Category Archives: Public Policy and Governance

You’ll Miss It When It’s Gone

Americans rarely consider the extent to which we depend on functioning government. When we board an airplane, we rely on  air traffic controllers–employed by government–to ensure that our aircraft won’t smash into another; when we go to the grocery, we assume that the foods we purchase have been inspected–by government–and are safe to consume. When we deposit our paychecks in the bank, we’re confident the funds will be available when we need them, thanks to government oversight and the FDIC.

When we need to drive somewhere, we’re not only aware that speeding might attract unwanted attention from a government-employed police officer, but (assuming we think about it at all), we understand that the citations issued to other motorists keep us safer.

And so on…

Although the news media provides us with daily evidence of the incompetence, corruption and insanity of the Trump administration, there has been significantly less coverage of the degree to which that administration has eroded our ability to trust government to discharge multiple mundane but essential functions. As a recent report from Can We Still Govern has documented, the destruction of government’s ability to perform the myriad functions we all depend upon has been ongoing–the reckless damage didn’t stop when Elon Musk’s DOGE departed.

In the United States today, it’s hard to know whether the food you buy will land you in the hospital. There are currently dozens of active recalls—precisely the sort of outcome foretold by current and former federal government workers who warned against President Donald Trump’s shredding of our food safety net. It’s one example of where the public would have been better off if Trump listened to public servants rather than berating and firing them.

Unfortunately, the increasing uncertainty about the safety of our food supplies is only one example, and–as the linked report asserts– far from the only consequence of Trump’s ongoing decimation of the federal workforce.

The White House’s war on what it dismissively terms “the administrative state” is being orchestrated by Office of Management and Budget (OMB) Director Russell Vought, the major author of Project 2025, whose fever dream is to take the country back to a time when Black folks were slaves, women were in the kitchen preparing a chicken they’d raised, and that pesky government wasn’t harassing “job creators” just because they were dumping industrial waste into the river that supplied the town’s drinking water….

Since Trump is too stupid, lazy and senile to oversee much of anything, Vought has had free reign–indeed, he’s been called the “shadow President.”

As the linked article notes, it can be difficult to explain to the public how significantly Trump’s damage to public service harms us all. One reason is that– to a larger extent than most of us realize– government’s job is risk reduction. These mundane functions are intended to keep bad things from happening. When the agencies that are supposed to prevent and minimize harms are dismantled, we are all but ensured an increase in what the article delicately calls “adverse outcomes.”

And because the people most aware of the harms being done–and most able to explain those harms to the general public– are government workers, Trump and Vought have gone after those workers and their unions with special ferocity. Early in March of 2025, Trump signed Executive Order 14251, stripping about one million federal workers of unionization and collective bargaining rights. The percentage of federal workers represented by a union declined from 56% at the beginning of Trump’s second term to 34% in July.

The mass firings of people charged with protecting America’s food supply have been most severe at Health and Human Services, where RFK, Jr. slashed about 20% of the entire staff of the Food and Drug Administration, firing more than 4,600 workers. He also fired at least 25% of the CDC staff (more than 3,200 workers). You will not be surprised to learn that the lab tasked with identifying cyclospora was not spared.

As the federal government has been emptied out of people with expertise, the number of political appointees has soared.

I don’t know about the rest of you, but recent air traffic mishaps have made me leery of boarding a plane, and this “senior citizen” breathes a sigh of relief when my social security check arrives…along with a brooding concern about how long I will be able to depend upon its receipt.

There’s an old saying that “You don’t appreciate things until they’re gone.” I wonder whether all those anti-government trolls will rethink their animus when they hesitate to buy lettuce, board a plane or make a bank deposit…

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The Measure Of A Society

It will come as no surprise to anyone who is even slightly aware of the reality in which we find ourselves that the rest of the world has lost confidence in–and admiration for–America.

A recent essay in Talking Points Memo was titled “What the World is Saying about Us,” and the details weren’t pleasant. It quoted key excerpts from what it described as “a devastatingly frank new report from the International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance.” The report on The Global State of Democracy 2026 found that the “quality of democracy in the United States is at or near record lows.”  Worse, it reported that our decline is “having seriously destabilizing effects on democracy around the world.”

The report was only one of several that have confirmed how far –and how fast– civic life in America has declined under Trump II.

A significant proportion of the current instability can be traced to US President Donald Trump, whose administration has reshaped political culture in the USA, where power is now personalized and used to further narrow individual goals and pursue vendettas against those critical of the president or his policies. Comparing 2025 to 2020, the change in the quality of US democracy was entirely negative: the country experienced seven statistically significant declines across multiple measures of representative governance, civil liberties, and the rule of law. There were no corresponding advances.

According to the report, America has experienced “statistically significant declines” in seven areas: Access to Justice, Economic Equality, Effective Parliament, Freedom of Expression, Freedom of the Press, Free Political Parties, and Judicial Independence.

Although I agree with those conclusions–and especially agree that the current administration is responsible for America’s recent precipitous decline–it is also important to acknowledge the pre-existing systemic flaws that facilitated that decline. I’ve previously pointed to gerrymandering, and several other legal and political structures that have outlived whatever utility they may once have had: the Electoral College, Citizens United and the filibuster come to mind.

Electing better people is important, but insufficient. We need to look carefully at the systems we use to elect those individuals and the metrics we use to measure the health of both our democracy and our economy.

Nick Hanauer has pointed to our use of an economic measurement tool that masks rather than reveals America’s economic condition: GDP. Media reports tend to treat GDP as a measure of the nation’s economic health; if it’s up by over 2%, we’re told the economy is doing well. If it barely rises or falls, the economy is doing poorly. But as Hanauer points out, GDP is a terrible measure of overall economic health because it is a measure of quantity, not quality.

For example, GDP considers $1 billion in corporate profits as equally positive as a $1 billion increase in the paychecks of workers, even though the $1 billion in corporate profits would likely be smuggled through stock buybacks to the pockets of a handful of wealthy executives and investors, while the $1 billion in worker wages would be immediately spent in communities around the country, creating jobs and spreading prosperity widely…

Since the 1970s, more than $80 trillion has been sucked out of the wages of workers and into the pockets of the wealthiest 1% of Americans. So far as the GDP is concerned, that’s a win. But for the vast majority of Americans, that loss of $30,000 per worker is a catastrophe. GDP doesn’t acknowledge the growing “K-shaped” economy, in which the wealthy few are doing quite well while everyone else keeps losing ground.

As Hanauer points out, when we measure our economy using GDP, we are valuing corporate output over human outcomes. It’s a metric that distorts our understanding of how the economy really works, and it operates to hide a wide variety of economic harms–including the enormous gap between the rich and the rest, a gap that greatly endangers democratic functioning.

If a Blue wave–or, hopefully, a Blue tsunami –allows us to replace the crooks, cranks and cowards who currently rule over us, we can’t simply breathe a sigh of relief and assume things will improve. We the People need to agitate for a comprehensive overhaul of the systems, assumptions and structures that have facilitated the declines we have experienced and the rest of the world has observed. 

How do we define a flourishing society? How do we accurately measure social and economic health? 

We have a lot of work to do.

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The Oversight Challenge

Accusations that we have had a “do nothing” Congress during Trump 2 are unfair. Look at how hard the GOP-dominated House and Senate have worked to enable this terrible administration and to block accountability. That’s something!  (Case in point: the Speaker sending House members home until after the midterms to avoid a vote on the Hegseth impeachment bill filed by Republican Thomas Massie.)

As we approach the midterms, I am getting uncharacteristically bullish on the possibilities of a truly massive Blue wave. The prospect that the Democrats will take the House and perhaps even the Senate has triggered hopes of massive oversight and eventual accountability.

But–where to start? The blatant corruption and lawlessness are so widespread throughout this disaster of an administration, the sheer volume of activities that need to be documented is daunting, but several pundits (sharing my hopefulness) have weighed in with suggestions. Jennifer Rubin at the Contrarian is one of them.

She began what became a lengthy list by noting the recent revelation that a Russian oligarch close to Putin, one Umar Kremlev, hosted Donald Trump Jr.’s wedding reception to the tune of hundreds of thousands of dollars–just the latest evidence of Putin’s cozy relationship with the Trump family.

Rubin then cited a Washington Post article listing a number of other areas of malfeasance crying out for oversight, including the obscene self-enrichment by Trump and his families and cronies; the handouts and pardons to supporters; his garish
self-glorifying construction projects; the abuse of immigrants (and lawful residents and citizens of color); the deployment of the National Guard to Blue cities; the mishandling of spending and contracts by Cabinet officials, beginning with then-DHS Secretary Kristi L. Noem; the dismantling/destroying of the federal government; the unwarranted prosecutions of people Trump considers enemies; the pressure campaigns on corporations, universities, and law firms, “often in violation of the First Amendment”; and the multiple ways in which Trump has mishandled foreign affairs (the plane gifted by Qatar; the insane tariffs and petulant trade deals; the Iran war; the strikes against alleged drug-trafficking boats); the appropriation of Venezuela’s oil.. and of course, the Epstein files.

High on my list are the evisceration of the Justice Department, where career lawyers have been replaced by bootlickers who have proceeded to violate professional ethics, ignore court rules, and lie under oath, and the blatant racism and discrimination against women and people of color at the Pentagon.

And what about the constant violations of the Hatch Act by virtually everyone serving in this administration?

As Rubin writes,

Let’s not overlook one of the key reasons for the entire exercise: To make an historic record that removes any reasonable doubt about the extent of the cruelty, incompetence, malfeasance, and lawlessness of this regime. Voters in future elections should have no doubt as to who enabled what misconduct, who looked the other way, who profited from office, and who put party loyalty and personal interest above their obligations to the Constitution and the American people…

Anyone running for office who served under Trump will have to account for his or her record; anyone seeking important positions in civil society (e.g. partners in law firms, corporation board members) will also need to explain their conduct. Every voter, every public entity, and every private sector employer or philanthropic organization will make an evaluation of past conduct — then themselves be held responsible if they decide to entrust former Trump lackeys with new positions.

I agree with all of this, but I admit to one rather overwhelming concern. The Congressional panel that investigated the January 6th insurrection amply documented Trump’s instigation of that attempted coup–and millions of Americans nevertheless voted to return him to the Oval Office.

Unless a significant number of those voters now see the error of their ways–and unless the millions who didn’t even bother to vote in 2024 are sufficiently roused from their civic disconnect–a public record detailing the extent of the corruption and incompetence will join the January 6th findings on some dusty shelf, and the United States will continue its precipitous decline.

It always comes back to We the People, and our willingness to accept the evidence and then act accordingly.

I do think that the effects of this horrendous administration are too obvious to ignore. January 6th didn’t succeed, and people went about their daily lives. This time, they’re pumping very expensive gas, buying fewer expensive groceries, and watching as neighbors and employees are kidnapped by ICE. Their family members are getting measles. And it’s increasingly difficult to ignore the daily news of America’s precipitously declining global stature.

So–fingers crossed….

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Denying Reality, Endangering Humanity

It isn’t just the belligerence, incompetence and corruption. There has never been a worse time to be governed by people ignorant and dismissive of science and expertise. There’s an oft-quoted maxim to the effect that “reality doesn’t care if you believe it,” and the administration’s blithe dismissals of climate change and the dangers of AI in the face of mounting evidence of the dangers of both should terrify us.

The other day, I opened the Indianapolis Business Journal to a story about how the administration is not only subverting the necessary closure of the aging power plants that contribute to climate change, but rolling back national environmental regulations based upon years of scientific evidence.

The IBJ reports that the EPA will formally rescind carbon pollution standards for fossil fuel-fired power plants, and reminds readers that, “earlier this year, the EPA rescinded similar climate standards for vehicles and the 2009 endangerment finding, a landmark ruling which held that greenhouse gases threaten human health.”

Under Trump, the agency is busily scrapping Biden-era mandates that required fossil fuel-fired power plants to deploy specific emissions-reduction technologies in order to sharply cut their greenhouse gas emissions in the coming decades.

Meanwhile, wildfires and droughts proliferate around the globe. As Paul Krugman, among others, recently warned, what we’ve seen so far is “just a foretaste of the disasters to come.” Meanwhile, Trump continues to dismiss climate change as a “con job,” and calls renewable energy “a scam,” despite the fact that solar and wind met almost all of the world’s growth in electricity demand last year. Worse, the Trump administration actively works to block wind and solar power projects.

The administration plans to eliminate all restrictions on greenhouse gas emissions from power plants.

There is a lot to be said about the reasons our current government seems so determined to rush into disaster, even when the very survival of humanity may be at stake. Climate denial, we know from decades of experience, is fueled by an unholy trinity of financial interest (fossil fuel companies determined to keep their profits flowing), ideology (conservatives hostile to any form of regulation) and psychological insecurity (real men burn stuff.) 

The administration is similarly dismissive of warnings about the danger posed by Artificial Intelligence. In the last few days, we’ve had escalating concerns voiced not by luddites fearful of new technologies, but by people intimately involved in the creation and improvement of AI. Those concerns have been confirmed by the CEOs of the largest companies working to develop and market that tool. Daron Amodei,  Anthropic’s CEO has acknowledged the existential dangers and the need to “put on the brakes,” and has called for government regulation if necessary.

As Krugman notes,

In a real sense, Amodei isn’t just trying to protect humanity from rogue AI, he is also trying to protect humanity from Donald Trump. It’s important to remember that, under the Biden administration, government policymakers tried to formulate some basic AI precautions. But removing those precautions was literally one of the first things Donald Trump did when taking office the second time. And that’s a history worth revisiting at a moment when the AI industry itself is sounding the alarm, but Trump is dismissing the risks.

Trump’s reaction? “You have a lot of very negative forces that are bringing it up that shouldn’t be bringing it up and they’re bringing up things that won’t happen.” Evidently, those things won’t happen because our lunatic President–who also is cheering on the proliferation of the data centers that power AI–says so. 

Just three days into his administration, Trump removed the safeguards put in place by the Biden administration; issuing an executive order titled “Removing barriers to American leadership in artificial intelligence,” an executive order which–as Krugman writes– might just as well have been titled “Damn the social and existential risks, full speed ahead.”

While financial motives and industry pressures undoubtedly motivated the move, Trump’s racist anti-DEI fixation also played a part. As Krugman says, “You won’t be surprised to hear that hostility to DEI was right at the heart of the agenda. Literally the second sentence of the order declares that we must develop AI systems that are free from ideological bias or engineered social agendas.” This was apparently “a thinly veiled plug for Grok, which by all accounts is vastly inferior to offerings from Anthropic and OpenAI but which Elon Musk has tried to sell in part because it supposedly isn’t “woke.”

Just a couple of things to ponder as we prepare to vote in the upcoming midterms after the hottest summer on record….

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Our Morphing Media And Government

I post frequently here about the enormous influence of our media environment on politics, because what citizens know–and what they think is important–is almost entirely influenced by media, by the places they get their information. Even when those sources are accurate, in the sense that the items they report on are presented factually, the choice of those items signals their degree of importance.

In media studies, we used to call folks who decided which matters were worthy of media attention “gatekeepers.” And as Don Moynihan recently reminded us at Can We Still Govern, gatekeepers covering government rarely if ever focus on what’s working. (He shares a recent article from The Onion, headlined “Post Office Celebrates Another Awesome Day of Delivering the Mail,” to underline the point. The notion that there there would be celebratory media coverage of routine competent government performance is the joke.)

There are a number of reasons why traditional media ignores such seemingly mundane matters. As Moynihan says, media has a negativity bias, based upon recognition that we humans are more emotionally aroused by “stories of loss rather than gain, failure rather than success, scandal rather than honest competence.”

Failures get clicks.

And of course, media figures want to be seen as independent watchdogs, not uncritical PR vendors of good news stories or conveyors of political press releases.

Then there’s our overwhelming human bias toward theater: People like stories–especially stories that involve wrongdoing. They’re more compelling, and they also tend to be easier to understand than reports about complicated administrative and legal systems that lack an identifiable “bad guy.”

And so, media coverage plays a critical role in educating the public about whether their government is working well or not. This is especially true for traditional media who seek to be broadly non-partisan.

But think about the incentive structure for politicians. If media attention goes to failures rather than successes, the incentives are to avoid failures: don’t rock the boat, don’t take risks, don’t try something with an uncertain payoff. Avoid blame at all costs.

This makes investing their time in the details of government a relatively poor bet for politicians. The details are too wonky, administrative processes are difficult to explain, the time required to master the topic is too great, the time required to see results is too long, and the potential for failure is high. All of this makes a political payoff too unlikely.

So what do we make of New York Mayor Mamdani’s intense focus on the nuts and bolts of (boring) governing? He is clearly  investing a huge amount of his political capital into those nuts and bolts, posting videos about filling potholes, fixing playgrounds, renewing infrastructure, and encouraging citizens to report service problems. As Moynihan writes, Mamdani is  focused on implementation rather than on announcing new programs.

Mamdani’s strategy depends upon people hearing about implementation. What if the media simply doesn’t care? What if it won’t cover these efforts to improve public services, or if it does, what if it gives much less attention to successful implementation than to negative stories? 

That dilemma is at the root of the rise of political “influencers,” people with large social media followings who are engaged to “get out the word.” It appears to be a growing phenomenon: unlike Mamdani, whose influencers are unpaid (albeit directed by a member of his administration who is on the payroll), the Department of Defense has hired and is paying influencers to amplify Pete Hegseth’s culture war battles. There are undoubtedly others.

And that, of course, gets us back to that foundational question: where do Americans get their information? Do we really want “influencers” on social media telling citizens what to think? 

The proliferation of propaganda, the desire of people to do “research” that confirms their original biases, and the lack of common sources of vetted information has allowed citizens to construct their own, preferred realities and contributed to a media “wild west” where there are no gatekeepers–or more accurately, where we are forced to be our own gatekeepers.

As Sarah Longwell recently wrote at The Bulwark, 

I think one of the biggest—and still most under-discussed—storylines of how we got here is the wholesale transformation of the media ecosystem. By which I mean the way that Americans get their information about the world, and then use that information to make decisions about what kind of society they want to live in, who gets to be part of it, and who gets to wield power. To understand the Trump era, you have to understand this first.

I couldn’t agree more.

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