What is the “Deep State”? How will President Donald Trump dismantle it? And why is it more likely that he will end up re-constructing it with a deeper, more biased political complexion.
By Tom Arms
What is the “Deep State”? How will President Donald Trump dismantle it? And why is it more likely that he will end up re-constructing it with a deeper, more biased political complexion.
If you are Donald Trump and his supporters the deep state is a living, breathing conspiracy of liberals who thwart their ambitions and conservative beliefs of how America should be run.
The deep state are a swamp of the journalists, teachers, university professors, lawyers, judges, civil libertarians, civil servants and politicians who believe that Trump lost the 2020 election and should be held accountable for his many alleged crimes.
To Trump and his supporters the deep state is comprised of regulators who block libertarian-minded Republican businessmen from opening an open-cast mine in a national park. Or they are the petti-fogging bureaucrat who stops them from planting a vegetable patch in their front garden. In short, the enemies of the deep state are those who believe that the state has gone too far in encroaching on individual liberties.
Americans love to hark back to the free-wheeling early days of the Republic. In 1800 the ratio of un-elected federal and state employees to the population as a whole was 0.05 percent. In 2024 the proportion had increased five-fold.
There are good reasons for the multiplying civil service. Over the past 225 years the world has become more complex. Special interest groups have proliferated. Elected officials have passed millions of new laws which now require an army of civil servants to administer.
Read: Trump vs. the “Deep State”
A series of surveys by Partnership for Public Service show that roughly 60 percent of those civil servants are Democrats as opposed to 45 percent in the population as a whole. They also donate to liberal causes, especially if they are involved in environmental protection, diplomacy, education, social services and civil rights—the areas where Trump wants the biggest cuts. The military, homeland security and immigration are largely immune from the Republican axe and enmity. Not surprisingly their ranks are disproportionately filled with conservative Republicans.
Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy have been tasked with the job of reducing the federal budget by $6 trillion by cutting the workforce by 75 percent. They plan to achieve this by using Trump’s decree powers to hold a bonfire of regulations. No more regulations, no need for civil servants to administer them.
To further swing the civil service away from the liberals Trump wants to replace some of the sacked employees with MAGA loyalists. At the moment about 4,000 federal jobs are political appointments. Trump says he wants to increase that number by a factor of 15. The American civil service already has more political appointments than any other G7 country. Trump’s plans will make it even more so. The Deep State will become more swamp like.
Republicans have made it clear that they will not stop with the civil service. Their target is the entire liberal establishment. The man earmarked for the job of Director of the FBI is Kash Patel. He has said that he will use the agency to pursue Trump’s enemies across the board.
Patel has a wide array of weapons available to him. There are straightforward criminal investigations. These have already been threatened against those who spearheaded impeachment proceedings against Trump during his first term. They include former Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Congressman Adam Schiff and former Republican Congresswoman Liz Cheney.
The charges don’t need any substance. The mere threat means that the targets are forced to lawyer-up at great expense and effort. Their families are already being subjected to social media harassment and death threats from MAGA loyalists.
Another tool is the withdrawal of security clearances from high-ranking civil servants and former politicians. They rely on retaining those clearances for private sector jobs when they are out of office. No clearance. No Job. No money. No influence.
America is proud of its free press. The problem is that a free press relies on profits to remain free. If profits fall then the media becomes susceptible to frivolous law suits and political pressure. They then either have to settle quickly out of court—as ABC News recently did—or resort to self-censorship to stay in business. Donald Trump has outstanding law suits against the Pulitzer Prize board, journalist Bob Woodward, the Des Moines Register, CNN, CBS and MSNBC. He has also threatened to withdraw the broadcasting licenses of ABC, CBS, MSNBC and CNN.
So far Trump has not threatened any individual academics. He has, however, said he would withhold federal funds and accreditation from universities which he believes are opposed to his conservative values and policies.
The soon-to-be inaugurated Trump has also promised retribution against lawyers and judges who have crossed his path. He has demanded the imprisonment of Special Prosecutor Jack Smith, who led investigations into the January 6 riots and the Mar-a-lago documents case. Trump has also demanded the dismissal of Judge Arthur Engoron and Judge Juan Merchan. The former presided over his civil sex abuse trial and the latter over the Manhattan trial which found him guilty of 34 fraud charges.
Chief Justice John Roberts has warned that such attacks undermine the independence of the judiciary. But Trump’s Supreme Court appointments have already called that independence into question.
World Review
Trump has three reasons for wanting to acquire Greenland:
1- The world’s largest island has substantial deposits of 43 out of 50 of the “rare earth” minerals.
2- It guards the eastern approach to the melting Northwest Passage
3- It straddles the route that Russian ballistic missiles would take in an attack on America’s East coast.
“Rare earth” minerals are essential to the building of batteries, computer chips and modern defense equipment. The country with the largest rare earth deposits is China. This makes Americans very nervous.
However, just because the minerals are there does not mean they can be easily extracted. Engineers have so far located 150 potential mining sites. But Arctic conditions, a labour shortage and the indigenous Innuits respect for their environment, means that after ten years, only one mine is operational.
In the early days of American exploration hundreds died searching for an ice-free passage through the Canadian Arctic linking Europe and Asia. Global warming means that within a few years ships will finally be breaking through the Northwest Passage. Greenland sits at the eastern end of what will become a major shipping lane.
It has long been recognized that the shortest route for Russian missiles attacking the US is over Greenland and Canada. That is why the US has established an early-warning system at Pituffik Space Base. Some 650 military personnel man radar systems and monitor space debris from their station 750 miles inside Greenland’s Arctic Circle.
But Trump does not need to own Greenland to place military bases there. The US has the right to build whatever military systems it requires under a 1951 treaty with the Danes, who are responsible for Greenland’s defense and foreign affairs. Trump can construct 50 more bases if he wants them.
However, it is also clear that ownership would give America greater control in other areas. It would, for instance, enable the US to introduce lax mining regulations in order to fully exploit the island’s untapped natural resources. This would, however, run counter to the daily lifestyle of the 57,000 Greenlanders who place a high premium on maintaining their unique—albeit cold– way of life.
American conservatives fought tooth and nail against relinquishing control of the Panama Canal. When the new revised treaty came before the Senate in 1977 it squeaked by with just one vote to spare.
It is not surprising therefore that ultra-conservative Donald Trump wants it back.
Unfortunately for the soon-to-be president, the reasons he has given for the re-acquisition range from outright lies to commercially dubious.
To start with, Trump says that the 50-miles of locks linking the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans is now occupied by Chinese troops. Thus America’s security is threatened. Next, is the claim that Panama is singling out American shipping and charging it unfair prices.
It is true that China has invested heavily in Panama since 2017 when the Panamanians switched diplomatic recognition from Taiwan to Mainland China. The Chinese have built bridges, a railway line and a cruise ship terminal. The Hong Kong-based company Hutchison Port Holdings has also secured the contract to manage terminal facilities at both ends of the canal.
But there are no Chinese soldiers in Panama. That is a lie. If there were troops that would be a casus belli for US intervention. Under the terms of the existing US-Panama treaty, America retains the right to intervene if its security interests are threatened.
As for the increased charges. Yes, they have risen 5-10 percent – for everyone, regardless of the national origin of their vessel. The money is needed for a $5.25 billion expansion program to recoup traffic that has been lost due to competition from the Suez Canal, covid and several years of drought. These factors combined with the opening of the Northwest Passage mean that Panama’s slice of the world shipping has dropped from six to five percent. To regain market share the canal authorities must charge more to improve facilities in order to compete.
Finally, there is the possibility of another reason for the Trumpian designs on the Canal Zone–immigration. An increasing number of migrants crossing the American southern border are coming from Venezuela via Panama and the treacherous Darien Gap. Control would create another block.
Adolf Hitler called himself “Volkskanzler”. Austria’s Herbert Kickl wants to use the same title if he succeeds in forming a government.
The link between the two Austrians is unsurprising. Kickl is leader of the far-right Freedom Party (FPO). The party has been junior partner in five Austrian coalitions, but the Social Democrats (SPO) and Centre-right People’s Party (OVP) have so far refused to participate in any government led by the FPO.
That may be about to change. After elections held in September, the FPO won the most parliamentary seats with 31 percent of the vote. President Alexander Van der Bellen pushed the other parties to reach an agreement that excluded Kickl and the FPO. But despite the high stakes, the other parties failed to resolve their differences and President Van der Bellen has reluctantly turned to Kickl who this week started negotiations with the OVP.
The two parties agree on a few things: the public wearing of hijabs, tax cuts and reduced benefits for immigrants and asylum seekers. But that is about it. A hint of the differences can be found in the title Kickl gave his party’s election manifesto—“Fortress Austria.”
Among the policies he is pursuing is a complete ban on asylum applications and the “remigration” (another term for expulsion) of “uninvited foreigners.”
Kickl also maintains close links with the Identitarian Movement who are anti-LGBTQ, anti-EU, anti-Semitic and anti-Muslim. Their leaders have been photographed throwing Nazi salutes and endorsed Kickl in the election. For his part, Kickl has called the Identitarians “an interesting project worthy of support.”
Where the OVP and FPO are most likely to fall out is over the issue of Russia and Ukraine. Kickl, an MEP, stormed out of an address to the European Parliament by Ukrainian President Volodomyr Zelensky. He has called for an end to EU sanctions against Russia which he claims breach Austria’s neutrality laws. He also opposes the German-backed European Sky Shield Initiative and supports Vladimir Putin’s claim that the Russian invasion was in response to NATO encirclement.
The one thing that may prevent Kickl from becoming Volkskanzler is the enmity between him and OVP leader Christian Stocker who once told him: “Mr Kickl, nobody in this parliament wants you. Nobody in this republic needs you either.”
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Tom Arms is foreign editor of Liberal Democrat Voice. He is also the author of “The Encyclopedia of the Cold War” and “America Made in Britain.”
