Obeying orders doesn’t mean you can’t drag your feet.
In January 2025, a few weeks before Donald Trump would be sworn in to begin his second term, the America First Policy Institute issued a warning about career government employees who might try to sabotage what the new president wanted to do.
Many career staff diligently and impartially serve whoever holds office. However, there are those who do not. Some career employees resisted the president’s agenda during the [first] Trump Administration. Interviews with former Trump Administration appointees reveal these employees used similar strategies to stymie the president’s policies. These included:
- withholding information;
- refusing to implement policies;
- intentionally delaying or slow-walking priorities;
- deliberately underperforming;
- leaking to Congress and the media; and
- outright insubordination.
This opposition embedded within the government constitutes the dreaded Deep State: unelected bureaucrats who have their own ideas about what they’re supposed to be doing, ideas that sometimes contradict the orders that come down from the top.
Right-wing opinion-makers excel at demonizing a word or phrase: DEI, critical race theory, socialism, open borders, fake news, illegal immigrant, and so on. Denizens of the right-wing media echo chamber can be counted on to respond according to their Pavlovian training. So no one needs to explain what woke people do or why it’s bad. Leaders just have to attach the label to someone, and the faithful know to start growling at them. The Right has been using this technique for decades. Back in the 1980s, Reaganites demonized the death tax, and before long even minimum-wage workers were outraged that the government might try to add friction to the path of generational wealth as it oozed down plutocratic family trees.
But few phrases are as thoroughly demonized as Deep State. The Deep State is supposed to be a kind of shadow government, a hidden cabal of officials who (like the Devil) can be attached to any conspiracy theory. The villainy of the Deep State explains why conservative governments consistently fail to keep their promises, and — no matter how many job-creating tax cuts the rich get — the vise around the American working class continues to tighten.
What the Deep State really is. Back in the first Trump administration, I started looking at the way Deep State was being used, and I came to a conclusion that surprised me: The Deep State really exists, but it’s nothing like its conspiracy-theory description. It’s not a conspiracy at all, it’s a culture, and it changes from one part of the government to another: The Deep IRS, for example, is nothing like the Deep FDA. What the Deep State actually consists of is government employees whose first loyalty is to the mission of their organization, rather than to the chain of command.
If you imagine making a career in the federal government, this makes perfect sense. Many young people are probably just looking for a job when they join the government, but the best candidates — the ones who become leaders and create the organizational culture — have choices. They commit themselves to the part of the government they believe in most, the one whose mission best reflects their inner values. So if you believe in public health, you join HHS or the CDC. If you want to protect society from crime, the FBI appeals. If you are inspired by the visions of science fiction, an offer from NASA sparkles in a way that no other agency can match.
If you have that kind of relationship to your organization, you are nothing like the soulless drone or petty tyrant Fox News wants its audience to imagine when its hosts say bureaucrat. You go to work with a spring in your step. You are fighting the good fight and holding back the forces of darkness.
Now what happens when a new administration wants to turn your organization against its core mission? When the EPA is asked to find or create loopholes in the laws that restrain polluters? When DoJ is directed to ignore crimes by the President’s friends and invent reasons to prosecute his enemies? When DoJ’s Civil Rights Division is tasked with protecting the privileges of Whites or Christians, rather than the rights of people who actually need protection?
Maybe you quit, like countless DoJ prosecutors have done since that department was corrupted by the likes of Pam Bondi and Todd Blanche. But maybe you have a family and a mortgage, or you only need to hang on two or three more years to qualify for your pension. “Maybe it won’t be so bad,” you tell yourself. “Maybe I can avoid the morally revolting assignments and still find parts of the job to believe in.”
Or maybe you think the mission your agency was created to pursue, the one that may still be embedded in the laws that established it, is too important to leave to the ever-changing whims of an 80-year-old simpleton and his cronies. Maybe you stay because you can imagine the know-nothings and yes-men who will be appointed if you leave.
Now you start doing the things AFPI found so threatening. You don’t get a membership card or learn the secret handshake, but you have nonetheless joined the Deep State.
The Deep Pentagon. Liberals like me aren’t used to siding with the Deep Pentagon. We remember Eisenhower’s warnings about the military-industrial complex. We know about the infighting between the Army and Navy, and the Pentagon’s desire to keep a weapons program funded even if the early tests aren’t going well. Too often a plane or vehicle that should be simple and nimble becomes a camel that is supposed to do everything for everybody, and gets bloated with options and gear. Generals and admirals are too easily seduced by the prospect of high-paying jobs in defense corporations after they retire.
Is there corruption in the Pentagon? Yes. Waste? Of course.
But simultaneously, there is a sense of mission: You want to protect the country. You want to preserve the geo-political prominence of the United States. When a strutting Napoleon wannabe and his unqualified Secretary of War Defense threaten that prominence and leave the nation open to attack, you start to rebel.
That’s what we’ve been seeing lately.
Enter Hegseth. When Pete Hegseth took control of the Pentagon, he did not have the respect of the officer corps. Yes, he had been in the military, rising to the rank of major. He deployed to combat zones and was awarded two bronze stars for “meritorious service” (which is actually quite different from getting a medal for valor). Prior to his confirmation, reports of a drinking problem and sexual improprieties came out. His ability to manage people has always been questionable; in civilian life he had managed only small organizations and not terribly well.
He was nominated as SecDef for two reasons: He was a Trump loyalist, and as a former Fox News personality he looked good on TV. Neither of those virtues ranks high in the value system of a general.
It could have worked if Hegseth had played to his strengths, if he had stayed out of major policy matters (that he knows nothing about) and been the Pentagon’s front man in the White House and Congress. But instead he has acted as if he alone understands war. He has assumed that any Black or female officer must be a “DEI hire” who lacks merit, so he has refused to promote them any higher, and has pressured some to leave. He has brought the culture wars into the military, espousing a “warrior ethos” that has little to do with modern high-tech warfare. Some of his proposals have seemed like jokes, like the one that will test the testosterone levels of all the men in the military and fund testosterone replacement therapies for those who fall short. (This is gender-affirming care for cis men.) Now he seems to be running for president, which is anathema to US military traditions.
But the real problem is the Iran War, which was launched on the assumption that it would be over quickly, and with little-to-no planning for what would happen if it wasn’t. Obvious Iranian counter-moves, like closing the Strait of Hormuz or attacking the bases in allied countries that are essential logistics hubs, were not foreseen or planned around. (That flaw was made obvious by the sad conditions aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln, but is a much larger story.) Having made no attempt to raise public or congressional support prior to the attack, Hegseth has left the Pentagon out on a limb now that the war has gone badly. The supplemental appropriations the military needs to keep fighting this war are stalled, because Trump and Hegseth don’t want to answer questions in Congress, while even Republicans are reluctant to authorize more money without having a chance to ask.
The result is that the rest of our defense establishment is being raided to fund the war. If you are a commander somewhere else in the world, facing your usual responsibilities without your usual resources, you’re not happy. If, say, you’re supposed to be ready if China decides to attack Taiwan or Russia invades Estonia, you know you’re not ready. When the USS George Washington finally relieved the Abraham Lincoln in the Gulf of Oman, it left the entire western Pacific without an American aircraft carrier.
Normally, the Pentagon keeps its discontents under wraps. But then, somehow, the Washington Post got its hands on reports about the classified Secretary of Defense Orders Book.
Several U.S. military leaders have advised Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth that prolonging large-scale operations against Iran is unsustainable and risks weakening their ability to confront threats elsewhere, including the U.S. homeland, according to people familiar with a recent assessment prepared for the Pentagon chief.
The warnings — detailed for Hegseth by the heads of the Army, Navy and Air Force and the four-star commanders overseeing U.S. operations throughout Europe, Asia and Latin America — appear in the Aug. 14 edition of the Secretary of Defense Orders Book (SDOB), these people said. They described the assessment to The Washington Post on the condition of anonymity because the document is classified.
The SDOB, typically produced twice monthly, outlines the worldwide availability of U.S. warships, aircraft, personnel and weapons systems. It reflects the president’s priorities for the force, which are carried out by the defense secretary, and includes insights from the military’s top generals and admirals that inform the directives the Pentagon issues.
Those “insights” can include a “non-concur”, where some regional commander can express his disagreement with orders s/he is nonetheless carrying out.
Then last Monday, Secretary of the Army Dan Driscoll resigned, after much feuding with Hegseth about Army leadership.
When Hegseth took office last year, the Army had 10 four-star generals on active duty. Today, it has five.
Nearly a year ago, when Hegseth abruptly called top officers from around the world to Washington to hear political speeches by himself and Trump, many tried to read the stony faces of the generals and admirals in their seats. We’re still trying to read their faces and interpret the clues they leave.
But if they are coming to the conclusion that the Trump/Hegseth regime is undermining the safety and security of the United States, don’t expect them to stay in line. I don’t expect a coup or an assassination, as might happen in some country with a lesser tradition of an apolitical military. But there are ways to act out, and I expect to see more of them.
The Weekly Sift 