Ideas For An Incoming Trump Administration
/Eight years ago, the incoming Trump administration did not “hit the ground running,” to say the least. Indeed, many have speculated that Trump was surprised that he had won. Whether or not that is true, he was not ready with a slate of people to fill the top cabinet and other posts. On top of that, many of his early initiatives quickly got stalled or hobbled by an orchestrated barrage of attacks from the Deep State. Examples include pervasive FBI investigations of his people for phony “Russian collusion”; a fake yet successful criminal gambit by the FBI/DOJ against his first choice for National Security Advisor (Michael Flynn); false rumors that delayed confirmation of, and then hobbled his first Attorney General (Jeff Sessions); a successful effort to get a special prosecutor appointed; and so forth.
This time around, I expect a very different scenario. The Trump transition project looks much better prepared. Nobody is going to buy the kind of Deep State scams that stalled Trump’s first administration. Both houses of Congress look like they will be supportive. There is a real opportunity for Trump’s team to come in with an immediate “shock and awe” cascade of initiatives to put the Deep State on the back foot.
So herewith some ideas for early actions that I would hope Trump will take. Most of these ideas are not unique to me, although I don’t necessarily know who may have first come up with them. I will give credit where I think it is due. Note: I’m leaving out the subject of climate and energy for now, and saving that for its own upcoming post.
Communications. Take immediate control of all government websites, and replace the messaging of the left with the messaging of the new administration. This is not something that requires any Congressional action, nor going through any kind of complex process to revise regulations. You would think that this item would be an obvious first priority of any incoming administration. However, the first Trump administration was inexcusably slow to take control of the communications function of the government. Dozens of government websites continued to parrot the left’s messaging years into Trump’s first term. In an example that I am most familiar with, the websites of EPA, the Department of Energy, and others continued to broadcast the climate alarm message two years and more into the first term, and when the sites changed, that occurred slowly and piecemeal.
Immobilize the administration’s enemies in the bureaucracy. The federal bureaucracy consists of well over 90% partisan Democrats, and large numbers of them are hard at work right now figuring out ways to “Trump-proof” their agencies, and to stall and undermine any changes the new administration might want to make. Meanwhile the career functionaries have what is called “civil service” protection, and theoretically can’t be fired without some proof of “cause” and a lengthy process. How to deal with that? The best suggestion I have seen comes from Steven Hayward writing at The American Mind on October 25: “Trump ought to have his cabinet officials determine who is useless or obstructive and order them to work from home. Then cut off their email and access to department computer servers the next day.” My only quibble with this is that I don’t see any reason why, with 2 million or so federal bureaucrats, this needs to be an individual process where cabinet secretaries make decisions person by person. This process could be applied wholesale to entire groups advancing agendas that the new administration opposes.
Department of Justice and FBI. These agencies have been shown over the last eight years to be thoroughly corrupt, with corruption for these purposes defined as participating in using the processes of criminal justice to attack political enemies. It’s not just that a few partisan people at the top got involved in illegitimate prosecutions of Trump or January 6 protesters or Trump allies; it’s that every single person went along, and not a single person spoke out against this. The entire top echelons of both agencies should be fired immediately, no questions asked. Those at mid to high levels with theoretical civil service protection should get the treatment of the prior bullet point. At lower levels (line prosecutors) it won’t be possible to fire or immobilize everybody, because there won’t be enough people left to do necessary work; but I would recommend erring on the side of getting rid of people. If the feds bring fewer prosecutions for some period of time, I don’t see a problem with that. Indeed, my experience with observing federal prosecutions over the course of my career is that a high percentage of them are dubious, more designed to bring down some big target and to advance the career of some prosecutor than to deal with real criminality. The highest profile prosecutions were often the most dubious, and also consumed disproportionately large amounts of resources. See my tag Phony Prosecutions. In the case of the FBI, I would recommend shuttering it, and creating a new agency with a new name. Current FBI agents could apply for employment at the new agency.
January 6. I have seen multiple people calling for immediate pardons for all January 6 defendants. I would not go that far. Instead, I would suggest getting a panel of Republican lawyers to review the convictions. In each case the conviction should be reduced to what would be the norm for the conduct at issue in non-political circumstances, which in the most severe cases will be something like misdemeanor criminal trespass; and the punishment should be commuted in each case to the extent that it is beyond what would be the norm for the conduct in question in non-political circumstances. That would mean no jail time for any but those who committed actual acts of violence. Those who merely wandered around the capitol non-violently should get full pardons. Under this regime, essentially every J6 defendant still in prison will be immediately released. The worst offenders will be left with a misdemeanor conviction on their record, which is appropriate. Anyone who was prosecuted for something that would not be prosecuted in normal circumstances should have his attorneys’ fees paid by the government. Anyone who was incarcerated for longer than would be the norm for the conduct in question should receive compensation for the time. Meanwhile, the entire team of J6 prosecutors in the Justice Department, and everybody in the FBI who worked on this, should be fired immediately. Also, the records of the DOJ and FBI should be de-classified to reveal how many sources the feds had among the protesters, and the extent to which the government sources instigated or directed the rioting.
Eric Adams prosecution. As I have written in several previous posts on this subject, the Adams prosecution is about relatively minor conduct, none of it involving any federal office. Given the overwhelming stench at Justice and the FBI, there is a reasonable hypothesis that this prosecution is revenge for Adams speaking out about the migrant crisis. My recommendation: Trump (or his new AG) should refer the case to the Manhattan or Brooklyn District Attorney’s offices, for them to decide whether to pursue the case as a matter of state bribery law.
Media and social media censorship. I have no doubt that a vast network of media and social media censorship organizations continues to operate in the federal government, even after the extensive exposure of that network that has occurred via litigation of the New Civil Liberties Alliance and others. A little-remarked aspect of this problem is that it seems to have originated — or at least first grown to critical mass — during the first Trump term, as a response of the public health authorities to what they saw as Covid “disinformation.” I doubt that Trump himself was much aware of this, but still, it was on his watch. Anyway, these censorship bureaucracies should be immediately dismantled, and their personnel fired. If that’s not possible, see second bullet point above.
DEI. The DEI cancer took off and metastasized throughout the federal government during the Biden administration. Biden issued multiple Executive Orders calling for more and more DEI initiatives, for example this one on his first day in office, January 20, 2021; and this one on June 25, 2021; and this one on February 16, 2023. Trump can and should revoke these Executive Orders on day one. Equally important, the entirety of the DEI bureaucracies in every agency should be dismantled, and the personnel fired.
Defund the Left! OK, this is not something that can just be done on day one. But there is a lot that can be done without waiting for new acts of Congress. Throughout the federal government, grants are being made on a daily basis to fund things like critical race theory, anti-Israel propaganda, “history” projects that teach hatred of the United States, and so on and on. This can be greatly reduced by a determined effort to take control of the grant-making bureaucracies, currently in the firm grip of the left.
That’s it for now. Commenters are welcome to put forth their own brilliant suggestions.