Trump's Plan to Destroy the Deep State Causes Panic at the New York Times

streiff reporting for RedState 

What would a Trump 2.0 administration look like? According to a New York Times article based on extensive interviews with people who are perceived to be in Trump’s inner circle should he evade federal indictment (BREAKING: Donald Trump Confirms Receiving Target Letter From Jack Smith in January 6 Criminal Investigation), Trump’s second term would be a dystopic hellscape in which the federal government would actually follow White House policies.

Mr. Trump and his associates have a broader goal: to alter the balance of power by increasing the president’s authority over every part of the federal government that now operates, by either law or tradition, with any measure of independence from political interference by the White House, according to a review of his campaign policy proposals and interviews with people close to him.

Mr. Trump intends to bring independent agencies — like the Federal Communications Commission, which makes and enforces rules for television and internet companies, and the Federal Trade Commission, which enforces various antitrust and other consumer protection rules against businesses — under direct presidential control.

He wants to revive the practice of “impounding” funds, refusing to spend money Congress has appropriated for programs a president doesn’t like — a tactic that lawmakers banned under President Richard Nixon.

He intends to strip employment protections from tens of thousands of career civil servants, making it easier to replace them if they are deemed obstacles to his agenda. And he plans to scour the intelligence agencies, the State Department and the defense bureaucracies to remove officials he has vilified as “the sick political class that hates our country.”

If you want to hear the plan without the spin, visit the Trump 2024 website. Here Trump talks about how to shatter the power of the administrative state.

Here’s my plan to dismantle the deep state and reclaim our democracy from Washington corruption once and for all, and corruption it is.

First, I will immediately re-issue my 2020 Executive Order restoring the President’s authority to remove rogue bureaucrats. And I will wield that power very aggressively.

Second, we will clean out all of the corrupt actors in our National Security and Intelligence apparatus, and there are plenty of them. The departments and agencies that have been weaponized will be completely overhauled so that faceless bureaucrats will never again be able to target and persecute conservatives, Christians, or the left’s political enemies, which they’re doing now at a level that nobody can believe even possible.

Third, we will totally reform FISA courts which are so corrupt that the judges seemingly do not care when they are lied to in warrant applications. So many judges have seen so many applications that they know were wrong, or at least they must have known. They do nothing about it, they’re lied to.

Fourth, to expose the hoaxes and abuses of power that have been tearing our country apart, we will establish a Truth and Reconciliation Commission to declassify and publish all documents on Deep State spying, censorship, and corruption, and there are plenty of them.

Fifth, we will launch a major crackdown on government leakers who collude with the fake news to deliberately weave false narratives and to subvert our government and our democracy. When possible, we will press criminal charges.

Sixth, we will make every Inspector General’s Office independent and physically separated from the departments they oversee so they do not become the protectors of the Deep State.

Seventh, I will ask Congress to establish an independent auditing system to continually monitor our intelligence agencies to ensure they are not spying on our citizens or running disinformation campaigns against the American people, or that they are not spying on someone’s campaign like they spied on my campaign.

Eighth, we will continue the effort launched by the Trump administration to move parts of the sprawling federal bureaucracy to new locations outside the Washington Swamp. Just as I moved the Bureau of Land Management to Colorado, as many as 100,000 government positions can be moved out. And I mean immediately out of Washington to places filled with patriots who love America, and they really do love America.

Ninth, I will work to ban federal bureaucrats from taking jobs at the companies they deal with and that they regulate. So they deal with these companies and they regulate these companies and then they want to take jobs from these companies. Doesn’t work that way—such a public display cannot go on and it’s taking place all the time, like with Big Pharma.

Finally, I will push a constitutional amendment to impose term limits on members of Congress.

This is how I will shatter the deep state and restore government that is controlled by the people and for the people.

Thank you very much.

According to the New York Times team, this plan is being pushed by groups who happen to believe that the government is composed of three branches and that the bureaucracy has no power to pursue its own agenda.

The two driving forces of this effort to reshape the executive branch are Mr. Trump’s own campaign policy shop and a well-funded network of conservative groups, many of which are populated by former senior Trump administration officials who would most likely play key roles in any second term.

Mr. Vought and Mr. McEntee are involved in Project 2025, a $22 million presidential transition operation that is preparing policies, personnel lists and transition plans to recommend to any Republican who may win the 2024 election. The transition project, the scale of which is unprecedented in conservative politics, is led by the Heritage Foundation, a think tank that has shaped the personnel and policies of Republican administrations since the Reagan presidency.

That work at Heritage dovetails with plans on the Trump campaign website to expand presidential power that were drafted primarily by two of Mr. Trump’s advisers, Vincent Haley and Ross Worthington, with input from other advisers, including Stephen Miller, the architect of the former president’s hard-line immigration agenda.

Reading the story, the only controversy that I see is that if Trump, or whoever the 2024 nominee is, follows through on this plan, then the utter sh**show we experienced from 2016-2020 with broad swathes of the federal government actively sabotaging Trump’s agenda will begin to cease. I’m not sure I’m a huge fan of “sequestering funds,” but I’d rather we had that than Joe Biden spending money without authority. The idea that there is any federal appointee that the president can’t fire is simply unconstitutional. Trump should not have been put in the position of begging Bill Barr to rein in the rogue and dishonest investigation by Robert Mueller. He should have the authority to fire a special counsel. If Congress doesn’t like it, they can impeach him or go f*** themselves… whichever gives them the greatest satisfaction. Cabinet departments and independent agencies must operate under the guidance and, if necessary, the president’s direction. I don’t know how the idea got started that the Justice Department has some super-special independence, but it’s dumb.

The president shouldn’t have the right to dismiss civil service employees based on their politics because everyone’s on-duty politics are those of the president in a true, non-partisan civil service. He has an absolute right to select the personnel who will develop and execute his policies and fire them if they don’t perform or sabotage his initiatives.

Inevitably, someone will argue, “how will you like it when the Democrats are in charge.” Anyone who thinks the bureaucracy isn’t a fiefdom of the Democrat party needs to seriously reconsider their sanity.