Undoing the ‘deep state’ means Trump would undo over a century of progress in building a federal government for the people and not just for rich White men

Three civil rights groups filed a lawsuit in October 2020 challenging Donald Trump’s executive order that banned federal agencies from offering certain diversity training.& AP Photo/Evan Vucci, File by Joseph Patrick Kelly, College of Charleston If elected, Donald Trump has vowed to demolish what he calls the “deep state” – a conspiratorial term for the American federal bureaucracy. A second Trump administration, running mate JD Vance has said, should fire thousands of civil servants and replace them with MAGA loyalists. Trump has said he would tap the billionaire Elon Musk as the hatchet man to lead his proposed government commission on “efficiency” in government. Compared with the other fireworks of the campaign – like Trump’s promise to criminally prosecute his political rivals and suppress news organizations – threats to gut the United States’ vast federal bureaucracy don’t get much attention. But doing so is a big a threat to democracy. For years, conservatives have claimed that taking power from government agencies gives it back to the people. Yet while it might seem counterintuitive, Americans actually exercise their sovereignty through the administrative state. The American administrative state was established almost 100 years ago by President Franklin Delano Roosevelt. As a historian...