February 10, 2025 - 5:20pm
There has been a great deal of hue and cry over the activities of Elon Musk and DOGE within the new revolutionary Trump administration. More significant, though, was the confirmation of Russell Vought as head of the Office of Management and Budget late last week. These actions reveal much about the operation now underway, and further indicate some substantive policy priorities that may now be emerging for this new regime, beyond simply demolishing “woke”.
Firstly, Vought’s appointment shows Trump’s determination to avoid the mistakes of an earlier generation of conservatives. First time round, many assumed the machinery of government simply did what was asked, and cried “culture war” when this did not happen, all while failing to tackle the technical and managerial bone and sinew that produced these effects. So far, this time, every move has been oriented towards fighting a meta-policy battle viewed as a necessary preliminary to any actual policies: seizing control. And Vought, who also headed the OMB in 2016, has returned with a detailed plan for doing so.
Vought himself spelled this all out first in the chapter he wrote for the Heritage Foundation’s notorious Project 2025, and more recently in a lengthy interview with Tucker Carlson ahead of the election. There, he described his previous stint at the OMB, a supervisory department tasked with controlling the overall financing and efficient operation of all other programmes: an office of joined-up thinking, if you will. Vought detailed the methods his institutional opponents used to evade any efforts at joining up the thinking: hiding pots of money, slow-walking policies, keeping officials in the dark, and otherwise obstructing presidential decisions. He detailed plans to claw financial control and the power to hire and fire civil servants away from the bureaucracy, and a slew of other instruments — dry and technical on the surface, but of paramount political importance — for reasserting control.
Now, with access to US Government IT systems already in the grip of a warband of youthful hackers led by a radicalised tech billionaire, the rest of the administrative and financial keys have been handed to another Trump loyalist, this time with a black belt in Swamp karate, and a grudge against everyone who thwarted him last time. And whether you view his approach as reining in an unacceptably powerful federal bureaucracy, or unacceptably politicising a neutral public sector to the benefit of autocrats and billionaires, depends, as so much does in these Schmittian times, on where you’re standing.
Vought’s actions have also been in keeping with this new administration’s proclivity for getting inside its opponents’ “OODA loop” — a term developed by USAF general John Boyd to describe a method of disrupting military enemies by moving too fast for them to make sense of what’s happening. In line with this methodology, Vought set briskly to work over the weekend: 36 hours after assuming oversight of the OMB, he shuttered the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. This may seem obscure, but is the latest offensive in a long-running battle. The CFPB was set up as an independent body in the wake of the subprime crisis, with the aim of protecting ordinary citizens from predatory financial practices. Since its foundation, though, critics have complained of its Left-wing politicisation, worsened when the original plan for bipartisan leadership was junked for a single, politically appointed director who triggered institutional drama in the early days of Trump 1.0.
More recently, too, Silicon Valley tech titans Mark Zuckerberg and Marc Andreessen have complained on Joe Rogan’s podcast of politicised CFPB regulation. Former Hill staffer and monopolies journalist Matt Stoller, meanwhile, suggests that such complaints are highly disingenuous and that Big Tech just doesn’t want regulatory oversight on plans to roll out the kind of “Everything apps” already popular in China, which effectively make their owners providers of consumer finance.
Are we witnessing Trump bringing a politicised Swamp bureaucracy to heel, or his Big Tech backers using that as cover to eliminate an agency that stands in their way? Arguably, these need not be mutually exclusive. Regardless, all of this should be of interest to frustrated Right-wingers on this side of the pond, especially those who do not identify as conservative.
Britain is now highly volatile. Even longstanding Labour loyalists are savaging Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s ideological vacuity and flimsy programme, while the Continuity Tories are languishing and Reform UK is surging. All is to play for, and a would-be insurgent Right may have less time than Vought did to flesh out an equivalent programme for moving from empty culture-war complaints to managerial offensive.
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SubscribeIt appears the next 4 years are just going to be different variations of the same story and arguments with different players.
The MAGA movement for many years has claimed that the Administrative State has become an unaccountable fourth branch of government. The agencies somehow stand within the Executive Branch but are allegedly independent from the Executive. At least one half of Legislative Branch (All Democrats and a few Republicans) believe that the Legislature has unlimited purse power to orchestrate long term agency funding under the General Welfare clause of the Constitution.
Anybody that tries to audit agency spending will run into the Democrat preferred method of PR attacks to undermine the credibility of auditers. The Democrats no longer try to make substantive arguments. They simply attack the messenger. That’s how you know they’re grasping at straws.
The other technique is using the DMV style process tyranny that limits the democratically elected Executive’s ability to promptly change inefficient practices with the agencies. The amount of bureacratic jargon-speak has been built into agency rules for a reason. They don’t want funding to be bound by the will of the people.
Time for you to have a column of your own. Good insights.
That’s about the size of it. A bureaucracy that is neither directly accountable to the people nor answerable to the duly elected President is, to use the favorite accusation of the left, a threat to democracy. It’s a body that exercises power and influence that is independent of the people and their elected leadership. It doesn’t really matter if Trump hands the keys to Elon Musk or Russell Voght or whoever else. The President represents the will of the voters as expressed through the electoral process. If the voters don’t like what he does, there’s another election in four years. If the President can’t remove these bureaucrats under his Constitutionally defined duty to uphold and enforce the law, who can, and what recourse do the people have? Democracy is, at bottom, the idea that power is properly derived from the consent of the people and the people have a right to govern themselves through chosen leaders. It’s an either/or. The people are either sovereign or they are not. There’s no such thing as partial sovereignty any more than there are degrees of how dead one can be. If they are, then there has to be a way however roundabout for the people to remove anyone and everyone who serves them and exercises their sovereign power through government office.
Most Europeans, including Mary unfortunately, have a huge blind spot where this is concerned because they’ve been ruled by officials they had no control or authority over since ever. The cultures and traditions of nations and people run deep. Putin’s Russia actually looks a lot like Soviet Russia in political terms, and Soviet Russia looked a lot like Tsarist Russia. It boils down to three different flavors of autocracy. Europe is still somewhat bound by its feudal origins. The parliamentary systems they use are more or less replacements for absolute monarchs and their bureaucracies are more or less analogous to the feudal nobility and system of vassalage underneath that were responsible for local operations and the day to day activities of running a country. They had their own responsibilities and powers independent of the absolute monarch and were understood to be independent. I can imagine why Europeans are reacting with horror to the idea that the President can just take a sledgehammer to those institutions, but America is different. I suspect more people will approve of the President’s demolition work than don’t and it will confirm, if any further evidence is even needed at this point, that American civilization is distinct from its European origins and not simply a recreation of European civilization on the other side of an ocean Trump is in many ways an expression of America’s distinct history and a renewal of the rejection of European political structure that started in 1776. Globalism saw the return of a lot of European politics to the US as well as the introduction of a lot of American concepts to Europe as well, and if you ask me, its to the mutual detriment of both.
Helpful analysis – thanks!
It seems to me the Europeans put a much bigger emphasis on statesmenship and statecraft than Americans who are (at least politically) more straight forward. Maybe we’re too idealistic but American citizens truly believe a government is bound by the will of the people.
This whole situation shines light on all the Bureacratic Leviathans that operate like a Soviet Politburo.
Yes, I agree, and I attribute this to having a very different history. Excluding Russia, which is and always has been its own political and cultural animal, Europe is an area composed off many small countries and a handful of medium sized ones with just a couple that could be considered ‘large’. Besides that, most of these nations represent nationalities that didn’t have their own country prior to WWI, but rather were passed back and forth by the various great powers. Small polities often dominated by larger neighbors would naturally lead to a greater emphasis on diplomacy and international affairs. Even the great powers of Europe were never so powerful as to be able to safely ignore their rivals. Diplomacy was a requirement. The US on the other hand formed on a continent that had been depopulated by the introduction of European diseases a century or two earlier and was free to expand into basically unoccupied territory. America has only ever been bordered by two or three nations at any point in its history, only one of which ever posed a significant threat, the British Empire, which occupied most of the US’s diplomatic attention for most of its history. America had enough resources to sustain itself and no serious rivals in its own hemisphere, so its people could simply pay more attention to reining in their own government rather than worry about being decimated by war with another great power or conquered entirely. Americans never have had to worry about being invaded by anybody militarily speaking, and still don’t.
For getting on for $300m Musk has bought the entire US government dataset to do with as he wishes for his own benefit. It’s the ultimate bargain for him (not for the American people who have been royally screwed). Not only that but it seems that he has got the government to pay him $7m per week for his team of 20 or so to do it!
So is Trump so stupid that he couldn’t see this happening with Musk given free rein to run the country for himself, or is he in on it? Even if (when) Trump gets rid of him, or tries to, Musk has still got the data.
Just remember that your political adversaries are forever stupid, corrupt and self-interested while you are permanently on the side of the just and righteous.
So handing that data on a plate to Musk is not dumb? Exactly what benefit is it to the ‘people’? A capitalist who makes his money from consumers has just shut down the department set up to protect consumers from people like himself. Musk now has all this data on his competitors and his market. Who is the genius here, and who the sucker, Trump or Musk?
What benefit is it to the taxpayers? Are you serious. Have a look at some of the things we now know our money has been funding.
Just an FYI- Just because an entity names itself something like the Super Wonderful Do Good Department of Caring, doesn’t mean they are that thing.
He made his 1st money from PsyPal, the second from Tesla, then contracts with NASA to build rockets a tenth the price, then Starlink.. I don’t see why he needs to steal the names and addresses of all citizens over 21. Bonkers conspiracy itis.
PsyPal sounds like a good app for someone to start. Save lotsa fees on shrinks, AI will cover it!
I for one see no need to give our taxpayer funds to Hamas, nor to drag shows in Ecuador, nor to foundations, “charities,” and other NGOs that contribute to radically left wing causes, such as the Soros’ family’s political action wing. Billions have been wasted on ridiculous things – sex changes performed on monkeys, for example, or comic books in Peru promoting transgenderism.
There are reasons our debt is soaring, while practically nothing seems to improve – corrupt actors within our government, and Biden was a master at this – are stealing and wasting our money.
The CFPB’s jurisdiction is already covered by over a dozen other enforcement agencies. The NLRB is a dinosaur agency that’s no longer needed. The Dept of Education simply hands out money, and large swathes of the State Dept are actively working to assist our enemies, such as China and Iran.
Musk and Vought should go in there with chainsaws, and remove all the poisoned trees in the forest, root and branch.
“… sex changes performed on monkeys …”
The people who performed these disgusting operations in innocent creatures should be hunted down and locked up for a very long time!
I think you are underestimating just how ideological Musk is.
Cheaper to buy the US Post Office books. They don’t just list the names of phone owners, bur their age,address and relatives. Scary!
The prognosis for a Trump-like roll-back in Britain is a grim one. There is one big difference between the UK and US that the political commentariat always misses…… whereas the American middle class has only ever been (at most) 50% up its woke backside, in the UK (thanks to decades of BBC-iffication) the figure is probably nearer 75%. That’s a very lot of ‘opinion-forming classes’ to get brought back to the real world. Then there is the much greater intractability of our British Blob this side of the pond. The grim truth is that Britain’s simulcrum of a ‘democracy’ (basically a permanent civil service, quango, lawfare hegemony obscured behind a Starmer/Farage/Badenoch media entertainment sideshow) needs to seriously fall apart before any real change can come. If and when that day does ever come it will probably be ugly.
Graham: Maybe the UK wants to become the 51st state, replacing Canada or Greenland in the running…Now you can see why the divorce happened in 1776; it just took 249 years for you guys to figure it out…A Bill of Rights in the Constitution can right the ship.
It’s significant that Britain alone of the European powers avoided the revolutions and revolts that characterized continental Europe in the 19th and early 20th century, and then also managed to avoid being defeated and/or conquered in the world wars. They never had a democratic revolution or suffered the indignity of having a new government thrust upon them by a foreign power. I wonder if the inability of the UK’s government to adapt to the present era isn’t partially a result of having enjoyed political stability over such a long period.
There was that revolution that resulted in Charles I losing his head.
I was aware. The French Revolution that destabilized Europe and signaled the beginning of the end of the feudal era started in 1789, or if you prefer to credit the American Revolution as the true start of the revolutionary era, that was just thirteen years prior, in 1776. Cromwell had been dead for over a century by that point. When he died, the colonies that became the US were just a few isolated settlements with a few thousand people each. During the period where what we call the modern world emerged from feudal Europe, the UK was relatively peaceful and stable. It could be argued that they had their revolution earlier, but even so it didn’t exactly stick as they brought back the monarchy in the end.
That is true. Presumably they came to the realization that a monarchy is a good thing to have.
Yeah, plus the British electorate just gave Starmer a huge majority that lasts for 5 years.
Labour only won because the Tory Party was so utterly crap that the electorate gave them a gigantic heave-ho – not because the people really wanted them!
Ok, but to win an election, all you need to be is slightly better than the other lot.
Hmmm! Not sure about that. I don’t think people thought that Smarmer & Co were any better than the Tory disaster. They just did not appreciate that things could actually be worse under Labour – and a Tory re-election was simply not acceptable.
It would be more accurate to say “The electoral system gave them a huge majority” despite two thirds of the voters voting against them.
That means Parliament does not have the confidence of the people – a huge legitimacy problem for the government. King Charles should do his constitutional duty (as William IV did in 1834): dissolve parliament now and hold new elections.
King Charles III: show the monarchy is not a mere cipher. Be the people’s champion and save both the country and the monarchy. 2029 will be too late. Dissolve Parliament now! New elections now!
Interesting scenario. It may be a little premature now, but later in the year when 2TK & Co have dug themselves even deeper into the mire, the economy is floundering, the lights start going out and the boats keep rolling up on our shores, there may be no alternative to assuage the anger of the British public.
We don’t normally do pitchforks and anti-government demonstrations in the UK (although the farmers are already giving it a good go) but we could take some lesson from the French. Weeks of demonstrations on the streets of London, Birmingham and Manchester would send a powerful message to the monarchy. But would Charles have the cojones to do it?
No.
The King acts on the advice of the PM, namely Starmer. Why would Starmer advise him to do that?
The whole point is that The king is entitled to act without the PM’s advice. There are times, like now, when the PM may have the “confidence of Parliament” but Parliament assuredly does not have the confidence of the people.
Starmer’s regime could sink the UK and the monarchy with it. Charles III could save the monarchy by dissolving Parliament for fresh elections. He would then be the people’s hero.
By mistake.
Why, who do think they intended to elect?
The electorate was faced with Tweedle-dum, Tweedle-dumber, and Tweedle-dee in The well-established parties: The Conservatives, Lib-dems and Labour. They were just a tad more disgusted with the ruling Conservatives in the moment. No real alternative was available in our FPTP system (since Reform was too new).
Labour has no mandate for its destructive programme. An honest government would either put each measure to referendum, or honestly publish the entire programme and call fresh elections.
There’s another big differenceand thats the slavish adherence to supra national bodies so endemic in UK politics of all persuasion,a process started by Blair and which has reached its apotheosis in Kneeler and his acolytes-a systemic democratic weakness that the USA does not suffer from .
So how many names are a threat to the leftist institutional dictatorship now? It started with Trump. Then came DeSantis. After that, a Cambrian explosion of right-wing spine!
Even if the regime clings to power this time, the old consensus is dead. The right has learned the game. The change in attitude is irreversible.
It’s like an abused wife who, after decades, finally realises the husband is the actual villain, and not her. From this point, she either walks out the door or smashes him over the head with the frying pan.
You can’t really mention Trump and DeSantis in the same breath. Love him or hate him, Trump is entirely out-of-left-field, and has a range of talents that few politicians possess, and charisma to burn. DeSantis doesn’t even have a personality, never mind any charisma.
That’s not the point I was making. DeSantis has done an amazing job in Florida. His style is no-nonsense and business-like. He doesn’t apologise, he doesn’t pander, and he goes on the attack. He anticipates the predictable attacks the ‘woke’ will throw his way, rolls his eyes, and moves on.
That was still a novelty a few years ago—when most ‘conservatives’ were still terrified of leftist smears. Give him some credit. He’s one of the good guys who helped pave the way.
Absolutely. His record during the ‘pandemic’ was outstanding.
He may not have been able to do what Trump is doing, but would still have made a far better president than any incumbent since Reagan
I can say the following thing with confidence: Bush 1 and Bush 2, Clinton, Obama and Trump never wore lifts in their boots. DeSantis did (probably still does). That is all that needs to be said.
Seriously? The man wears lifts in his boots! I give him no credit whatsoever!
Many of us have waited a long time for substantive change. It will take quite a bit for us to pull back now.
I always go to Mary’s columns first. Minor detail – John Boyd was a USAF Colonel not a General. His Biography “Boyd” is a fascinating read.