Throughout this week, the Washington Examiner’s Restoring America project will feature its latest series titled “Reforming the Deep State: Reining in the Federal Bureaucracy.” We invited some of the best policy minds in the conservative movement to speak to the issues of what waste, fraud, abuse, and unaccountability exist throughout the federal government and what still needs to be done. To read more from this series, click here.

The “deep state” exists not as an organized conspiracy against the elected government of the day but as a portfolio of casual bureaucratic groupings that advance their own interests over those of the nation.

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At the worst end of the deep-state spectrum are those motivated to malfeasance by ideology. A good example here comes from former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper and former CIA Director John Brennan. The recent declassification of government documents strongly indicates that both men sought to politicize 2016 presidential election-related intelligence analysis to damage then-candidate Donald Trump.

But the deep state isn’t simply a Democratic Party problem. Illustrated by the Trump administration’s decision to drop FBI investigations or federal charges against the president’s political allies, this administration is hardly immune to its own deep-state antics. Indeed, the Justice Department’s decision to drop charges against border czar Tom Homan, after he was apparently recorded taking a $50,000 bribe from undercover FBI agents, reeks.

In turn, as various writers have argued this week for the Washington Examiner, we should pursue reforms that can weaken the incentives and means of action for deep-state activities. I believe this effort should center on demanding honesty, incentivizing talent, punishing malpractice, and ensuring that those who take risks to serve the country are also served by it.

How is the Trump administration doing so far?

Eliminating intelligence community programs on diversity, equity, and inclusion has made positive headway. These programs were widely derided by front-line personnel across the intelligence community and federal law enforcement. Front-line officers believed that officials were being promoted or given the most sought-after assignments not because of their talent but because of their ability to tick DEI boxes. As the Washington Examiner has reported, this DEI activity has also provided an excuse for numerous government-funded junkets to tourist spots such as Las Vegas.

There is nothing wrong with diversity, per se. At the CIA and in certain divisions of the FBI, for example, diversity is manifestly beneficial in enabling officers and agents to infiltrate countries and organizations where white people would immediately stand out. But the key point is that diversity must be a secondary interest beyond the foundational interest of recruiting and promoting the best talent.

Trump administration officials, particularly Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, also deserve credit for taking a fresh look at the so-called “Havana Syndrome,” or “anomalous health incidents,” problem. AHIs center on hundreds of U.S. intelligence officers, diplomats, and military personnel who have reported strange symptoms such as loss of gait, auditory malfunctions, severe headaches, and other ill effects with an unexplained cause over at least the past decade. The intelligence community continues to insist broadly that the incidents do not involve hostile action by a foreign power. As the Washington Examiner has reported, however, there is very substantial evidence to suggest that a significant proportion of globally reported AHI incidents involve hostile activity concerning elements of the Russian and Cuban intelligence services. The method of action is believed to center on radio frequency and microwave weapons that cause physical and neurological injury, sometimes even death.

About the deep-state concern, numerous active and former U.S. government officials have provided information to the Washington Examiner that strongly suggests the intelligence community, the CIA in particular, has covered up or disregarded evidence of Russia’s technical capability and specific culpability on AHIs.

Fortunately, Gabbard is doing what her predecessors would not and is taking a second look at the issue. House Intelligence Committee Chairman Rick Crawford (R-AR) and fellow committee member Ronny Jackson (R-TX) are also investigating the intelligence community’s analysis here. They want answers for Americans whose only crime was to accept dangerous, difficult jobs of far lower pay than they could have earned via safer, private-sector jobs.

Accountability matters.

When it comes to AHIs, successive intelligence community leaders have chosen the deep-state impulse of a cover-up over an honest investigation. They have done so fearing that honesty would reveal harder truths of a nuclear-armed power committing de facto acts of war against the United States. We should remember this consideration when we read accounts such as those by former CIA Director Bill Burns, which proclaim high moral values but take no accountability for failing those they lead. This is no small concern. When the deep-state reckoning on Havana Syndrome is finally forthcoming, it may even show that a serving U.S. president was harmed.

Still, we must also be wary of deep state-style behavior that pressures professionals to do an administration’s partisan bidding. If intelligence analysts believe their career is dependent on pleasing the political consumers of their content, they will be tempted to shape their analysis not based on evidence but on the more expedient interest of retaining their employment. And in the end, rose-tinted analysis is worse than useless. It reinforces false misconceptions, conceals truths, and drives poor policy choices.

Russian President Vladimir Putin could speak well on this subject. The rampant penchant of the Russian security and intelligence services to tell Putin only what he wants to hear was, at least in part, responsible for Putin’s belief that he could secure an easy military victory over Ukraine within a matter of weeks. Instead, since Russia’s war on Ukraine began in February 2022, Moscow has secured control over only 20% of Ukrainian territory in return for 200,000 to 250,000 dead soldiers, many hundreds of thousands more wounded, and an economy on the precipice of implosion.

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The central foundation of Trump’s political power is the general sense of many Americans that their government puts special interests before their own. And that, in that deep-state conception, America is on a negative trajectory.

Trump can redress these concerns and earn himself a positive place in the history books by doing so. But not if he decides to make the deep state a servant of his own agenda.