President Donald Trump is moving at the speed of Silicon Valley, and Washington, D.C.’s establishment which is used to three-day congressional work weeks is being overrun.
In his first term, Trump was conventional in his approach to change, assuming that bureaucrats and even some of his own appointees would enact his policies. Instead, except on trade and immigration, he faced non-stop resistance, leaving the “swamp” intact after four years of battle.
During his four years outside of the Oval Office, President Trump put his freedom, fortune and life on the line as he faced unprecedented political lawfare and at least two assassination attempts.
If there are any doubts, President Trump is demonstrating that he is not going to waste a moment of his second term.
The number of very significant actions taken by the Trump administration over the past two week has been breathtaking from ending Diversity, Equity and Inclusion policies that violate the Civil Rights Act to an aggressive defense of the borders including imposing tariffs on Canada and Mexico and day-one deportations of criminals illegally in the United States.
But February 3 is the fork in the road day for the swamp. The day when federal bureaucrats will have to decide if they want to keep their high-paying, low-pressure jobs by returning to their offices or not.
Unbeknownst to most of America, federal workers and some contractors have largely been working from home or remotely since March of 2020. Yes, that’s right, one month shy of five years after the Wuhan virus shut down America, the federal government largely remains out of the office.
Many federal workers have never worked full-time in the office as they were hired in the past five years, many others have been coming in a couple of times a month to check-in but working from home the rest of the time. But on Monday, February 3, they will all be required to be in the office.
This is going to be beyond messy.
Government managers naturally adapted to the remote workforce by shrinking their office footprint, getting rid of phone lines and internet connections, and having workers share cubicle areas with others who were in the office on different days. Needless to say, the Washington Post will be filled with stories about the “waste” as workers show up into chaos with no desk or phone.
Some of these federal employees will decide not to return to the office and accept the offer to pay them until Sept. 30, 2025 and then terminate their employment. Others have moved out of the D.C. area during the five-year period and will quit as a result. There will be areas of government where the voluntary culling of the workforce will be disproportionately affected.
After all the complaining, in a couple of months, the situation will settle, the logistics will be resolved and things will “work” again.
But they will work in a new and different way, with a workforce who has chosen to be there, and an increased sense of urgency.
In 2016, I was part of the Trump transition team which urged a “shock and awe” strategy which was rejected by President Trump at the advice of his largely establishment White House staff.
Two weeks into his second term, we are seeing sweeping changes with resister bureaucrats finding themselves sidelined, pending replacement.
The swamp is being brutally drained by a President facing an almost $2 trillion projected deficit and a prior administration that used the administrative state as a tool to institute former President Barack Obama’s “fundamental change of America”.
Trump tried playing the Washington, D.C. game by the establishment’s rules in his first term and all it bought him were two impeachments and an eight-year witch hunt attempting to take away his freedom and fortune.
Now, he is using Washington’s incapacity to move quickly against it in a bold attempt to save America from decline.
It is going to be painful for some, traumatic for others, but for most of America, this is what they expected to happen. For the President they elected to grab D.C. by the throat and make it work for the people.
After all, the real fork in the road is not Feb. 3, 2025 it was on Tuesday, Nov. 5, 2024 when America voted for real change, not just the kind that gets printed on bumper strips and forgotten.
Rick Manning is the President of Americans for Limited Government.
Reproduced with permission. Original here: Fork in the Road: Trump’s Swamp Draining
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