President Trump on March 20th, 2025, ordered the following: “The Secretary of Education shall, to the maximum extent appropriate and permitted by law, take all necessary steps to facilitate the closure of the Department of Education.”
That is interesting language: to “take all necessary steps to facilitate the closure” is not the same as closing it. And what is “permitted by law” is precisely what is in dispute.
It is meant to feel like abolition, and the media reported it as such, but it is not even close. This is not Trump’s fault. The supposed authoritarian has his hands tied in many directions, even over agencies he supposedly controls, the actions of which he must ultimately bear responsibility.
The Department of Education is an executive agency, created by Congress in 1979. Trump wants it gone forever. So do his voters. Can he do that? No, but can he destaff the place and scatter its functions? No one knows for sure. Who decides? Presumably the highest court, eventually.
How this is decided – whether the President is actually in charge or really just a symbolic figure like the King of Sweden – affects not just this one destructive agency but hundreds more. Indeed, the fate of the whole of freedom and functioning of constitutional republics may depend on the answer.
All burning questions of politics today turn on who or what is in charge of the administrative state. No one knows the answer and this is for a reason. The main functioning of the modern state falls to a beast that does not exist in the Constitution.
The public mind has never had great love for bureaucracies. Consistent with Max Weber’s worry, they have put society in an impenetrable “iron cage” built of bloodless rationalism, needling edicts, corporatist corruption and never-ending empire-building checked by neither budgetary restraint nor plebiscite.
Today’s full consciousness of the authority and ubiquity of the administrative state is rather new. The term itself is a mouthful and doesn’t come close to describing the breadth and depth of the problem, including its root systems and retail branches. The new awareness is that neither the people nor their elected representatives are really in charge of the regime under which we live, which betrays the whole political promise of the Enlightenment.
This dawning awareness is probably 100 years late. The machinery of what is popularly known as the “deep state” – I’ve argued there are deep, middle and shallow layers – has been growing in the US since the inception of the civil service in 1883 and thoroughly entrenched over two world wars and countless crises at home and abroad.
The edifice of compulsion and control is indescribably huge. No one can agree precisely on how many agencies there are or how many people work for them, much less how many institutions and individuals work on contract for them, either directly or indirectly. And that is just the public face; the subterranean branch is far more elusive.
The revolt against them all came with the Covid controls, when everyone was surrounded on all sides by forces outside our purview and about which the politicians knew not much at all. Then those same institutional forces appear to be involved in overturning the rule of a very popular politician whom they tried to stop from gaining a second term.
The combination of this series of outrages – what Jefferson in his Declaration called “a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object” – has led to a torrent of awareness. This has translated into political action.
A distinguishing mark of Trump’s second term has been an optically concerted effort, at least initially, to take control of and then curb administrative state power, more so than any executive in living memory. At every step in these efforts, there has been some barrier, even many on all sides.
There are at least 100 legal challenges making their way through courts. District judges are striking down Trump’s ability to fire workers, redirect funding, curb responsibilities and otherwise change the way they do business.
Even the signature early achievement of DOGE – the shuttering of USAID – has been stopped by a judge with an attempt to reverse it. A judge has even dared tell the Trump administration who it can and cannot hire at USAID.
Not a day goes by when the New York Times does not manufacture some maudlin defense of the put-upon minions of the tax-funded managerial class. In this worldview, the agencies are always right, whereas any elected or appointed person seeking to rein them in or terminate them is attacking the public interest.
After all, as it turns out, legacy media and the administrative state have worked together for at least a century to cobble together what was conventionally called “the news”. Where would the NYT or the whole legacy media otherwise be?
So ferocious has been the pushback against even the paltry successes and often cosmetic reforms of MAGA/MAHA/DOGE that vigilantes have engaged in terrorism against Teslas and their owners. Not even returning astronauts from being “lost in space” has redeemed Elon Musk from the wrath of the ruling class. Hating him and his companies is the “new thing” for NPCs, on a long list that began with masks, shots, supporting Ukraine and surgical rights for gender dysphoria.
What is really at stake, more so than any issue in American life (and this applies to states around the world) – far more than any ideological battles over Left and Right, red and blue or race and class – is the status, power and security of the administrative state itself and all its works.
We claim to support democracy yet all the while, empires of command-and-control have arisen among us. The victims have only one mechanism available to fight back: the vote. Can that work? We do not yet know. This question will likely be decided by the highest court.
All of which is awkward. It is impossible to get around this US government organisational chart. All but a handful of agencies live under the category of the executive branch. Article 2, Section 1, says: “The executive Power shall be vested in a President of the United States of America.”
Does the president control the whole of the executive branch in a meaningful way? One would think so. It’s impossible to understand how it could be otherwise. The chief executive is… the chief executive. He is held responsible for what these agencies do – we certainly blasted away at the Trump administration in the first term for everything that happened under his watch. In that case, and if the buck really does stop at the Oval Office desk, the president must have some modicum of control beyond the ability to tag a marionette to get the best parking spot at the agency.
What is the alternative to presidential oversight and management of the agencies listed in this branch of government? They run themselves? That claim means nothing in practice.
For an agency to be deemed “independent” turns out to mean codependency with the industries regulated, subsidised, penalised or otherwise impacted by its operations. HUD does housing development, FDA does pharmaceuticals, DOA does farming, DOL does unions, DOE does oil and turbines, DOD does tanks and bombs, FAA does airlines and so on it goes forever.
That’s what “independence” means in practice: total acquiescence to industrial cartels, trade groups and behind-the-scenes systems of payola, blackmail and graft, while the powerless among the people live with the results. This much we have learned and cannot unlearn.
That is precisely the problem that cries out for a solution. The solution of elections seems reasonable only if the people we elected actually have the authority over the thing they seek to reform.
There are criticisms of the idea of executive control of executive agencies, which is really nothing other than the system the Founders established.
First, conceding more power to the president raises fears that he will behave like a dictator, a fear that is legitimate. Partisan supporters of Trump won’t be happy when the precedent is cited to reverse Trump’s political priorities and the agencies turn on Red-state voters in revenge.
That problem is solved by dismantling agency power itself, which, interestingly, is mostly what Trump’s executive orders have sought to achieve and which the courts and media have worked to stop.
Second, one worries about the return of the “spoils system”, the supposedly corrupt system by which the president hands out favours to friends in the form of emoluments, a practice the establishment of the civil service was supposed to stop.
In reality, the new system of the early 20th Century fixed nothing but only added another layer, a permanent ruling class to participate more fully in a new type of spoils system that operated now under the cloak of science and efficiency.
Honestly, can we really compare the petty thievery of Tammany Hall to the global depredations of USAID?
Third, it is said that presidential control of agencies threatens to erode checks and balances. The obvious response is the organisational chart above. That happened long ago as Congress created and funded agency after agency from the Wilson to the Biden administration, all under executive control.
Congress perhaps wanted the administrative state to be an unannounced and unaccountable fourth branch, but nothing in the founding documents created or imagined such a thing.
If you are worried about being dominated and destroyed by a ravenous beast, the best approach is not to adopt one, feed it to adulthood, train it to attack and eat people and then unleash it.
The Covid years taught us to fear the power of the agencies and those who control them, not just nationally but globally. The question now is two-fold: what can be done about it and how to get from here to there?
Trump’s Executive Order on the Department of Education illustrates the point precisely. His administration is so uncertain of what it does and can control, even of agencies that are wholly executive agencies, listed clearly under the heading of executive agencies, that it has to dodge and weave practical and legal barriers and land mines, even in its own supposed executive pronouncements, even to urge what might amount to be minor reforms.
Whoever is in charge of such a system, it is clearly not the people.
Jeffrey A. Tucker is founder and President of the Brownstone Institute, where this article first appeared.
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This government has cost the country billions upon billions of pounds due to lockdowns and other covid-related nonsense (PPE, track and trace, eat out to help out, useless gene therapies, etc). This money can never be recouped but something that can be done is to dramatically cut public sector spending.
The non-conservative Tories have expanded the state beyond all recognition and this needs cutting with a scythe. There needs to be a cull of the hundreds of thousands of useless public sector jobs, starting with the DIE managers. If they have a modicum of talent, they may be able to get jobs in the private sector as admin assistants.
Spot on. Unfortunately, this is one of the main reasons that the Tories are hemorrhaging support. Since Mrs. Thatcher was ousted, the spineless, dripping wet majority in the party have never had the cajones to cut back the state nor reform the NHS. It’s taken 30 years for many of them, but more and more of their supporters can see how much the party has let them down.
And so say all of us.
I’m an old school Conservative. Two things I wanted when voting for Bojo.
Won’t be voting this year way things are. Reform – yeah, but Tice is a nobody.
Better to vote Reform and shake thing up than not vote. If you don’t vote, you can’t complain about the result. Tice is a smart and competent businessman.
Tice is a “don’t scare the horses” leader: pleasant, easy on the eye and with sound business experience.
Farage, Habib and Widdecombe supply the passion.
Where is the Magic Money Tree when you need it?
Already been stripped bare.
Uprooted indeed
Recession….incoming!
All going to plan for the Davos Deviants. Once this country is in hock to the central bankers we are well and truly Tom Ducked.
Jonathan Lis on Talk Tv via New Culture Forum !! What a leftie Chunt !!…
Then cut spending – reduce the civil service; privatise more of the NHS (overdue anyway); get rid of some benefits; cut overseas aid; stop assistance for migrants?
Go French. Their system works jus fine. Problem – we don’t have the nous to effect the switch and there would be a public sector general strike – “Save our beyond useless NHS” would be the slogan
https://edmhdotme.wpcomstaging.com/why-the-health-service-works-in-france-11-2022/
‘….the scale of the challenge faced by politicians….’
The IFS highlights the symptoms.
The disease is socialist fascism.
The real challenge faced by politicians is, first, to reform themselves:
Get rid of the ‘payroll vote’ by dramatically reducing the size of government, the cabinet, double MPs salaries to improve their calibre and increase their independence. Abolish the House of Lords and set up a professional second revising chamber appointed by an independent commission.
None of this will ever happen so, instead, a system of proportional representation is required. First past the post has run its course.
Oh, and remove parliament from the ‘Palace of Westminster’.
They deserve a modern building of utilitarian design.
“They deserve a modern building of utilitarian design.”
Totally agree. I believe the very large warehouse style building that was once occupied by Staples, the office supplies firm, in that fine place called Stevenage New Town, is empty. Stevenage has great transport links by road and rail, affordable (for the Southeast) housing, great shopping. What more could they wish for?
The British parliamentary system was invented by aristocrats as a way of governing in an aristocratic way. Aristocrats went up against other aristocrats and were elected by people with money or property. As the pressure came on for reform of the voting system (otherwise revolution might ensue), they had to modify it to suit this new, wider franchise. So we still have an aristocratic system that is well past its sell by date perhaps. We also need to be done with the Norman feudalism that is the Royal family. The sovereign still owns everything – you hold the deeds to your house ‘freehold’ (free to hold unless the sovereign decides otherwise). So we are all still serfs working within a Norman invaders rule set.
I suggest PR for MPs, and only 150 of them. An elected revising chamber also of only about 100 members. And perhaps keep the royals but with no powers to approve any legislation whatsoever
Also we should have referendums for all legislation. The people would be the final approvers of laws. The MPs and revising chamber would only advise us. Also that way there would probably be a strong brake on too much legislation because it would take longer to enact because of the delay caused by waiting for referenda approval.
The UK is over £2trillion in debt and November’s debt interest payment was over £7billion so around £80nillion a year, give or take a few billion!
With our levels of debt and ever-increasing public sector, taxes cannot be cut without increasing taxes elsewhere.
So the question for every politician to answer is – What services will you cut to make savings?
A few ideas to get the ball rolling:
Turn the NHS in to a social insurance model and introduce competition
Scrap the Climate Change Act and Net-Zero
Reduce the Civil Service, Johnson promised to get rid of 90,000 of these leaches.
Scrap the public sector pension scheme and replace with a defined contribution scheme
Fulfil the “bonfire of the quangos” the Tories promised to carry out
Socialists always run out of other people’s money.
1997-2009, it was the Red Socialists who did it.
2009-2024, the Blue Socialists have done it.
Now it seems, it’s to be the Red Socialists turn again.
Unless a miracle happens and we get REFORM.