February 18, 2025
Firing Civil Servants and Dismantling Government Departments Is How Aspiring Strongmen Consolidate Personal Power – Lessons from Around the Globe
With the recent confirmations of Tulsi Gabbard and Robert F. Kennedy Jr. – two of the most controversial of President Donald Trump’s high-level administration nominees – the president’s attempt to remake government as a home for political loyalists continues.
Soon after coming to office for a second term, Trump aggressively sought to overhaul Washington and bring the federal government in line with his political agenda. He is spearheading an effort to purge the government’s ranks of people he perceived as his opponents and slash the size of long-standing bureaucratic agencies – in some instances dismantling them entirely.
Bureaucracies, in this way, are an important part of democracy that constrain executive behavior.
At the helm of much of this is businessman Elon Musk, who is not only the world’s richest man but also the largest donor of the 2024 election and the owner of multiple businesses that benefit from lucrative government contracts.
Musk – and a small cohort of young engineers loyal to him but with little experience in government – descended on Washington, announced their control over multiple government agencies, fired career civil servants, and even strong-armed access to government payment systems at the Treasury Department, where the inspector general had just been sacked.
Read the full article on The Conversation.
More from CNAS
-
The Superpower Has Left the Building: Munich 2025
Commentary
Behind the frustration and fears of abandonment lies a major question: What will — what can — Europe do about it?...
By Richard Fontaine
-
‘Europe Has Got to Do More for Defence’: What to Expect as European Leaders Meet on Ukraine
Video
NATO policy expert and adjunct senior fellow in the CNAS Transatlantic Security Program, Jim Townsend joins to discuss what to expect when European leaders meet on Ukraine.Wat...
By Jim Townsend
-
Averting AI Armageddon with Colin Kahl and Jacob Stokes
Podcast
In recent years, the previous bipolar nuclear order led by the United States and Russia has given way to a more volatile, tripolar one, as China has quantitatively and qualita...
By Andrea Kendall-Taylor, Jim Townsend, Colin H. Kahl & Jacob Stokes
-
Averting AI Armageddon
Reports
In recent years, the previous bipolar nuclear order led by the United States and Russia has given way to a more volatile tripolar one, as China has quantitatively and qualitat...
By Jacob Stokes, Colin H. Kahl, Andrea Kendall-Taylor & Nicholas Lokker
