MAGA Republicans ranted and raved about a deep state they mostly imagined, and then created a real one…<\/p>\n\n\n\n
“at the same time that he’s focused on dismantling the deep state, Trump seems to have built his own undemocratic, unaccountable executive apparatus.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
How else should we view the incident that The Washington Post<\/em> reported<\/a> on last week involving Elon Musk, the unofficial head of the White House’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), and Secretary of State Marco Rubio?<\/p>\n\n\n\n As DOGE was slashing its way through the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), Rubio issued a waiver<\/a> ensuring that “existing life-saving humanitarian assistance programs” should continue, despite the announced shutdown of USAID. “Several times, USAID managers prepared packages of these payments and got the agency’s interim leaders to sign off on them with support from the White House,” the Post<\/em> reported<\/a>. “But each time, using their new gatekeeping powers and clearly acting on orders from Musk or one of his lieutenants, [Luke] Farritor and [Gavin] Kliger would veto the payments\u2014a process that required them to manually check boxes in the payment system one at a time, the same tedious way you probably pay your bills online.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n As a result, USAID clinics that were supposed to be protected by Rubio’s order were shuttered.<\/p>\n\n\n\n That is an almost perfect illustration of how conservatives used to believe the deep state operated\u2014with unelected, unofficial back-channel operatives overruling the plainly stated instructions of those who are nominally in power.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n …<\/p>\n\n\n\n “this should be worrying to anyone who takes seriously the threat of the deep state or values the rule of law.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Whatever your views of Musk and Rubio as individuals, it simply cannot be that the Senate-confirmed secretary of state is having his decisions overruled by a man (or his lieutenants) who still lacks any official place in the White House’s organizational chart<\/a> and who runs a rebranded version<\/a> of the U.S. Digital Service, an agency meant to streamline the executive branch’s digital outreach efforts that has no statutory authority to make spending decisions.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n …<\/p>\n\n\n\n “while the situation with USAID and Rubio is the most high-profile, it is not the only example of DOGE and Musk operating like the very deep state Republicans used to criticize.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n …<\/p>\n\n\n\n “Overruling the decisions made by legally appointed officials. Dodging transparency. Refusing to identify who is running the show. Are Musk and the DOGE just the deep state by a different name?”<\/p>\n\n\n\n