WHY TRUMP IS SO THREATENING TO THE PERMANENT BUREAUCRACY. There was a moment in Sean Hannity’s Fox News interview with President Donald Trump and DOGE czar Elon Musk when Musk seemed to contemplate — as if for the first time — the existence of what used to be called the “permanent bureaucracy” and now sometimes goes by “deep state.”

“There’s a vast federal bureaucracy that is implacably opposed to the president and the cabinet,” Musk said. “And you look at, say, DC voting. It’s 92% Kamala … I think about that number a lot. That’s basically everyone. And so, if the will of the president is not implemented, and the president is representative of the people, that means the will of the people is not being implemented, and that means we don’t live in a democracy. We live in a bureaucracy.”

Musk made a minor error in the District of Columbia voting numbers. Yes, in the 2020 election, with former President Joe Biden at the top of the ticket, 92.1% of district voters chose Biden and former Vice President Kamala Harris, versus 5.4% for Trump. In 2024, when Harris was the presidential candidate, 90.3% voted for her versus 6.5% for Trump. So, Musk was a couple of points off for 2024.

You get the idea. The district, home of the federal government, is a single-party jurisdiction, and it has voted 90%-plus for Democrats for president for the last 20 years.

But, the permanent bureaucracy does not all squeeze into the district. It also lives in several surrounding counties. Montgomery County, Maryland, voted 75% for Harris, while Prince George’s County, Maryland, voted 86% for Harris. In Virginia, Alexandria voted 77% for Harris, Arlington County also voted 77% for Harris, and Fairfax County voted 66% for Harris.

So yes, the heart of the deep state is overwhelmingly Democratic. You will not be surprised to learn that, of the federal employees who contributed to a presidential candidate in 2024, most gave to Harris. The publication Government Executive reported that federal employees donated “at least $4.2 million” in the 2024 race, and nearly 84% went to Harris.

Breaking things down a bit, Government Executive reported that more than 61% of Trump’s relatively meager donations came from two cabinet agencies, the Defense Department and the Department of Homeland Security. The rest of the executive branch’s money went to Harris. “The Education Department had the most one-sided donation breakdown,” Government Executive said. “Employees there gave more than $25,000 to Harris and did not make a single donation to Trump, according to FEC records. That was followed by the Environmental Protection Agency, with 99% of donations going to [Harris], the Energy Department at 97%, the Commerce Department at 96%, and the State Department at 94%.”

When it comes to federal government workers, political donations go almost entirely in one direction.

Federal workers are also more unionized — another measure of Democratic leanings — than the rest of the nation’s workforce. Private-sector unions have shrunk to almost nothing in the last several decades, while public-sector unions have grown. Today, 30% of federal government employees are union members or are represented by union contracts.

The largest federal government employees union is the American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE), which reported last week that its dues-paying membership has risen to 321,000 as government workers continue to “join in droves” following Trump’s arrival. The union claims that beyond formal membership, it represents 800,000 federal employees around the country.

Government employee unions give to political candidates, of course, and like the personal donations of federal workers, the contributions go just one way. In 2024, AFGE, in its various forms, contributed $2,645,208, virtually all of it to Democrats, according to OpenSecrets.

One last note about the permanent bureaucracy/deep state. Republican efforts to shrink it always seem to focus on the Washington, D.C., area. But, federal employees are spread all around the country. About 80% of the federal workforce is outside the district/Maryland/Virginia area. “The locations with the largest federal employee populations are Washington DC — 7.3%, Virginia — 6.6%, California — 6.5%, Maryland — 6.4%, Texas — 5.7%, and Florida — 4.2%,” writes the Partnership for Public Service. 

Aside from the military services, the largest federal employer, by far, is the Department of Veterans Affairs. After that comes the Department of Homeland Security, the Defense Department civilian workforce, the Justice Department, the Treasury Department, and more. The largest occupation is under the broad definition of “medical, hospital, dental, and public health,” and the second-largest occupation is “general administration, clerical, and office service.”

So far, DOGE’s efforts to shrink federal spending have mostly focused on ridiculous expenditures — the LGBTQ comic book in Peru — that no one can defend. Obviously, that needs to be cut. But, the federal bureaucracy is so large and sprawling that waste can and will be found virtually anywhere, including in government activities that voters need, want, and support. Those need to be examined, too.

It is much-needed work. But it’s no mystery why it has set off howls of anger from the bureaucracy, which is not only permanent but much of it is politicized as well. Its leaders would rather defend the indefensible to resist Trump and Musk than admit that federal spending is in need of reform. 

And yes, the president and DOGE should be careful and systematic. But they need to be tough and persistent, too. The permanent bureaucracy has made itself hard to penetrate and change because it really, really doesn’t want to be penetrated and changed. Recently, a group of former Obama aides who appeared on the podcast Pod Save America discussed how hard change can be. “We all know that government is slow,” said former Obama speechwriter Jon Favreau. “We all know government can be inefficient. We all know that the bureaucracy can be bloated. We all worked in the White House. We tried to reorganize the government. We tried to find efficiency. It’s hard to do.”

Another former Obama speechwriter, Jon Lovett, addressed what Trump and Musk are doing and said, “Honestly, some of this is pretty annoying because it’s some of the stuff we should have done. We didn’t know you could do some of this.”

Now, the president and DOGE have an opportunity to actually succeed where others failed. They need to be smart. They need to be sensible. But most of all, they need to keep going.