Centralizing and personalizing power? This will not end well

You might not be so happy when the next guy takes charge

The last few days were busy ones - again - for the Trump administration.

The effort to purge every part of the executive branch and consolidate power continues.

The DOGE not-really-Congressionally-approved-technically-unconstitutional agency continues to threaten federal workers' jobs.

You might have heard that Musk, with Trump's blessing, sent an email to federal employees saying they had to respond with what they do at their jobs in five bullet points or risk being fired.

Who put Musk in charge of all of this? Well, Trump, all by himself. No Congressional blessing. No Congressional oversight.

And thanks to the Republicans in charge of Congress, that's likely to continue.

But hey, interestingly, several department heads - who are approved by Congress - said to ignore that request.

See, the problem here is chain of command. Again, DOGE itself really has no official right to do a lot of what it's doing.

But regardless, that chain of command still leads back through the executive branch to Trump.

Meanwhile - and this is much more concerning to me, personally - Trump launched a purge of the upper ranks of the military and continues to solidify his purge of federal law enforcement.

In the military, Trump fired the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff - the top military official in the US - and pushed out five other generals.

His Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth then fired the three top lawyers of the military, the Judge Advocates General, in an effort to install what he calls a "warrior ethos".

Now at least these are happening by the book. Trump and Hegseth are well within their power to do these.

However, as is typical of Trump, it's breaking norms.

Normally presidents wait to replace the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff until their four-year term ends. And Hegseth later in an interview said that normally JAGs choose themselves from a pool of professionals.

But that's over now.

The president has asserted his will to make those choices.

Over at the FBI, the new director, Kash Patel, is reassigning a bunch of agents and moving them out of Washington, DC.

Remember that many top FBI officials have already been forced out and that they seem committed to going after anyone who worked on the January 6th investigations, demanding the names of anyone who did at one point.

Now you might dig all of this.

Look, regarding DOGE, it's hard to argue with efficiency. Every adult human being has some sort of bureaucracy horror story - whether it's government or your job. And the president is indeed the Commander-in-Chief under the Constitution and can assert control over the military. Maybe the FBI needed some reform - especially in the way it conducts investigations.

But that's not the point here.

What we're seeing is a massive concentration of power.

And that ain't good.

Again on DOGE, government is, in some key, critical ways, not supposed to be efficient. It's supposed to slow down the action of power - to force compromise and deliberation.

Again, you might not like that. And I get it. Sometimes you just gotta get stuff done.

But this is part of a system - a set of institutions and norms that disperse power - so that our liberty can be protected.

For example, there are about 80 agencies of the federal government that are technically part of the executive branch, but were set up by Congress to be independent because they have specific tasks to do.

You've got the Federal Communications Commission, which regulates broadcast. The Federal Elections Commission to keep tabs on elections and election spending. The Postal Service.

But now, Trump has signed an executive order to bring those agencies more under his control. They can no longer make decisions independent of the White House. Everything has to be submitted for approval.

Now, again, if you're of a certain mindset, you think this is great. The independent agencies are the poster children for the unaccountable, unelected bureaucrats that run the country that you hear about often from conservatives.

Fair enough. I'm happy to have a debate about that. Let's get Congress involved and change the structure, if necessary.

But as things are being done now - when you put it all together - you have a massive concentration of power in the presidency.

And in particular, with Trump, you have additional twin dangers here of personalization and weaponization of this newly concentrated power.

Sound crazy? Let's go down the list.

Trump has threatened to use the FCC to punish media companies that he doesn't think have treated him fairly. Not the country, him.

Over at the Justice Department, the new Attorney General, Pam Bondi, issued a directive that so-called "weaponization" of law enforcement would end, while simultaneously naming specific people who would be investigated that have ticked off Trump in the past.

Let's stop on weaponization of law enforcement for a second. What does that mean?

Recently I ran across a great definition in an article in National Review.

Weaponized law enforcement targets a person, rather than a crime.

Normally the way it's supposed to work is a crime gets committed, investigators find evidence that a specific person did the crime, and then the person gets prosecuted based on that evidence.

In weaponization, first you target someone you don't like and want to bring down, then find crimes to fit.

How convenient. How legal. How wrong.

Now, Trump supporters will argue that's what happened with him. And you know what, I'm not hostile to this point of view.

I think most of the cases brought against Trump were suspect and/or small potatoes. The only one I felt that mattered was the Georgia case. But that one's on the rocks, too.

Regardless, the actions Trump took and didn't take around his false claims that the 2020 election was stolen and January 6th turned out to be things that it was hard to find specific laws against.

Talk about sliming your way through the cracks.

Impeachment was where it should have ended. But alas, cowardly Republicans.

So, based on this experience, Trump has made it clear now that he's seriously considering going after specific individuals in revenge. He wants them to suffer like he has. Find crimes and make 'em stick.

Kash Patel, the new FBI director, was clear about how he's on board with this. He spelled it out in a book and numerous podcasts. He said all of this was misunderstood in his appointment Congressional hearings, by the way. I've already mentioned that the AG has named people in a memo.

And then we have Ed Martin, not a household name. He's now Trump's nominee for US attorney in Washington DC and acting in that capacity now. He helped organize the Stop the Steal movement and has already fired about 30 prosecutors who worked on the January 6th prosecutions.

He recently launched something called "Operation Whirlwind" - I kid you not - in which he will target critics who make any "threatening" statements against Trump and Musk .

Nominally he's investigating actual threats. The effect could likely be to silence political opponents with the threat of prosecution. We're headed down a path of persecution vs. appropriate prosecution.

Again, you might say, hey, they had it comin' - whoever the heck "they" is in this case - given the Trump lawsuits.

But keep in mind - with DOGE and this concentration of power in the presidency and the growing precedent of weaponization of law enforcement - you might get what you want this time.

But the next time - the next time someone you don't like takes power - it might not be great to have unstoppable, unaccountable concentrated power in the regulatory agencies, law enforcement, and the military.

You might like the person that's doing this stuff now. But if we allow this much power to become personalized - based on the whim of a single individual based on a single election, well, that strikes me as plainly un-American.

Concentrated power is bad. Personalized, concentrated power is worse.

And think this through - it raises the stakes of winning power immensely.

If you think we have contentious politics now, just wait until everything - I mean, everything - is on the line.

Not just some policies out of DC, but personal safety, personal freedom.

Unchecked power raises the stakes of political competition.

And that can go to dark places.

We need dispersed power.

We need checked power.

We need oversight.

Sure, an all-powerful president might get shit done.

But at what cost?

Good luck, America.