The purge
Trump and Musk aides purge career officials, commandeer sensitive government databases: ‘There is no oversight.’
“What are you supposed to be doing? And, why aren’t you doing it?”
So said a British management consultant involved in the post-Soviet Russian privatization project in the 1990s were the questions he used to approach his work, telling Russians how to privatize their country.
However tragi-comically crude, the template gave a kind of way for him to organize himself for a task that a) was overwhelming, flawed, and riddled with corruption b) western management consultants parachuting into Russia probably weren’t really qualified to do.
It came to mind as I was trying to think through the blizzard of actions Trump and his minions have taken since returning to power less than two weeks ago, and the kind of fog they can induce. By the time one starts learning about what Trump’s billionaire co-president Elon Musk is doing forcing out top career professionals at the Treasury Department, the Office of Personnel Management, General Services Administration, FAA, and USAID; a reported purge of senior officials at the FBI; the suspension last week of almost all US foreign assistance, in an order signed by Secretary of State Marco Rubio, then trying to understand the humanitarian exemptions put in place to that action; the Trump Office of Management and Budget suspension of all US federal assistance programs, except individual benefits payments; then the withdrawal of the OMB memo ordering that cut-off to thwart judicial review after a judge temporarily suspended it; then there was the terrible plane crash Tuesday night of a civilian passenger regional jet with an Army Black Hawk helicopter, near Reagan National Airport, killing 67 people; a tragedy which Trump Wednesday, without any evidence, linked with his crusade against diversity programs.
It’s overwhelming, it’s nearly impossible to keep track of all of it, and one is at a loss about what to do about any of it.
Is there a template to try to organize thinking about the tsunami? The one I provisionally came up with:
What is happening?
What does it mean?
What can be done about it?
“There are two ways to think about this,” Rachel Kleinfeld, a democracy and governance expert at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, said by email.
“One is that this is a pretty typical, if fast moving authoritarian playbook used by multiple democratically elected leaders to centralize and personalize power,” she said, citing the examples of Hungary, India, and Poland under the former ruling Law and Justice Party.
“The other way to think about this is that this is a democratically elected government delivering quickly on a set of policies desired by their constituents,” Kleinfeld continued. “They are doing so in a manner that is pushing against all the norms and some of the laws, spreading a climate of fear, etc. But this is not Belarus.”
Musk aides commandeer sensitive government databases: ‘There is no oversight’
The pattern that is emerging is that senior career civil servants are being forced out or aside in multiple federal agencies, some after resisting actions they believe are problematic or even illegal by aides to Elon Musk, who oversees a new agency that as yet has no legislated mandate, the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE).
“DOGE instructed me to violate the due process of our employees by issuing immediate termination notices to a group of employees without due process,” a senior USAID official, Nicholas Gottleib wrote to USAID colleagues, according to a report in the Washington Post Thursday. “I was notified moments ago that I will be placed on administrative leave, effective immediately. It has been an honor working with you all.”
Aides to Musk “have locked career civil servants out of computer systems that contain the personal data of millions of federal employees,” Reuters reported today.
“We have no visibility into what they [Musk aides] are doing with the computer and data systems,” one OPM official told Reuters. “That is creating great concern. There is no oversight. It creates real cybersecurity and hacking implications.”
“The highest-ranking career official at the Treasury Department is departing after a clash with …Musk over access to sensitive payment systems,” the Washington Post reported today. “The possibility that government official might try to use the federal payments system…to enact a political agenda is unprecedented.”
“Several senior FBI employees have been told to resign in a matter of days or be fired,” the New York Times reported today.
“Everybody is replaceable,” Trump told reporters this afternoon of federal workers. “We’d love to have them leave. It’s our dream to have everyone work in the private sector.”
“This is one of the worst opening couple of weeks of any Presidential administration I can remember,” David Doak, a former campaign manager and media consultant, wrote on Twitter. “There is no honeymoon with Trump, he won’t allow it. Wackos for his cabinet, politicizing an airline tragedy, aborted freeze, Musk running amok….”
“The most troubling thing to me is it appears to be well thought out and well planned, which means it is not some haphazard operation,” Doak told me. “It is a bunch of folks committed to the Hungarian model.”
The Orbán playbook
“When Viktor Orbán was elected [Hungarian] Prime Minister for the second time in 2010—after eight years out of power—his first and most aggressive move was to rewrite the Hungarian Constitution,” the Authoritarian Playbook, a study published by ProtectDemocracy.Org with which Kleinfeld was involved, wrote in a section on a case study of Hungary.
“This new document, rushed through in a matter of months with almost no public visibility, consultation, or ratification, removed almost all meaningful checks and balances,” it continued. “Orbán also rewrote the electoral rules to reduce the size of Parliament and distort electoral outcomes in favor of his Fidesz party… Taken together, these successful attacks on checks and balances make it less likely that Orban will again lose power—ever.”
“Authoritarian projects cannot succeed without the cooperation or acquiescence of legislatures, courts, and other institutions designed to provide checks and balances,” the Authoritarian Playbook wrote.
It suggested that journalists “provide context on the role of the executive branch in the governing process in relation to other branches and centers of power,” and that they “avoid political intrigue stories that can, by overstating process dysfunction and conflicts, inadvertently help warm voters to executive power grabs.”
“Summary of Trump’s first two weeks,” conservative anti-Trump commentator Bill Kristol wrote today on Twitter. “Trump has thrown the federal government into chaos, thus endangering your services and benefits; he’s pardoned violent criminals; he’s announced tariffs that will raise your prices; and he’s done nothing to help you and your family.
Photo: President Trump talks with reporters as he signs executive orders in the Oval Office at the White House, on Jan. 30, 2025, in Washington. EVAN VUCCI/AP.
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