The concept of the deep state is indicative of one of the fundamental challenges that undermines American domestic policies and represents the desire of American presidents to redirect the bureaucratic apparatus and tighten their control over it. In line with this meaning, President Donald Trump positioned himself in opposition to the institutions of the executive branch and their employees, resulting in the prominence of two concepts dominating the American domestic scene: the unified executive authority and the deep state. The former is based on the personalization of presidential power to bypass the boundaries of logic and the rule of law, while the latter – in one of its meanings – refers to orchestrated conspiracies aimed at undermining the constitutional authority of the elected president.
However, the implications of the deep state, in the American context, go beyond the previous meaning to encompass a complex network of high-ranking positions and unelected government leaderships in various institutions, such as the military, intelligence, and judiciary, which hold the reins of governance. The unjustified influence of these non-elected individuals in public policies is reflected in what is passed or obstructed in terms of official decisions, greatly diminishing the role of the elected president. In a related sense, the deep state refers to thousands of opinion experts and non-political government employees who undermined Trump’s authority during his first term and hindered him from imposing his vision and policies. Examples include Jeff Sessions, who refused to engage in investigations of Russian interference in the 2016 presidential elections, and Jim Mattis, who resigned due to disagreements over Trump’s strategic decisions, such as the withdrawal from Syria, among others.
Confronting the Deep State:
Trump’s efforts and policies to uproot the deep state and dismantle its roots have been multifaceted, aiming to reduce the size and effectiveness of the sprawling federal government by limiting its resources and reducing the number of employees. These policies found their roots in his first term, were reiterated in his election campaign last year, and are finding their way into implementation in his second term. In his first term, Trump issued an executive order known as “Schedule F,” which aimed to isolate “rogue bureaucrats” and strip civil service employees not loyal to the president of protection, facilitating their dismissal and replacement with others who explicitly express their loyalty to Trump upon appointment. Trump began his second term with an executive order authorizing comprehensive reviews of American intelligence agencies and other agencies to rectify “previous misconduct” through appropriate measures.
Trump’s desire to undermine the deep state, granting open leave to employees overseeing diversity management in government institutions, and appointing loyalists following the reclassification of thousands of civil service employees, comes within a set of contexts and factors. These include the Democratic Party’s and its liberal elite’s sole and informal control over the reins of governance during the tenure of the previous president, Joe Biden, on one hand, and Trump’s supporters’ desire for a decisive presidency that meets their aspirations, on the other hand. Additionally, it involves applying one of the most important lessons learned from Trump’s first term, which is the selection of individuals characterized by absolute loyalty to him, regardless of their competence, to prevent any potential resistance to his controversial policies.
Trump may succeed in dismantling the deep state in his second term, considering a range of evidence, including the multi-step plan to reduce the size of the civil service, limit the authority of institutions and experts, and appoint loyalists instead of current officials. This plan calls for dismantling the deep state by dismissing every corrupt official, implementing comprehensive reforms of federal departments and agencies, making extensive changes in the Department of Justice and the Federal Bureau of Investigation, which embody the deep state, establishing a truth and reconciliation commission and a system for monitoring intelligence agencies, relocating large parts of the federal bureaucracy outside the “Washington swamp,” and relying on political appointees rather than professional experts.
Since his return to the White House on January 20, 2025, Trump has indeed launched a retaliatory campaign against prominent figures; he revoked Secret Service protection for three senior national security officials from his first presidency: John Bolton, the former National Security Advisor, Mike Pompeo, the former Director of the Central Intelligence Agency and Secretary of State, and Brian Hook, the former Assistant Secretary of State. This is the same treatment that Anthony Fauci, the infectious disease expert and former Chief Medical Advisor to the American president, received. Trump also ousted prominent figures from various government positions and revoked security clearances from 51 former intelligence officials for questioning reports related to Hunter Biden’s laptop, the son of the former president. Additionally, he targeted around 30 government inspectors known as “Inspectors General,” along with officials responsible for rooting out corruption and misconduct. They were collectively dismissed without notifying Congress.
In fulfillment of his promise to dismantle the government bureaucracy, and in parallel with the current Republican leadership of Congress, Trump is also seeking to fill thousands of political appointments in various government positions as quickly as possible. In this context, the roles played by several officials tasked with eliminating the deep state become clear, including Attorney General Pam Bondi, Federal Bureau of Investigation Director Kash Patel, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, National Security Advisor Mike Waltz, and Elon Musk, who leads Trump’s efforts to improve government efficiency. Trump has chosen controversial figures to hold the most sensitive positions, specifically in the Departments of Justice and Defense, as well as intelligence agencies. These are individuals capable of making a real and positive difference in confronting the deep state. Therefore, his policies indicate his ability to break traditional standards in selecting government leaderships to achieve his political agenda, as evidenced by his repeated statements on the “Truth Social” platform regarding the destruction of the deep state. Steve Bannon, Trump’s former advisor, described the new president’s team as a “thunder squad for radical change,” aimed at transferring specific individuals and reappointing or dismissing others, with the goal of executing the president’s orders regardless of their legality.
Evaluating Effectiveness:
In contrast to analyses that push for the American president’s ability to confront the deep state through his aforementioned policies, three trends emerge that cast doubt on that ability, as follows:
1- The continuation of the deep state in other forms: This trend is based on the difficulty of reforming the federal government, especially since the deep state does not originate from within the federal bureaucracy but rather from the “contractor state” composed of financially wealthy and politically protected giant corporations led by major defense contractors, state governments, and nonprofit organizations supported by taxpayers and members of Congress from both the Democratic and Republican parties. Therefore, the citizens and supporters of this deep state are the real reason behind the increasing federal spending and the federal budget deficit under the complexity of federal programs and the use of tax money to employ millions of people in the private sector. They are the real reason behind waste and fraud, not the bureaucrats. Additionally, the largest contracts of the real deep state go to giant corporations affiliated with the military-industrial complex through the U.S. Department of Defense, making it one of the most prominent manifestations of monopoly and one of the reasons for weak federal oversight.
2- The negative consequences of Trump’s policies on himself: This trend argues that Trump’s policies to undermine the deep state will undermine him due to a set of reasons, including that the leaderships he appoints touch the global leadership role in a more complex international context than during his first presidential term. Therefore, they do not align with global geostrategic tensions in the Middle East or Europe, nor do they align with escalating tensions with China amid intense international competition with it. There is no doubt that replacing experienced intelligence experts will have long-term negative consequences at a time when the United States needs an efficient and effective intelligence community.
In other words, Trump’s policies in confronting the deep state will result in undermining, if not “destroying,” American intelligence agencies, as these policies are based on the control of loyalties in the work of these agencies, which undermines one of the most important foundations of their work, namely, prioritizing the interest over loyalty through providing the president with the best available intelligence information. Additionally, it is easy to question the competence of many of the individuals he appointed, including the Director of National Intelligence, former Democrat Tulsi Gabbard, who defended Bashar al-Assad and accused Trump of seeking war with Iran; thus, her record and publicly stated political positions indicate the selective nature she will exercise when evaluating intelligence information, listening to what aligns with her ideological framework and rejecting what contradicts her vision and policies.
3- Politicizing the deep state for functional purposes: Some analyses argue that there is no such thing as the deep state, and that Trump’s claims about it are an attempt to trade and inject conspiracy theory into the heart of American politics to settle scores and create cultures of silence and fear that may affect the functional performance of various official agencies. These claims may be just the beginning of targeting opponents of the current American administration, heralding the beginning of a new era for the United States and its governance system, where positions are distributed based on whims rather than competencies. Based on this, in the near future, Trump’s objectives from these policies will become clear, whether their politicization aims to deter civil service employees from opposing his extremist agenda or to reorganize the bureaucratic apparatus and harness it in his service, turning the federal government into a means of tightening control, targeting opponents, settling scores, pursuing adversaries, and provoking traditional institutions.
In conclusion, President Trump fulfills his promise to pursue his enemies and bring down supporters of the deep state who previously opposed him and caused him legal persecution, which he began just hours after taking the constitutional oath as President of the United States in his second term. As a result, Trump’s policies in confronting the deep state raise serious questions about his supporters’ ability to manage large and complex institutions, and their role in politicizing the largest institutions that are supposed to be independent of political power, in a clear abuse of power and a deliberate transformation of institutions into political tools.
