"Donald Trump had lost the election. The January 6th Capitol riot was seen as an irredeemable scandal. The pandemic was raging, and the country was still reeling from the George Floyd protests. "Republicans had been run out of town," one Trump Administration official told me. "I thought, I'll go to Texas, where I might still be able to get a job with a scarlet 'T' on me. It's like, this city, and the federal government-it's over.""
"Some were convinced that Trump's first term had been a missed opportunity. The Administration had been slow to hire, and many staffers were unfamiliar with the intricacies of bureaucratic combat. As Trump loyalists planned their return to power, they studied up. Jim Blew, an Assistant Secretary in the Department of Education during Trump's first term, recalled fielding dozens of calls about arcane processes like negotiated rule-making. "We all realized it really helps to understand these things," Blew said."
"Lia Thomas, a swimmer at the University of Pennsylvania, became the first transgender athlete to win a women's N.C.A.A. Division I national championship. The October 7th attacks in Israel led to campus protests nationwide. Conservatives were particularly outraged by Joe Biden's higher-ed agenda. Biden officials attempted to use the HEROES Act-a law passed after 9/11 allowing the government to waive student-loan requirements in a national emergency-to cancel billions in student debt, long after the pandemic's peak."
After a demoralizing January 2021, conservatives in Washington reorganized around federal institutions and administrative tactics. Many former staffers studied arcane regulatory processes, negotiated rulemaking, and the mechanics of agency staffing to gain leverage. Conservatives tracked cultural developments—expanded D.E.I. programs, high-profile transgender athletic achievements, and campus protests sparked by international events—and targeted legal and administrative responses. Biden administration moves on higher education and attempts to use the HEROES Act for student-debt relief intensified conservative mobilization. The emerging strategy combined litigation, expertise in administrative procedure, and targeted hiring to exert sustained influence within the federal government.
Read at The New Yorker
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