backlash,' Were Organized By Left-Wing Group"--Free Beacon.
- "Left-Wing Groups Funded Anti-DOGE Protests At Republican Town Halls: Report"--Daily Wire.
But the other tell that it is fake is the projection and misdirection from leading Democrat leaders. I'm specifically thinking of a February 4 statement from Chuck Schumer on X, where he wrote: "An unelected shadow government is conducting a hostile takeover of the federal government. DOGE is not a real government agency. DOGE has no authority to make spending decisions. DOGE has no authority to shut programs down or to ignore federal law. DOGE’s conduct cannot be allowed to stand. Congress must take action to restore the rule of law." This is the same Schumer that once said that Trump was "being really dumb" to take on the intelligence community because "they have six ways from Sunday at getting back at you." When it comes to "shadow governments," Schumer knows a thing or two.
Schumer's reference to a "shadow government" is also nod to the very successful meme of there being a Deep State. But it also reflects the reality that there is a very real Deep State: "#AltGov: the secret network of federal workers resisting Doge from the inside," as The Guardian reports.
After seeing Elon Musk’s X post on Saturday afternoon about an email that would soon land in the inboxes of 2.3 million federal employees asking them to list five things they did the week before, a clandestine network of employees and contractors at dozens of federal agencies began talking on an encrypted app about how to respond.
Employees on a four-day, 10-hours-a-day schedule wouldn’t even see the email until Tuesday – past the deadline for responding – some noted. There was also a bit of snark: “bonus points to anyone who responds that they spent their government subsidy on hookers and blow,” one worker said.
Within hours, the network had agreed on a recommended response: break up the oath federal employees take when hired into five bullet points and send them back in an email: “1. I supported and defended the constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic.”
“2. I bore true faith and allegiance to the same,” and so on.
It was only the latest effort by a growing and increasingly busy group banding together to “expose harmful policies, defend public institutions and equip citizens with tools to push back against authoritarianism”, according to Lynn Stahl, a contractor with Veterans Affairs and a member of the network. Increasingly, the group is also trying to help its members and others face the thousands of layoffs that have been imposed across the federal government.
Calling itself #AltGov, the network has developed a visible, public-facing presence in recent weeks through Bluesky accounts, most of which bear the names or initials of federal agencies, aimed at getting information out to the public – and correcting disinformation – about the chaos being unleashed by the Trump administration.
With 40 accounts to date, their collective megaphone is getting louder, as most of the accounts have tens of thousands of followers, with “Alt CDC (they/them)” being the largest, at nearly 95,000 followers.
The network has also formed a group and a series of sub-groups on Wire, the encrypted messaging app, to share information and develop strategies – as played out on Saturday.
The article goes on to note that #AltGov actually began during Trump's first term.
Mark Tapscott had warned of this back in January before the inauguration. He noted that a then-recent survey conducted for the Napolitan Institute by RMG Research of 500 federal civil service managers being paid at least $75,000 and living in the Washington, D.C., region had shown that "Fully 42% of those federal managers surveyed declared their intent to either strongly oppose or oppose Trump once he is sworn in and back in the Oval Office, assuming the RMG Research results are representative of the 2.3 million federal career civil service workforce that carries out the day-to-day work of the government." Focusing on those that identified as Democrat, "two-thirds said they would actively oppose orders advancing Trump policies."
And here we are with federal workers secretly conspiring to block policy changes. It makes one wonder if it is time we return to a spoils (as in "to the victor goes the spoils") type system when it comes to the federal bureaucracy?
As you know, the "merit" based system of a professional bureaucracy was a creature of progressive leaders, such as Woodrow Wilson, who believed in a society ruled over by philosopher kings "experts" that should be protected from firing just because a different administration had been handed control of the bureaucracy. But, as Tapscott explains, it has become subverted to its own ends:
Initially, only a small slice of federal workers were covered by the "merit system," but those ranks were steadily expanded to the point that by the time President Jimmy Carter left office in 1981, 90% of all civilian employees.
Along the way, the career service bureaucracy became steadily more entrenched, and, after JFK enabled federal workers to unionize in 1962, all but immune from management accountability and wielding millions of campaign contributions to support candidates — virtually all Democrats — who would protect them and expand their ranks with bigger government.
But the more "professionalized" the federal workforce has become, the more solidly it has become the fourth branch of government, aka the "administrative state." The administrative state uses regulations, guidance, and its own "judiciary" — i.e. administrative law judges — to enforce its will, entirely apart from anything remotely resembling electoral accountability.
The reality facing the second Trump presidency is that the administrative state that largely defeated his first-term efforts to force accountability on it is even more powerful today than it was four years ago.
These people give new meaning to the idea of "slow-walking" any idea, program, proposal, or politician seeking to reduce the power and influence of the career bureaucracy. They leak, they bury, they create endless reviews, and so forth and so on.
And because they use government power to defend and extend their political influence, the merit system has become a modern analogy of the spoils system. ...
Most importantly, it has made it all but impossible to affect any real change to federal policy, to root out corruption and inefficiency. In other words, it is no longer responsive to voters.
There is a shadow government. But it is not DOGE. It is the ossified administrative state and those in the bureaucracy plotting to thwart the will of the people.
Root them out.
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