Opinion
By Jeff Childers
11/23/24
Good morning, C&C, it’s Saturday! Your weekend edition roundup includes: Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy penned what is potentially one of the most important op-eds ever published and nobody noticed; Judge Merchan solves his sentencing paradox and Democrats suffer another inglorious defeat, perhaps having gone down for the last time; Trump nominates a small pantry of Cabinet picks including three key health positions: Surgeon General, CDC, and FDA; and Florida’s superstar Surgeon General does it again, leading the way to Make America Healthy Again.
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Wednesday’s Wall Street Journal included an op-ed titled, “Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy: The DOGE Plan to Reform Government.” Depending on how things play out, this op-ed, which for the first time disclosed details of how the ‘efficiency’ plan will work, could become one of the Nation’s historic documents, a modern Declaration of Independence. Or re-Independence. Whatever, you get the idea. Freedom from the Swarming Bureaucracy.
Somehow, in the rush of events this week, this historic op-ed that described exactly how Musk and Ramaswamy plan to streamline the bloated U.S. government, got much less attention than it deserved. The plan potentially affects every man, woman, and child in the country, not to mention the vast federal workforce, and you’d think the talking heads would have something to say about it. But nope.
First, the article defined the problem: Our representative government has grown too big and unwieldy for our elected representatives to manage. Thus, over the course of time, the overwhelmed (if not outright lazy) politicians delegated more and more management responsibility to unelected, partisan bureaucrats, assembling in the process a massive, biased federal bureaucracy that has become an anti-democratic shadow government. Elected representatives come and go, performatively figure-skating across a peaceful frozen lake, while all the real business of government frantically transacts in the churning, sunless waters concealed below the icy surface.
Whenever a particular politician stops skating and tries to peer into a crack in the ice, the pallid finger of the deep state emerges from the frozen waters and pokes them in the eye.
Musk’s op-ed answered all the many critics of the “Department of Government Efficiency,” or DOGE. It’s been tried many times before, critics have correctly pointed out in stacks of articles and op-eds since the election. It’s too big, at best DOGE could only clip a little off the margins they complained. It would take more than four years, and Trump doesn’t have the time, the critics shrieked. And finally, DOGE has no power and Trump can’t do anything without Congress.
In response, Musk announced that DOGE will have it all wrapped up in less than two years, completing its mission by July 4, 2026, well before the mid-term elections. So, it’s to be a sprint after all, and not any kind of bureaucratic marathon. They don’t expect any effective deep state resistance. This goal would seem like nothing more than a silly pot-smoker’s fantasy if Elon weren’t so well-versed in how government operates. But since the space billionaire knows his way around DC, the goal suggests instead that speed is part of the strategy.
The article was light on particular policies, but the details it did include were practical and made sense. Elon promised the process would lean into legal and Constitutional executive powers and not rely on Congress. Remember, the deep state works for the President, our Nation’s chief executive officer. The problem for a particular president is figuring out who exactly does work for him.
They aren’t going to slow down to try to figure out who’s infesting the deep state, so that it can be carefully pruned by hand. They plan to use a weed wacker. So, for example, Trump will cancel all the generous “work from home” policies that mushroomed up during the pandemic, which Elon and Vivek expect will “result in a wave of voluntary terminations” by employees who can no longer tolerate the thought of getting dressed and going into the office.
Similarly, the authors suggested that executive rule changes to relocate federal agencies out of DC would trigger yet more “voluntary terminations.” I guess they imagine some DC residents will reject moving for work to slower-paced, pastoral environments like Kansas.
Next, DOGE will lean into the logic of the two recent, anti-bureaucratic Supreme Court decisions: West Virginia v. EPA (2022) and this year’s Loper Bright decision, which terminated the much-hated Chevron Doctrine. According to Elon, using embedded lawyers in the agencies and artificial intelligence tools, DOGE will interrogate each agency’s regulatory books, querying whether regulations confine themselves to the narrow limits of what Congress specifically authorized.
The majority of regulations will almost certainly fail that test. Elon said they would be collected into batches and sent to Trump in a series of executive orders requiring agencies to either reform or rescind the non-compliant rules. It will be a regulatory bloodbath.
These two recent Supreme Court decisions are critical for ensuring that the fixes stick beyond Trump’s term. As Vivek pointed out, “after those regulations are fully rescinded, a future president couldn’t simply flip the switch and revive them but would instead have to ask Congress to do so.” If I didn’t know better, I’d suspect the two decisions might be part of a much bigger plan that began during Trump’s first term.
Finally, massive cuts in regulations will necessarily make large numbers of federal workers redundant. Redundancy is one of the only ways to remove federal employees without getting tangled up in unionized federal civil-service protections. The law allows for broad “reductions in force,” so long as they don’t target specific workers. Musk promised all redundant employees would be treated respectfully, offered incentives to retire early, given generous severance packages, and aided in applying for private sector jobs.
There was much more, read the whole thing. (Try this link if you hit a paywall.)
The bottom line was: this is a breathtaking, grand, brilliant vision. Musk and Ramaswamy answered each of the critics’ objections, and proposed an efficiency plan that, in spite of all odds, and despite and having the deck completely stacked against it, might just work.
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Earlier this week, I suggested that Judge Merchan was trapped between a sentencing rock and a political hard place. He adroitly handled the political hot potato by tossing it to the future. CNN ran the story yesterday headlined, “Trump’s hush money sentencing is postponed indefinitely, judge says.” Dismayed Democrats immediately signaled distress.
The gist was that Judge Merchan has no intention of sentencing Trump before his Inauguration. So the earliest it could happen is after Trump leaves office, which means there won’t be any last-minute, ‘Hail Marx’ long-shot jail sentence to save the Democrats from the coming Trump Administration. It was surprising how many prominent Democrats came unglued, obviously hoping against hope and logic that Judge Merchan would somehow lock Trump up for years over a misdemeanor bookkeeping error.
For example, ranting Representative Adam Schiff (D-Ca.), called it “justice denied”:
MSNBC’s far-left legal commenter Joyce Alene (1 million followers) wailed that yesterday was a very sad day for her idea of the rule of law:
Trump’s team called it a “decisive win” for the President. At this point, all the judge plans to do is consider whether to dismiss Trump’s case entirely or put it on ice for four years. So that’s a wrap; absent some surprising development nobody saw coming, the Trump lawfare campaign has ground to an inglorious and ineffective halt.
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The Washington Post ran a story yesterday headlined, “Trump pushes past sting of Gaetz’s exit with flurry of new picks.” Trump nominated most of his Cabinet in the first 20 days after the election. I’m not positive, but I can’t recall a faster transition in the modern era. Yesterday saw a slew of new names for the less prominent roles, including three key positions of special interest to the C&C community. The first was Dr. Janette Nesheiwat for Surgeon General. Here she is in 2022, complaining about military jab mandates:
Of the three health slots named yesterday, Janette’s was the most potentially disappointing, although we remain hopeful. The bad news was that the regular Fox News Contributor, who owns a chain of urgent care centers in New York and is related to lots of career political people in DC, was an early and loud covid jab pusher and a pro-masker who even once demonstrated the double-masking technique on air.
Piling on, buffoonish bowtie doctor and vaccine salesman Peter Hotez, one of the pandemic’s minor villains, called Janette a “good pick.” So that wasn’t too good.
On the plus side, despite pushing jabs, during the pandemic Janette was consistently anti-mandate, pro-religious-exemption, and pro-military. In early 2020, before it went sideways, she even endorsed Trump’s recommendation for using hydroxychloroquine to treat covid infection. We have no idea whether Janette has “evolved” any of her pro-jab positions after seeing how badly things played out. She does seem sane, so there’s a chance.
In any case, the office of Surgeon General is largely symbolic, lacking any particular power besides glorified marketing of government narratives. The Surgeon General says squirrels do not usually make good indoor pets…
Trump’s next two more influential and important health picks were much stronger.
🔥 President Trump nominated Dave Weldon for CDC Director. Weldon is a doctor, a US Army officer and veteran, and a former Republican Congressman.
While in Congress, Weldon once introduced a bill to strip vaccine safety oversight away from the CDC and move it to a separate independent agency under HHS. Dave has publicly voiced cocnerns about the independence of the federal government’s vaccine safety review process, and he went after mercury in vaccines claiming a link to autism.
You could call Dave “skeptical” of many vaccines, notably including MMR and Gardasil. I could find no record of his position on covid vaccines, except for folks noticing there wasn’t one. He stayed off social media. Weldon got a 100% rating from National Right to Life, and he has consistently supported life, religious liberties, and conscience rights in health care. Dave has called Jesus Christ one of his biggest political influences.
Given his well-established skepticism of vaccines, he seems perfect for the CDC.
🔥 Third and finally, my personal favorite nomination, Dr. Marty Makary for the FDA.
Dr. Makary, 54, is a Johns Hopkins surgeon and a professor of surgery and public health. During the pandemic, Makary was a cautious but consistent voice of reason. At great professional risk, he often publicly advocated for focused vaccination, open debate, herd and natural immunity, and against mandates, school closures, masks, boosters, and public health overreach. He helped Governor DeSantis unmask Florida and quickly get schools re-opened.
Marty Makary is Media Matters’ Number Two top “dishonest Fox News doctors” because of his pandemic appearances, which to my mind, makes him even more qualified for the job. We need an FDA Director who says what he really thinks and doesn’t just rubber-stamp covid vaccines for pregnant women because it’s politically correct.
Makary’s impeccable credentials, regular op-eds, social media presence, advice to DeSantis, and his other public appearances were critical ammunition in the successful war to stop biomedical totalitarianism (2020-2023). Only a Democrat could complain about Makary’s medical and institutional qualifications for the role. I am delighted to see him nominated for the FDA, and pray he can get his arms around that beast.
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The Tampa Bay Times ran a terrific story yesterday headlined, “Florida Surgeon General opposes fluoride in water as he is eyed for Trump admin.” And so, it begins! Not waiting to see whether Robert Kennedy, Jr. is confirmed for Secretary of HHS, standout Florida Surgeon General Joe Ladapo shattered records and made history yesterday, by establishing Florida as the first state in the Union to recommend against public water fluoridation:
CLIP: Press conference — Joseph A. Ladapo announces new Florida policy (29:49).
Did you ever think you’d live to see this day? Just as when Florida’s Department of Health recommended against the covid shots, Dr. Ladapo published a strong FDH guidance summarizing the evidence and studies showing the potential risks of fluoridation.
The Times’ headline slyly suggested that Ladapo’s was just trying to curry favor with the Trump team to score a Cabinet appointment. Perfectly ridiculous, of course, since Ladapo’s record predates Trump’s election, and since he hasn’t been nominated for any of the top slots (although he’d be terrific).
Don’t count him out. What Ladapo is doing is backstopping Kennedy’s nomination for Secretary of HHS; if Trump can’t get Kennedy confirmed, he can send Ladapo up instead.
Anyway, what is more likely behind the timing of Ladapo’s move was last month’s federal court decision from San Fransisco, which slammed open the Overton Window, making the new guidance politically possible instead of an instant career ender, which it would certainly have been if proposed last year. Either way, Dr. Ladapo is already getting started Making America Healthy Again, beginning with Florida.
It was a team effort, no doubt, but what an encouraging and uplifting experience it is to see everything coming together like this.
Have a wonderful weekend! Grab a Christmas tree, enjoy the cool weather, and then head back here on Monday morning for more warm and cuddly Coffee & Covid.
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The views expressed in this commentary are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official position of Citizens Journal Florida
