On November 12, president-elect Donald Trump announced his second-term plans for a “Department of Government Efficiency” which will, in his words, “dismantle government bureaucracy, slash excess regulations, cut wasteful expenditures and restructure federal agencies.”

He’s assigning leadership of the “department” to the world’s most successful corporate welfare queen, Elon Musk, and to Vivek Ramaswamy, whose claim to fame is trying, not very well or successfully, to sell himself to the public as some kind of Trump/Musk hybrid.

Such DOGE! Much wow! Working up a backronym from Elon Musk’s favorite memecoin wasn’t hard, but it’s probably the heaviest lifting involved we’ll see from the idea.

After noticing the joke and the jokers involved, the first and most important feature to understand about this new department is that it’s not going to be a “department.”

A “department” is a cabinet-level, executive-branch organization with broad powers to administer government operations using taxpayer money appropriated for its use by Congress.  At present, there are 15 “departments” in the federal government ranging from State (diplomacy), Defense (the military) to justice (law enforcement).

DOGE, on the other hand, will operate as either a Presidential Commission or a Federal Advisory Committee. Several of the former and a thousand or so of the latter can be identified as operational at any given time,  but few of them ever get much, or continuing, attention.

Why? Because Presidential Commissions and Federal Advisory Committees only get to do one thing: Make recommendations.

When it comes to recommendations on how to “dismantle government bureaucracy, slash excess regulations, cut wasteful expenditures and restructure federal agencies,” the difference between your conversation with a neighbor and DOGE’s recommendations comes down, mostly, to who’s buying the coffee donuts consumed during the talking.

DOGE may get some office space, a small staff, and a tiny budget to cover the coffee and donuts, but authority to make anything happen? Nope.

We’ve been here before, many times. History is littered with commissions and advisory committees. They’re among politicians’ favorite tools for convincing you they’re going to do things they have no intention of actually doing.

Even escalating from the commission/committee scam to requiring “recommendations” from actual departments usually doesn’t accomplish much. For a recent example, look at Trump’s first term.

In 2016, Trump campaigned on eliminating two federal regulations for each new one. Then he ordered government departments to do just that.

Oh, wait, no … he ordered government departments to “identify” two regulations “to be eliminated” for each new one. No requirement that they actually BE eliminated, just that they be “identified.” Results:

As of three days before Trump’s inauguration, according to QuantGov’s Regulation Tracker, the Federal Register included 1,079,651 regulations. That number then increased, never dropping below the original number again for nearly two years, after which it began increasing again, totaling 1,089,742 on the day he left office.

This time, he’s not even letting such recommendation-making infiltrate the functional areas of government. He’s just microwaving his old guff and serving it  to Musk, Ramaswamy, and you.

Business as usual, as usual.

Thomas L. Knapp (X: @thomaslknapp | Bluesky: @knappster.bsky.social | Mastodon: @knappster) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

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“TRUE!!!”

That’s president-elect Donald Trump’s response to a post on his social media platform claiming that he plans to declare a “national emergency” and use the US armed forces to abduct and deport immigrants on a very large scale.

It’s not a good idea to bet the ranch on campaign promises, especially Trump’s. In 2016, he was going to build a big, beautiful wall and make Mexico pay for it, but instead he ended up illegally misappropriating US taxpayer funds to build a partial, ineffectual, symbolic wall.

Which, by the way, Joe Biden continued construction on, just as he largely continued Trump’s other immigration polices, which in turn were pale copies of Barack Obama’s immigration policies, differing only in his screeching that Obama and Biden supported “open borders” even though they each abducted more immigrants than Trump ever managed to.

But we should, I suppose, at least entertain the notion that Trump really means this one, and that he’s stupid and evil enough to give it the old college try.

As I’ve explained many times, I’m no “constitutionalist,” but since those who rule us claim to be both empowered to do so by, and obedient to, the US Constitution, I’m all for holding them to it … and letting them suffer the consequences of violating it.

Item One: The US Constitution forbids the US government to regulate immigration with the sole exception of imposing a small head tax (see Article I, Section 9; Article V, and Amendment X).

Item Two: The US Constitution forbids government at all levels to infringe the right to keep and bear arms (see Amendment II).

Item Three: Laws repugnant to the Constitution are void (see Madison v. Marbury).

QED, when someone attempts to abduct, cage, or deport an immigrant, even under color of one of those void unconstitutional “immigration laws,” that person is just a common criminal, attempting to commit a violent crime. The prospective victim, and/or others acting in the defense of the prospective victim, are entitled by both right and constitutional protection to resist,  up to and including the use of deadly force.

Would I rather it didn’t come to that? Absolutely. I’d rejoice if the country’s ICE agents and such voluntarily handed in their gang colors and returned to useful jobs in the private sector.

But if they need stronger incentives to straighten up and fly right, that’s on them.

As my friend Nicky Reid, aka comrade hermit, suggested the last time Trump started in with this nonsense, “we the people” should arm the undocumented.

More than 100 million Americans own hundreds of millions of firearms. If, say, five million of them donated reasonably good handguns to the prospective victims of Trump’s deportation plans, ICE agents and the military personnel Trump wants to illegally order to participate in immigrant abductions would soon be finishing their shifts in bags with tags on their toes instead of at home digging in to dinner.

Strong incentives, see?

Stronger still if applied early enough to ensure Trump doesn’t even try.

Thomas L. Knapp (X: @thomaslknapp | Bluesky: @knappster.bsky.social | Mastodon: @knappster) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

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Let’s get my “news hook” out of the way: President-elect Donald Trump has been offering up names for appointments to his cabinet, and rattling a constitutional saber about using “recess appointments” to get around the constitutional  requirement that those appointees be confirmed by the US Senate.

I’m not really interested in the details of that argument here. What I’m interested in is the nearly too obvious to bother stating fact it highlights: Many Americans, of many political persuasions, seem discontent with the way “the government” “runs” “the country.”

As you can tell by the sequential scare quotes, I’ve got problems with all three implicit claims, but let’s assume that the federal government (aka “the United States”) actually “runs” (that is, dictates and enforces everything its principals declare themselves  interested in) what most people think of as “the country” (a particularly defined land mass on the continent known as “North America”).

Let’s further assume that it does so on the basis of notional authority conferred by a document ratified by a tiny fraction of a single percent of the population of that “country” circa 1787: The US Constitution.

Yes, I know, that document proclaims itself the work of “we the people,” but very few of the people supposedly living under its rule had, or have, any voice in either its framing or  its subsequent impositions.

That said, again, many Americans seem perpetually unhappy with the results. They don’t like this bill getting passed by Congress or that ruling handed down by the Supreme Court or so-and-so getting elected president. It never ends.

So, my question: When do we stick a fork in it and admit it’s done?

Second, my response to the “you can’t be serious” crowd, which I will hand off to Lysander Spooner:

“But whether the Constitution really be one thing, or another, this much is certain — that it has either authorized such a government as we have had, or has been powerless to prevent it. In either case it is unfit to exist.”

He wrote that, believe it or not, in 1870.

Many Americans, including me, notice that the Constitution only seems to be obeyed when those in power find obeying it convenient.

Some Americans, not including me, fantasize that it’s not only possible to force government to obey it, but that doing so would magically solve all the problems that have them so upset so much of the time. It’s not possible, nor would it produce those results.

As Rita Mae Brown wrote in 1983 (you may have seen the quote attributed to others), “insanity is doing the same thing over and over again, but expecting different results.”

That’s “constitutionalism” in a nutshell.

For 237 years, politicians have pretended the Constitution “works” … and most Americans have pretended with them, even while proclaiming their unhappiness with its results in ways small and large (for the latter, consider 1861-65).

Same thing over and over.

Same results over and over.

And that’s how things are going to stay until we decide to try something different.

Thomas L. Knapp (X: @thomaslknapp | Bluesky: @knappster.bsky.social | Mastodon: @knappster) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

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