Donald Trump is not so much dismantling the administrative state as taking high explosives and a wrecking ball to it. It took Adolph Hitler 53 days to dismantle democracy in Germany at the beginning of 1933. Trump is trying to beat that record. The Washington Post talks of 'bedlam' and the BBC describes his latest moves as 'chaos.' He unilaterally paused billions of dollars of federal funding on Friday with confusion reigning when his newly appointed press secretary could not tell reporters if the pause affected Medicaid and Medicare which millions of Americans rely on: “I’ll get back to you on that.” If proof was needed that none of it had been thought through, this was it.
There are already a dozen or more lawsuits against the US government. On Monday a judge temporarily halted the executive order to freeze government grants and loans, minutes before it was set to come into effect on Tuesday. She blocked the plan until next Monday in response to a lawsuit filed by a group of organisations representing grant recipients.
Yesterday, the order was rescinded by The White House:
NEW: The Trump administration has rescinded the federal grant freeze.— Brian Tyler Cohen (@briantylercohen.bsky.social) 29 January 2025 at 18:05
This was followed by his 27-year-old press secretary Karoline Leavitt, tweeting that this was not a rescission of the 'federal funding freeze' but only a rescission of the Office of Management and Budget memo directing the freeze. Needless to say, everybody was by now thoroughly confused.
This prompted a second judge, John McConnell, to issue another restraining order saying the OMB memo was hugely ambiguous and what Leavitt had said was a "distinction without a difference."
This wasn't about some minor technical issue but about virtually all US Federal Government spending, excluding defence, amounting to perhaps even trillions of dollars. Broadcaster CBS talked about 'chaos and confusion.' You can say that again. They look like a bunch of total amateurs, which is exactly what they are.
Redundancy
Separately, Trump has offered a sort of blanket redundancy offer to two million government employees which seems totally crazy to me. The Office of Personnel Management (OPM) said the offer was available to "all full-time federal employees" - excluding certain staff such as postal workers, members of the military, immigration officials, and some national security teams.
Workers who wanted to take the deal were simply asked to reply to the email with the word "resign" in the subject line and presumably AI would take over.
Firstly, nobody knows who might take up the offer. If you were nearing retirement, it could prove tempting. Anyone thinking of leaving anyway might also want to take it up. In my (admittedly limited experience) when a company makes that kind of offer, it’s much more likely that the ones who apply are the brightest and the best. They know finding another position is easy for them.
The ones who won’t consider quitting are the plodders, the dullards, and the least productive. It’s a good way of cutting your own productivity.
I noted one Senator has claimed Trump and the White House have no authority to do this and I assume another legal challenge is coming soon.
Polling
I also noticed some YouGov polling on voters' current attitude toward Brexit. The headline is that "belief that Britain was right to vote to leave the EU falls to a new low of 30%." This is true. Another 55% think it was wrong, while 14% don't know (who are these people?). When the don't knows are removed 65% think it was a mistake against 35% who believe it wasn't.
Looking back, this equals the record highest figure for YouGov (they also had this same 65% figure in May 2024) since they started asking the question in August 2016, but note Kantar had it at 69% to 31% in June 2024.
However, I think there are more important numbers hidden in the details. Looking at people who voted to leave in 2016, just two-thirds (66%) now think it was the right choice. Compare that to the 88% of remainers who still believe the decision was wrong.
In the very first of these polls, from the beginning of August 2016 barely six weeks after the referendum, 94% of leave voters were convinced the decision to leave the EU was the right one, while 89% of remain voters thought it was wrong. Just 4% of leavers had converted to don't know.
Since then another 28% of leave voters have changed their mind and now either think it was wrong or have become don't knows.
But remain voters who still believe it was wrong has remained a solid 88% virtually the same as it was nearly nine years ago. Remember, this isn't affected by old people passing away or by younger, pro-EU voters joining the electorate. These are leavers who have actively changed their minds.
The answer is obvious if only Starmer will look.
The Financial Times has provided the first peep into how the UK government's 'reset' with Europe is going behind the political smokescreen.
The answer is - not very well. The most revealing comment if you ask me is in the final paragraph and comes from EU Commission spokesman Olof Gill: “We look forward to the UK defining its priorities, including on defence and security, and will engage on that basis.” I ask you, we are now in the ninth year after the referendum, the fifth year after formally exiting the bloc and the EU are still waiting for the British government to 'define its priorities.'
This is absolutely extraordinary and is an indication that we are continuing to cling on to cakeism.
The UK is stuck in a doom loop unable to make hard choices or any sort of trade-off. No government has dared to tell the people that leaving the EU had downsides. The time when that must happen is fast approaching. Voters are ready to hear it.
