Standards Who Needs Standards? We Just Need Willing Bodies Loyal to Trump!

 

Standards? Who Needs Standards? We Just Need Willing Bodies Loyal to Trump!

We have a newly reconfigured and profoundly inferior federal government, where senior federal officials and firmly established federal agencies – particularly those created to protect ordinary Americans from toxic and predatory practices of mega-powerful corporate interests – have been terminated, hollowed out or replaced with “appointment by cronyism” without regard to true competence or necessary experience. All federal employees are charged to protect the Constitution as their most basic assignment. But to get a federal job today, only loyalty to Trump matters.

As we watch even some of these crony-driven appointments fired (forced to resign in some cases because they failed Trump as some level) – Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, Attorney General Pam Bondi, Labor Secretary Lori Chavez-DeRemer, a literal army of seasoned FBI agents, weather/fire prevention/merger officials discharged, civil rights and environmental lawyers shown the door, top level Customs and Border Protection and Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials dismissed, our most senior generals and admirals relieved of duty, a litany of US Attorneys and Assistant US Attorneys - who have been unable to secure grand jury indictments against Trump’s clearly-identified “enemies” - gone, immigration “judges” (administrative appointments by the DOJ) who recognized statutory rights of asylum-seekers eliminated – we are watching objectively unqualified replacements (many in fear of losing their jobs that they are willing to do “whatever Trump wants” without regard to legality) run what’s left of our government.

Federal judges are nominated without academic or litigation experience. Diseases (like measles), ounce fully eradicated here, are breaking out under the antivaxxer leadership of RFK, Jr and his conspiracy theory/anti-science senior managers as HHS and the CDC. As allegations of misfeasance and substance abuse, coupled with charges of misuse of federal personnel and jet aircraft for personal use, are raging in the headlines focused on FBI director, Kash Patel, who has personally presided over the firing agents who, in the past, were part of investigation teams looking into Donald Trump’s misuse of classified files taken for personal use. Several recent articles in The Atlantic by Sarah Fitzpatrick have made powerful claims of in-office inebriation, Patel’s alleged inability to meet daily scheduled events, all purportedly documented through multiple sources. Patel’s response has been to file a $250M defamation action against Fitzpatrick and The Atlantic, which will subject the FBI Director to wide-open discovery that could be embarrassing to him. To endear himself to Trump and purportedly to keep his job, Patel has initiated a new investigation into the rehashed Trump’s 2020 election loss and pledged that arrests are imminent.

With a seriously depleted federal workforce, particularly within the Justice Department, the once-stellar standards that made prestigious lawyer candidates vie for appointments to into the highly-regarded corners of the federal legal community, are now having extreme difficulty in finding applicants – knowing that loyalty to Trump, a willingness to defy the Constitution and federal law to placate the President, is required to get and keep that job. Competence, law school achievement and experience are qualities that have fallen by the wayside.

Likewise, in the military, morale has plunged so low – by the seemingly whimsical firing of flag-rank leadership and the persistent hammering of fundamental Christian national conspiracy theories to his troop by a recovering alcoholic who never rose above the rank of major in the Army – that the military is unable to meet its recruitment goals, and there is a push to reinstate a very unpopular draft to meet these needs.

But the bottom line across these federal needs is a massive reduction in the quality level for people deemed acceptable to the Trump administration. ICE agents are among the least skilled recruited, many failing background checks (even after they have been hired). With about two months of training, these agents are released to administer Stephen Miller’s brutal immigration scheme, often arresting people without a judicial warrant, only using a very questionable administrative warrant that carries no legal weight. Masked and unidentified, these subpar agents are accorded power without meaningful accountability.

In a nation where “rule of law” (vs “rule by law” created by a privileged and extreme elite) is the most fundamental building block for our democracy, the hollowing out of our experienced and neutral federal lawyers, has left our constitutional guardrails in shambles. Trump, as truly unpopular as he is, has been able to push autocratic edicts while fostering election rigging for the upcoming 2026 and 2028 elections with the support of new federal lawyers unwilling to challenge obviously unlawful Trump orders. But the Trump restaffing efforts are not restocking that legal staff with competent, ethical and appropriate lawyers. Writing for the April 22nd Associated Press, Eric Tucker and Alanna Durkin Richer explain the depth of the problem:

“The FBI and Justice Department are scrambling to rebuild a depleted workforce after a wave of departures over the last year, with leaders easing hiring requirements and accelerating recruitment in ways that some current and former officials see as a lowering of long-accepted standards… The FBI has turned to social media campaigns to attract applicants, offered abbreviated training for candidates from other federal agencies and relaxed requirements for support staff seeking to become agents, according to people familiar with the changes and internal communications seen by the Associated Press. At the same time, the Justice Department has opened the door to hiring prosecutors right out of law school to help fill vacancies in U.S. attorney’s offices across the country… Some current and former agents also say the FBI is promoting into positions of leadership employees with less experience than would be customary for the jobs…

“Elements of the regimen have been periodically tweaked to fit the bureau’s needs, including over the last year under the leadership of FBI Director Kash Patel… With a mantra to ‘let good cops be cops,’ Patel announced last fall that transfers from other agencies such as the Drug Enforcement Administration would be able to complete a nine-week training academy instead of the traditional academy that spans more than four months. The change rankled some current and former officials who say the FBI’s protocols, professional culture and diversity of cases it handles help to distinguish it from other agencies.” Simply, the new agents are undertrained, significant requirements are waived, and the entry-level standards significantly lowered.

I’m Peter Dekom, and if you had to pick a pattern of recruitment that would erode democracy the most, Donald Trump and his cronies seem to have hit the motherlode of destructive mediocrity and cronyism.