While the Trump administration is engaging in mass firings, purging Justice Department agents and attorneys, and strangling federal agencies like USAID, the Environmental Protection Agency, and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, teams of what have been referred to as “MAGA commissars” have been fanning out across federal agencies to screen applicants for government positions for complete and unwavering loyalty—not to the United States, but to Donald John Trump.
If you didn’t support him in the election, if you have social media posts questioning his policies, or if you can’t affirmatively state how eager you are to enforce his dictates, you’re out.
“We’re cleaning house,” Sergio Gor, director of White House Personnel, told Fox News. “If you are working in the federal government in a political appointee position, that comes through the White House now.”
There is an atmosphere of fear for those federal employees who haven’t been purged yet, with worries that they’re being surveilled by DOGE and many workers nervous that even the slightest comment that’s viewed as disloyal will get them fired, demoted, or banished to an undesirable position.
They’re not crazy. They’re watching people all around them get fired—not because they’re not experts or not good at their jobs—but because Trump or Elon Musk deems them insufficiently MAGA. For those the administration can’t outright fire just yet, they’re trying other tricks to get rid of them and replace them with MAGA diehards, including offering bogus buyouts that likely violate multiple laws and contractual agreements.
This is not the normal type of transition. Yes, there is always a bit of upheaval when a new team comes into town. But normally they keep career people at the Justice Department or the National Nuclear Security Administration, whose jobs are not considered political but are vital to national security. But Trump is firing people who safeguard our nuclear missiles, preserve our forests, and protect us from disease, as the CDC has also been a major target for his administration.
Why get rid of experienced people and replace them with inexperienced ones? Is that really a way to decrease waste and increase efficiency, as Mr. Musk claims he wants to do? That defies logic, since it takes time and money to train new people, and such people are more likely to commit errors, costing taxpayers money.
The real reason for the firings, the new hires, and the screenings is very simple—Trump is creating his own Deep State.
Trump is a master at accusing his opponents of things that he himself is doing. He’s alleged massive corruption while constantly violating the Emoluments Clause and enriching himself and his family through meme coins, by selling every product he can think of to supporters, and by soliciting what can only accurately be characterized as payoffs from business leaders, including a $40 million gift to Melania Trump courtesy of Jeff Bezos. Trump has also accused liberals of inhibiting free speech while he’s threatened to revoke media licenses, has overseen the expulsion of news agencies from their Pentagon offices, and has blocked the AP from White House events for calling the Gulf of Mexico the Gulf of Mexico.
Yet his greatest sleight of hand has been turning a fake Deep State into a real one. Trump spent the 2024 campaign railing against a “Deep State” that didn’t exist and about the supposed “lawfare” that was used against him when truly he was as pure and innocent as the driven snow, he contended.
In reality, his version of the Deep State was always just about honest bureaucrats doing their jobs the way they were supposed to, prosecuting him for the crimes he committed, including trying to overthrow our government.
But now we’re going to see what a real Deep State looks like—when an administration goes to extraordinary lengths to imbed as many extreme loyalists as possible. This will ensure that no matter how much Trump, Musk, their friends, or the corporations that support them lie, cheat, and steal, no one will ever pay any consequences. Because, as we saw with New York City Mayor Eric Adams, there are no charges for those who plead loyalty to Dirty Donald.
Trump and Musk are also trying to make sure that, should a Democrat follow Trump in office, they’ll find it extraordinarily difficult to operate with all of the MAGA loyalists Trump has installed in key positions throughout the government. In other words, this won’t end in four years or maybe even 10 years or a generation.
Trump isn’t destroying the Deep State; Trump is the Deep State.
Ross Rosenfeld is a frequent political writer. Follow him on Bluesky and check out his Substack.
The views expressed in this article are the writer’s own.
The post Trump Is Creating a Deep State appeared first on Newsweek.
