Donald Trump’s dismantling of the federal government is illusory

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In the weeks since his return to office, Donald Trump, along with Elon Musk, whom he tapped to lead the Department of Government Efficiency, has been firing civil servants, shuttering agencies, eliminating funding for foreign aid and generally quashing any will to push back against his will. In other words, he has been doing what he promised he would do during the last campaign.

The results have been brutal. The shuttering of the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), for example, threatens the health and even the lives of individuals around the world who have come to depend on the aid they receive from this federal agency. The removal of the staff and the shuttering of the offices of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, as well, eliminate one layer of regulatory oversight of a corporate class that has at times tended to prioritize the pursuit of profit at the expense of consumer interests. And more cuts are coming, with plans to drastically reduce other departments or eliminate them altogether.

All of these moves might very well reduce waste within the bureaucracy and balance the federal budget. And it is easy to demonize the bureaucracy in abstract terms or even as part of something called the deep state that undermines the democratic will of the people. But this bureaucracy is made up of real people with real bills and real mortgages to pay and real families to support. The lives of thousands of fired workers have suddenly been upended while the remaining employees carry on in their jobs constantly worried that they can be fired at any time and for any reason.

As the Trump administration pursues this purge of federal workers, there have been questions about why members of the Democratic Party and even members of the president’s own party have not been more willing to stand up to the president. It is true that Democrats could be more vocal in highlighting the devastating consequences these cuts are having on real people. And members of both parties should be pushing back against a president who is apparently intent on eliminating agencies that were created and funded by the legislative branch and thus cannot be dismantled or starved of funding without legislative approval.

As the minority party, however, Democrats have few options. And as supporters of the president and his agenda, Republicans appear happy to sit by and watch as Trump undermines their legislative authority.

This inaction on the part of Congress has led to a certain level of despair from a public that fears the vital institutions of the state will be dismantled before it is possible to organize any meaningful political response to what the president is doing. There is a sense that not much can be done to halt the president’s drive to dismantle the institutions of the state.

But all hope should not be lost. In truth, what Trump is doing is not so much dismantling the federal government as defunding it. Though people are being fired, office leases are being terminated and funding is being cut off, the institutions themselves remain in place. Even if these institutions are mere shells of what they were only a few weeks ago, they are not dead. The legislation that established these institutions remains in place.

What Trump and Musk have been doing, in fact, is manufacturing the illusion of action instead of implementing the reforms that might be labeled real action. Both men are engaged in a form of performance art that has created the appearance of strength and action without actually being strong and without actually taking action. They are both engaged in a branding exercise to burnish their own reputations as decisive and tough bosses. In reality, they are doing very little of what they claim to be doing.

To be sure, real damage is being done. The billionaire president and his billionaire friend do not seem to care much that their cuts are upending peoples’ lives. Nor do they seem to care that the agencies that help people and that keep the country functioning are being weakened in ways that will reverberate for years to come. The effects of these decisions would never reach them; they live in worlds that have been insulated by their enormous wealth.

But in reality, what Trump and Musk are doing is committing acts of political vandalism rather than engaging in the real and hard work of meaningful reform of government. Any meaningful dismantling of the federal state would involve the legislative unwinding of the agencies and departments that Trump and Musk are now targeting with cuts. This is not likely to occur. There has been much talk about why Congress has appeared so willing to stand by and watch its authority be challenged by what can only be described as a power grab by the executive branch. To be sure, many Republicans in Congress are pleased with what the president is doing, and their inaction should be interpreted as a form of cheerleading.

But the real reason Congress is doing little to stop the president is that it is in a sense being let off the hook. If members of Congress had to vote on the dismantling of the agencies Trump and Musk are gleefully decimating, then they would have to go on the record to defend those cuts in front of their constituents, some of whom would presumably wonder why their jobs were being eliminated or why the services they had come to rely on were no longer being provided. As it stands, congressional Republicans can sit back and let Trump and Musk take the heat for the cuts while avoiding the unpleasant task of taking a stand on what the president is doing in their name.

The defunding of government and the dismissal of federal workers is of course having real consequences on people’s lives and on the government’s ability to function smoothly. But defunding an agency or department is not the same as eliminating an agency or department. It is also much easier to restore funding to a department than to create a new department altogether. Which is to say, there is reason to hope that once Trump and Musk are no longer in positions of power, or when the political winds shift, it will be possible to begin the difficult work of restoring the funding to these agencies that had never been formally eliminated.

Jeffery Vacante is an assistant professor in the Department of History at the University of Western Ontario.