Gutting the Government

I’ve been saying it for a while on social media. Project 2025 has within it the seeds of its own destruction.

The theme throughout is “Fire all the libs and replace them with loyalists.” Of course, the “libs” are everyone in government. Elon Musk speeded that up, along with his theft of government databases, and Russell Vought found Musk’s actions to fit in his goal of demoralizing whomever was left in government.

But there are not enough loyalists to replace the libs. Another of Project 2025’s objectives is to decrease the numbers of people employed by the government, but Project 2025 needs some number of operatives inside the government to carry out their program. It appears that they have not figured out that number or wildly underestimated it.

Government is a funny thing. When it’s working well, we’re not aware of it. We just collect our Social Security checks, or drop stuff off at the Post Office, or don’t get deadly diseases, most of which we don’t see. So what are those people doing in those offices? Waste, Fraud, and Abuse! But it’s what they are doing in their offices that keeps the Social Security checks going out, the mail running, and the deadly diseases away from us.

Tyler Robinson saved the FBI embarrassment by surrendering. Kash Patel owes Robinson’s father. But the early actions by law enforcement stand in their naked incompetence. Utah’s state FBI head, Mehtab Syed, was sacked by Patel. It was obviously something he had to do: she has a Pakistani name and is a woman. Her absence probably made a difference, along with the reassigning of FBI agents to hang out at Home Depot parking lots to pick up day laborers to make the numbers for Kristi Noem and Tom Homan.

Across the government, actions are taken in one fiefdom with little consideration of how that will impact ongoing work or a need to surge capability in an emergency. There are numbers, there are goals. There seems to be no consideration of what to do if the first plan goes wrong. It’s been claimed that this is because the current group thinks they won’t be leaving, but it looks more and more like an inability to plan past today. Another suggestion this morning on Bluesky was that since they believe that their actions will bring the Second Coming of Christ, there is no need to plan further.

That stovepiping was obvious in the ICE raids on the Hyundai battery plant in Georgia. A MAGA candidate for a local office decided to get some glory for a mass deportation, and called ICE down on the people who were preparing the factory for jobs for the locals. ICE had to make their numbers! But Trump had just accepted tribute from South Korea in the form of a promise to invest in the US, which South Korea is now reconsidering, along with the factory and other investments in the US.

Trump intervened after the workers had been arrested to say they could stay on. South Korea said no. The workers were shackled and humiliated, as have been many other workers picked up to make ICE’s numbers.

There’s an attempt to walk it back.

Employees of the State and Commerce Departments, along with representatives from Georgia, may be able to turn things around to open the factory. If we want to talk about waste,  fraud, and abuse, that’s a bunch of money, along with what the ICE raid and detainments cost, that shouldn’t have been spent. Or they may not be able to turn it around. Trump take jobs in Georgia.

Patel and his sidekick, Dan Bongino, will represent the capture of the assailant as their triumph and the media will consign the first 24 hours after the murder to the memory hole. But we need a competent FBI, and indications are that that may no longer be the case.

The lack of competence and coordination that the administration has brought on itself is a potential weakness to exploit. But it can’t be depended on to bring down the regime.