From the Washington Monthly, Gilad Edelman on Trump’s plan to make government slower, costlier, and more dysfunctional: Slashing federal employees doesn’t save money — it just makes the government more dependent on private contractors and more prone to colossal screw-ups. How the Trump era is changing the federal bureaucracy. How Trump is dismantling a pillar of the American state: Donald Trump is presiding over the most withering, devastating, and trenchant attack on the American administrative state this nation has ever known. Trump could dramatically reshape the civil service, if he wanted to. Benjamin Wittes on why Trump’s war on the deep state is failing — so far.
Bureaucrats to the rescue: Following Trump’s election, bureaucracy has gone from being a thorn in the side of democracy to being its saving grace — but bureaucrats are also frontline workers who grapple independently with complex questions of democracy. The year of the civil servant: Never before have the roles of government workers taken on such significance — but there could be consequences to using their power to undermine the administration. Washington, D.C., is not a cynical swamp — it’s America’s most hopeful place. Every month, the Trump administration proves that public-sector experience is necessary for a functioning government — private-sector experience is a poor substitute.
