View from K Street: What awaits?

Only two months have passed since the inauguration of Donald Trump. During that short period, the American government and the American workplace have undergone fundamental changes—and not only to the number of employees and the scope of their responsibilities. The very purpose of government, the “idea” of the role of a liberal democracy in a hostile world has been radically altered. Everything is a deal; everything is a negotiation. Friends are foes, foes friends. Tariffs are imposed, withdrawn, and re-imposed. Verbal assaults are followed by denials; outlandish assertions offered with no plan or process, all presented with the subtlety of a cudgel, most subverting the Constitution’s protections of Free Speech, Free Press, Free Association, and Due Process. Congress is cowed; the courts stymied. To this transactional president, prudential values are mere ‘chits’ to be bargained. To one with no abiding principle—except advantage—abiding principles are in play.

The most pressing question is the goal of these dizzying changes. What is the endgame? If this were truly about efficiency, so many egregious, inefficient missteps would not have occurred. The self-styled Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) claims it is skilled in data mining and is data driven, but it provides little data and what is provided is error-filled and withdrawn. There’s a limit to the number of reversals you can witness before it is broadly understood that there was no “waste, fraud, or abuse,” only a nihilistic will to destroy.