Tuesday, September 02, 2025

WASHINGTON VIEW:

OPENING: The News

Washington View via SEMAFOR is Ben Smith’s new column, aimed at helping our readers understand the Trump administration as it seeks to remake the US government and American society and reshape everything from private enterprise to global trade.

View / No more ‘Yes, Minister’:

How Trump and social media broke the bureaucracy

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Ben Smith

Co-Founder and Editor-in-Chief, Semafor

Sep 2, 2025, 2:41am PDT

ESTABLISHING THE ARGUMENT

"More than 22,000 federal employees lost their jobs in DC, Maryland, and Virginia from January to May, according to the Richmond Fed. They include members of the top ranks at institutions from the CDC and IRS to the FBI and NSA, pockets of American permanent government that have long weathered changes in presidential administration.

> When the CDC head refused to implement changes to vaccine policy and fire subordinates, she lost her job immediately, as did they.

> When the politician appointed to run the IRS appeared to side with the permanent staff, President Donald Trump literally sent him to Iceland.

Shattering the job security once afforded to the permanent government will have been one of Trump’s signal and lasting achievements, no matter how the rest of his term goes.

So I spent some time last week trying to understand how this crusade is seen inside a White House that has gone further, faster, than either friends or enemies expected.

Term Limits for Bureaucrats! - Reform the Kakistocracy

“It’s a directive from one person — the president,” one top official centrally involved in reshaping the government said. “

"Get it done’ is the name of the game.”

Part of the velocity of change comes from a fervor that began last summer:

“The attitude stems from the president getting shot at Butler,” said another White House official. “

"There is no time to waste — by definition, this is a one-term president.”

Elon Musk, for a time, defined this assault and captivated public attention.

But the “tip of the spear,” as a top White House ally put it, is deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller, who in February offered one of the most important explanations of this administration’s outlook.

Trump, he said, is “removing federal bureaucrats who are defying democracy by failing to implement his lawful orders, which are the will of the whole American people.”

BEN'S VIEW

The reason Trump has been successful at waging war on civil servants he sees as standing in his way is the same tool he’s used to his own political benefit since 2015: social media.
> It’s one thing to issue top-down mandates.
> It’s another to have an army of enforcers with a direct line to the president.

“Honestly, I don’t think it would have been possible pre-social media,” the White House ally mused, citing the MAGA influencer Laura Loomer and any number of lesser-known X accounts.

“There are 100 different outlets that can cover your insubordination — and they do.”

Trump’s victories against the bureaucracy have appalled many Democrats, though none have much of a theory on how to put Humpty Dumpty back together. It’s going to be hard to attract the best and the brightest to temporary employment.

But others on the left are ready for the change and believe that, most of all — are no longer viable.

After mocking think-tankers for identifying Federal Reserve independence — undemocratic by definition — as vital to “our democracy,” the liberal economist Adam Tooze asked whether it’s “time to actually define what the appeal of ‘our democracy’ actually is” and to “define what a democratic politics of central banking might look like.”

As with many of Trump’s innovations, Democrats are beginning to believe there’s no going back.

ROOM FOR DISAGREEMENT

The Niskanen Center argued recently that politicizing the bureaucracy will produce such bad outcomes that future presidents will have to reverse course. “Business literature has developed a robust evidence base showing that the ability of employees to speak up without fear of retribution directly contributes to improved team and firm performance” — and inversely, that fear is “significantly” related to worse outcomes.