How will Trump take on the administrative state?

By the time you read this, the first raft or two of Donald Trump’s executive orders will have been promulgated.

No one outside the charmed circle of his close advisors knows what is coming down the pike, but all indications are that the orders will be energetic and far-reaching. Colin Powell would probably have pulled out the phrase “shock and awe.”

Most observers believe that there will be robust attention to immigration, the border, energy, regulation, taxes and the conduct of elections. There will probably also be orders touching the fate of some 1,500 people charged in connection with the self-guided tour of the Capitol on January 6, 2021. I would not be surprised if there were also orders regarding the conduct of some of the prosecutors involved in those cases. And if Hamas remains foolish enough to hold on to its hostages, it will not be a good day for the members of that terrorist organization.

As was the case at the beginning of Trump’s first term in the winter of 2017, expect a furious legal squeal to be unleashed to counter many of Trump’s orders. “You can’t do that!” will be the prevailing slogan. Will there once again be district judges issuing “universal injunctions” with “nationwide application” in an effort to stymie Trump’s orders? Maybe. There were twenty such injunctions issued in the first year of Trump’s first term. But I suspect that the Trump administration 2.0 will be much more effective both in the drafting of bulletproof executive orders and in responding to the legal blowback.

What about Trump’s promises of “retribution?” Two things. First, I expect that term to be retired in favor of the word “justice,” by Trump’s team if not by all of his supporters. There will be a spate of pardons. There will also be some high-profile indictments. But the latter will be conducted not in the spirit of revenge but of maintaining the rule of law. Did you tamper with the witness (a felony) and muck about with evidence (also a felony)? Then make sure you have a good lawyer.

Second, expect a lot of the response to unfold by means of bureaucratic finesse rather than direct confrontation. In the movie Office Space, a hapless and incompetent employee called Milton is given worse and worse spaces to work until at last he is relocated to the basement and given a can of insecticide to help with the roach problem. I understand that even as I write there are regular screenings of Office Space among certain people on Trump’s transition team.

But behind all the talk about reducing, relocating or eliminating elements of the administrative state, beyond the schadenfreudig fantasizing about the fate of this rogue prosecutor or that corrupt apparatchik is a large issue that has not, I think, gotten sufficient attention.

It is this: will Trump’s initiatives aim to reform the operation of the administrative state, making it more efficient and (a key point) putting its operations into the hands of his people rather than the hands of the “woke” elite? Or will it aim to make the sorts of structural changes necessary to undermine the perpetuation of the administrative state itself?

In other words: will the Trump revolution aim chiefly to replace their guys with his guys, while also streamlining and rationalizing the operation of government? Or will it aim at a deeper structural change, one that reimagines the way government works? Only the latter can begin the process of dismantling the administrative state.

What we are talking about is not a simple either/or proposition. The various agencies and institutions that make up the sprawling edifice of the United States government can be usefully reformed. Mission creep can be corrected, malevolent accretions like DEI initiatives can be scrapped, budgets can be scrutinized and trimmed.

But all such reforms, while useful, do not touch the core of the administrative state, which centers around an anti- or at least unconstitutional understanding of the way in which the US government operates.

The development of this novel understanding is the product of many decades. It goes back to the progressive era of the last century, when clever politicians and bureaucrats developed ways to circumvent a Constitution they regarded as insufficiently enlightened for the exigencies of modern life. The core innovation was to preserve the forms of the old constitutional order while simultaneously emptying them of political vitality. This was accomplished primarily by handing over the reins of real governmental power to a proliferating congeries of administrative agencies populated not by elected, and therefore accountable, officials, but by unelected bureaucrats. It was, in essence, the construction of a parallel governmental apparatus that supplemented and redirected the will of the original.

In some ways, the administrative state resembles Grigori Rasputin, the priapic Russian charlatan who attached himself to the court, especially the court ladies, of the hapless Czar Nicholas II. That is to say, like Rasputin, the administrative state is seemingly ubiquitous, predatory and malevolent. It is also, like him, exceedingly hard to kill. Rasputin’s end has been much romanticized. According to some popular accounts, he was stabbed, poisoned, shot and drowned, yet somehow managed to soldier on. Finally, it is said, a bullet to the forehead at point-blank range did the trick.

There will be no bullet to the head of the administrative state. But as the second Trump administration gets underway, it behooves us to acknowledge the extent to which America is at a fork in the road of its political fortunes. One path, the easier path, is a modified version of what has become business as usual in the United States. Down that path will be lots of MAGA rhetoric, some salutary reforms, but no fundamental changes.

This article was originally published in The Spectator’s February 2025 World edition.