The federal government is falling apart
Don Moynihan on what's been broken within the federal government.
When a president is failing, it's not always easy to see that in your daily life. I would argue that George W. Bush made a lot of bad decisions throughout his presidency, but most Americans didn't feel that in their personal lives until the 2008 financial crisis, which I think he contributed to.
Trump's failures seem to be showing up everywhere lately, as I've written about, and it just feels like the federal government is falling apart. I decided to call up an expert on the federal government to discuss what he's seeing.
Don Moynihan is a professor of public policy at the University of Michigan, and he has a newsletter called Can We Still Govern? He's been closely documenting the Project 2025 effort, DOGE and other Trump administration actions that have hobbled the federal government. He says things aren't looking good.
"I think with the federal government, there are two big categories of places where you expect to see problems," Moynihan tells me. "One is under conditions of crisis or emergency, where there's this big demand upon the government and a need to meet that demand. The second is in the sort of routine interactions that the public has with federal agencies—there are a handful like the IRS, the Social Security Administration and Veterans Affairs, where they do have those interactions."
He says if you look at either of those broad categories right now, you can see that "the wheels are coming off."
"The IRS and Social Security are now run by the same person, which I think is a red flag, right?" Moynihan says. "These are like two huge, complicated federal agencies, and one guy is running both of them."
Moynihan notes that a recent Inspector General report found that the agency is collecting much less revenue than it should from its audits. Elon Musk's DOGE fired scores of tax audit specialists, and they're the people who have the expertise needed to look into high-income tax evaders. Now, those wealthy tax evaders are getting away with it.
As for stuff that's more obvious in our lives, we've seen how gas prices have gone up, prices everywhere are also up, food is being recalled left and right, etc. Moynihan says much of this is evidence of a failing federal government.
"It's often hard to make a causal connection between a specific outbreak of a food-borne illness and a particular decision that was made," Moynihan says. "There was reporting on how DOGE had cut a particular lab whose job it was to monitor the source of the outbreak in lettuce that we saw a while back."
If you slash government experts like this, there are real consequences. We're seeing that. You now have to think twice before you purchase any lettuce or jalapeños.
"A lot of the regulatory functions that the federal government built up over the course of the 20th century came because things like food safety were really bad, and people didn't feel like they could trust what they were buying when they went out to purchase food," Moynihan says. "It sort of feels like we're sliding back into that direction."
Thor Benson
Even the military is being affected by this incompetence of the Trump administration. We're low on missiles, as we're still fighting in Iran, and there have been notable resignations at the Pentagon.
"The fact that the Army secretary resigned last week, I think, is another red flag," Moynihan says. "This is not someone who could be described as a woke general. This was an ally of JD Vance, a Trump appointee, and he reportedly was resigning over Pete Hegseth's military purges."
Moynihan has been warning about the disastrous consequences we'd see if Trump was allowed to attack the foundations of the federal government for the past few years or so. You'd think that would mean that things would be playing out as he expected, but he says things are worse.
"Things are worse than I thought they would be, and I think that is primarily due to the role of DOGE," Moynihan says. "I think the Project 2025 people had a plan, and that plan is moving along. Russ Vought is still in office, but I don't think anyone fully understood at the time just how consequential DOGE would be."
I asked Moynihan to give the federal government a health report. Is it falling apart? How bad is it?
"I think it is fair to say the wheels are coming off," Moynihan says. "It's sort of like if you had a car and you took out 10 percent of the parts of the car. It's not that the car is going to be 10 percent slower. The car is not going to work."
