In the spoils, the Trumpian nationalists, the tech wizards, and the fiscal conservatives are united for a common project.

O ne of the more surprising developments in the first weeks of Donald Trump’s administration is the revival of an aggressive conservative instinct to shrink the government, to reduce not only the scope of federal authority in national and global affairs but to literally just shrink it by reducing the number of people employed by the government.

DOGE is the administration’s first big shock — a consulting group led by the world’s richest man, a former beneficiary of American subsidy himself, Elon Musk. Musk’s job was siccing his wild young men and their algorithms on various federal departments, looking for spending that was contrary to mission, not specifically mandated by legislation, or simply excessive and unjustifiable.

Every few hours, it seemed, they were making a scandal of finding billions or millions of dollars to slash. Cutting excessive spending on media subscriptions, cutting subsidies to a gay opera to be launched in Dublin, Ireland, tearing out support for opposition media in allied countries that have governments deemed too conservative by the previous administration. The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, which is dependent on money withdrawn from the Federal Reserve, was a juicy target.

This was a surprise because Trump had partly won his party’s nomination and the presidency by moderating the GOP’s fiscal conservatism. He had ruled out major slashes to Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid and occasionally made lavish promises of expanding the social safety net to take care of everyone. If anything, the inchoate message of Trump’s movement was that he was going to redirect largesse away from progressivism and from the programs that serve the gentry liberal class and move it to spending on the “forgotten man.”

There has been some early heady talk of a major split within Trumpism, between the tech futurists and the old-school nationalist Right. This split has been highlighted by Steve Bannon, the hard-charging nationalist media entrepreneur, when he attacks the Silicon Valley boys as too-late converts to Trumpism who want to divert us into techno-feudalism.

I think it’s too early to declare it a split. Right now, what we are witnessing are the spoils of a surprising election that has put Democrats on their back foot. Lacking the ability to check Donald Trump in Congress, Democrats have been subject to a blizzard of executive action and have been unable to focus on any one action or scandal long enough to generate oppositional momentum. Trump is now more popular and approved than ever before.

In the spoils, the traditional Trumpian nationalists, the tech wizards, and the traditional fiscal conservatives are united in a project. The tech wizards are aimed at a regulatory state that has tried to absorb and entangle Silicon Valley in recent years, the Trumpian nationalists want to dethrone a progressive power elite that survives on government subsidy, and the fiscal conservatives want to cut spending. On top of that, Donald Trump wants revenge on the deep state and an assurance that his administration’s policies are carried out faithfully under Article II of the Constitution. Call it the new fusionism. Only this time, it’s a fusion bomb.

Why is this government able to move at such breakneck speed? Partly because Donald Trump’s majoritarian victory has given him a newly minted political legitimacy that didn’t even accrue to George W. Bush in his first term. Second, because this is Trump’s second crack at the presidency. He and his team know better how to reach the levers of power and are far more aligned on an agenda. Third, the judicial revolution that Trump inaugurated in his first term has spent years opening the field. They’ve cleared up some questions about executive authority that limit the president’s ability to reinterpret statue but also freed him to act energetically when directing executive branch offices and powers.

Conservatives also have a built-up advantage. The asymmetric advantages that progressives were able to give themselves through extra-constitutional power grabs have become asymmetric weaknesses. It is easier to end and destroy programs that have accreted missions and powers not strictly delegated by Congress. There is no equivalent action the other side could take once in power. Conservatives can end the practice of diverting what was supposed to be humanitarian aid to the socialist opponents of Viktor Orbán. But there is no equivalent program of intervening in democracies to support conservative and traditionalist figures for liberals to cut.

This is new territory claimed, and it gives conservatives new horizons for the future.