Not long after Donald Trump was sworn in as president back in 2017, his chief strategist, Steve Bannon, made an incendiary statement vowing that the new administration would fight an unending battle for the “deconstruction of the administrative state,” raising fears that the new president would carry out a blitzkrieg assault on the federal bureaucracy. While the former TV host likely had no inkling of what his more ideological strategist meant by the “administrative state,” it would not be long before Trump himself would embrace similar rhetoric aimed at what he derisively coined the “deep state.” Unlike his advisor (and many libertarian-leaning Republicans), Trump’s hostility towards the federal government stems less from any ideological opposition to “big government” than from his own personal resentment and paranoia. With his agenda stalled early on his term, the president came to blame all of his woes on this supposedly omnipotent deep state, which denoted a quasi-invisible and demonic cabal of entrenched bureaucrats allegedly sabotaging his presidency.
Fortunately for those who believe in a strong and independent federal bureaucracy, the Trump administration largely failed to follow through on these early threats. Within six months of his inflammatory remark, Bannon was out of a job in the White House, while the embattled president had more pressing concerns than attempting to dismantle the federal bureaucracy. By the time he left office, Trump had done irreparable damage to American democracy and its institutions, but the so-called “administrative state” — an ideological shorthand for the numerous departments and independent agencies inside the federal government, from the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) to the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) — remained standing, if not mostly unscathed.
