The Department of Justice, FBI, and USAID are posing prominent test cases for how the Trump administration can reform a malignant federal bureaucracy.
Amid the hundreds of substantive executive actions President Donald Trump has taken in his first two weeks back in the White House, perhaps none matter more than his efforts at bureaucracy-busting. That notably includes what Julie Kelly calls a “Friday night massacre” days ago of the Department of Justice’s January 6 prosecutorial staff, which erased 30-40 temporary positions Biden’s DOJ had attempted to make permanent.
Acting Deputy Attorney General Emil Bove, “arguably, he has done more in two weeks than Trump’s entire Department of Justice did during his first term,” Kelly said in a Saturday video. So has acting D.C. U.S. Attorney Ed Martin, both while the Senate confirmation of U.S. attorney general nominee Pam Bondi remains pending.
Together, they’ve sought the firing or retirements of numerous top FBI and DOJ personnel, and an accounting of all FBI personnel involved in the Jan. 6, 2021 prosecutions. Martin is also directing an internal probe into the DOJ’s abuse of a post-Enron obstruction statute that the Supreme Court said the department used unlawfully to imprison right-leaning Capitol protesters with help from Constitution-hating federal judges. CIA mouthpiece Ken Dilanian complained on NBC, “This is probably the biggest purge in the modern history of the FBI, and we’re talking about most of the senior leadership at the bureau.”
The Office of Personnel Management and U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) are also posing prominent test cases for how the Trump administration can reform a federal bureaucracy that has, by design, resisted elected control since its inception. The administration is considering folding USAID into the State Department, and Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) doge Elon Musk claimed early Monday morning Trump supports doing so. The two agencies have long engaged in power struggles.
USAID is widely perceived as a CIA front organization. Former State Department official Mike Benz says USAID has funded international censorship and regime change operations. As demonstrated by journalists Diana West and M. Stanton Evans, the State Department has embedded Communist subversives from well before Whittaker Chambers all the way through secretaries Hillary Clinton and Antony Blinken, making it another top strategic threat to American self-governance.
