Due to sheer volume — call it a flood, deluge, tsunami, or a simple fire hose flow of “news” — it’s a challenge to even focus on the less splashy yet highly damaging transgressions of the Trump administration. But it is slowly emerging that government agencies under Trump are now not only less vigilant at enforcement (well, except for ICE), but have “adjusted” their agencies’ mission statements, references, and associated language to reflect their political agendas in the new “reality.”
Steve Benen, a producer and blogger at The Rachel MaddowShow, has managed to spot and document this disturbing trend. First and foremost the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau under acting head Mick Mulvaney (a vociferous opponent of the CFPB) announced in January that the agency will be “less focused” on protecting consumers. That announcement puts the agency’s mission directly at odds with the “reality” of the bureau’s mandated task and what of course the name should imply (in a normal world).
Benen notes other reality-challenging adjustments: U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services [is] changing its mission statement, eliminating the phrase “America’s promise as a nation of immigrants.” Then it was the Department of Housing and Urban Development mission statement, which will apparently no longer reference “free from discrimination,” “quality homes,” or “inclusive communities.”
The Interior Department’s mission statement no longer references native Americans or providing “scientific and other information.” The State Department’s mission statement no longer prioritizes the goal of a “just and democratic world.”
And then there’s FEMA and its new strategic plan. The Federal Emergency Management Agency, the federal government’s first responder to floods, hurricanes and other natural disasters, has eliminated references to climate change from its strategic planning document for the next four years.*
[*Clearly our own Governor Phil Scott’s administration is on board with that agenda and is using the same tactic in a recent editing out of climate change from a Vermont State planning document.]
That document, released by FEMA on Thursday, outlines plans for building preparedness and reducing the complexity of the agency.
FEMA’s strategic plan mentions expected cost increases “due to rising natural hazard risk,” but makes no mention of the global crisis that contributes to those risks.
This effort to spin reality (should I even bother mentioning it is right out of Orwell’s 1984?) may be expedited by Trump’s so called “beachhead teams”— almost 600 hires quietly installed early on throughout government bureaucracies. The teams included dozens of industry lobbyists, political cronies (many from far-right media) and can be found here in a problubica.org’s searchable database.
Who knows which Trumpist or GOP lackey made these changes? But given that President Trump has openly bragged about lying and making up “facts” in a meeting with the Prime Minister of Canada, it’s obvious where the deception and lies start. So it won’t be a surprise that in terms of deceptive practices this fish — the Trump administration — is continuing to rot from the head first.
*A word about the famous pipe image
“How people reproached me for it! And yet, could you stuff my pipe? No, it’s just a representation, is it not? So if I had written on my picture ‘This is a pipe’, I’d have been lying!” — René Magritte
Thus, ‘this is not a mission statement’ and the Trumpists can stuff it.
At the same time Trump is directing this devastating plan to deconstruct the administrative state, both the right and the left are giving an assist with constant warnings about the “Deep State.” We’re losing the ability to distinguish between the administrative state that enforces economic and environmental regulations, runs social welfare programs, fights crime and corruption, and provides for the national defense, and the far less common abuses by the bureaucracy that result in surveillance of citizens and manipulation of national policy for personal or corporate gain.
In a Monmouth poll released today 74% said the Deep State probably or definitely exists (but they can’t seem to define it). Sixty percent said that unelected or appointed government officials have too much influence. Trump’s one-two punch of deregulate and delegitimize is yielding remarkable success.
“In a Monmouth poll released today 74% said the Deep State probably or definitely exists (but they can’t seem to define it).”
That makes disproving the existence of the Deep State more than a little troublesome. It’s a perfect ill-defined catchall conspiracy theory for Trumpsters to haul out when the occasion demands an enemy.