View from K Street: Chaos with a purpose

Congressionally established departments shuttered without explanation; Special Counsels and a National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) Member with fixed-terms and specific statutory protections summarily fired; appropriated funds impounded; “special government employees” ax thousands of civil servants in the unjustified name of “efficiency” and freely root around in confidential public records; 65 years of promoting civil rights discarded, demeaned, and reversed; judges challenged; Congress cowed into silence.

We are but a month into the second Trump administration and chaos—entirely intended—is its defining characteristic.

Where is this all going? That is the question consuming K Street. The lawyers and lobbyists are as bewildered—and belittled—as anyone. Many, noting the Republican majorities in the House and Senate, anticipated a new level of opportunity and influence. Instead, they have found themselves sidelined, along with Congress, banished by a president uninterested in the gives and takes, the temporizing and delays of the legislative process. In place of Congressional activity and the lucrative lobbying attendant to it, we have Executive Orders (EOs), the principal exemplars of presidential authority. No lobbyists need apply.