President Trump is already making history with his cabinet – a motley list of government reformers, from Tom Homan (Border Czar) to Tulsi Gabbard (DNI) to Matt Gaetz (AG) to Pete Hegseth (Defense Secretary) to Robert F. Kennedy (HHS) to Elon Musk (DOGE), who are united in their shared vision of eliminating fraud, corruption, and waste from an oversized, debt-ridden and bloated bureaucracy – and returning accountability and power back to the People, where it rightly belongs.  If confirmed, Donald Trump’s cabinet is poised to go down as one of the most significant in our history.  For the first time in at least a century, a presidential administration appears genuinely dedicated to restoring constitutional government, as the Founding Fathers originally conceived it.  The American people have given this administration the mandate to do so.  Indeed, but for President Trump’s victory on November 5^th, the American Dream – and constitutional governance – would have been all but vanquished from the face of the earth.

This is because America has reached the twilight hour of its existence – the election gave the people two diametrically opposed visions: continue the decades-long decline that has brought the Republic to near financial and cultural ruin, hollowing out our cities and atomizing public life to a crisp, or potentially reverse the sinister trends of the last several decades with a radical course correction that would bring about true and lasting reform to government of an order of magnitude not seen in over a century at least.  Happily, the American people – sensing the existential stakes of this hour in our history – rose to the occasion and chose the latter option.  President Trump was given an irrefutable mandate by the American people to take a sledgehammer to the administrative state – including the bloated federal bureaucracies that waste money to scandalous extremes, always at the expense of the American people.  In addition, the early picks for DHS, border czar, and Attorney General showcase a commitment to gutting these agencies wholesale, cleaning up the landscape of violent criminals once and for all, and redeeming the rule of law in this country, which has been tragically weaponized by bad-faith actors across the government for the purposes of exacting revenge upon political opponents, degrading it of any semblance of integrity.

So many of our regulations, as both Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy have addressed in the period after both were named co-chairs of the newly formed Department of Government Efficiency (or “DOGE”) are rooted in left-wing social experiments, from woke DEI initiatives to climate voodooism, that have no basis in reality, let alone enriching the public good.  When America was founded, the federal government was extremely limited.  That was how the Founding Fathers intended it. Even Alexander Hamilton and John Adams, who, as Federalists, preferred a stronger government – particularly a robust Executive Branch – relative to their Anti-Federalist peers, nevertheless would perceive the monstrosity that is our present leviathan government to be a radical departure from its constitutional mandate.  Indeed, our bureaucracy today has become so exorbitant – so tangled in frivolous rules and guidelines – that it would be unrecognizable to any of the Founding Fathers — even the ones inclined to muscular executives — as well as their children and grandchildren. 

Under George Washington’s government, there were only three cabinet posts established – State, War (which later became Defense), and Treasury – to aid the commander-in-chief (the fourth, the Attorney General, was not considered as an official cabinet position, though it gradually became that way over time).  That was it.  Fast forward nearly a quarter millennial later, and now an entire department has to be created – the aforementioned “DOGE” – simply to investigate fraud and scale back on government regulation and overreach.  How far have we fallen!

Blessedly, this time around, Donald Trump – unlike Republican presidents of the recent past – seems to view cutting the size of government as not just a talking point for the campaign trail, but a serious mandate for draining the swamp.  Washington, DC – like the government it stationed – was never, ever supposed to provide full time employment for civil servants, lawyers, and bureaucrats – who would in turn enrich themselves off the good-will of unsuspecting taxpayers.  Though it took many years, even generations for the People to finally catch on, the bureaucrats are now in the defensive, having poked the bear of a sleeping giant – which has woken from its slumber, now apoplectic over how things have been managed for so long.  The way government runs today is a national scandal that warrants the aggressive treatment we are now seeing with Donald Trump’s cabinet nominees.  

That talking pundits fret on cable news by the announcement of Matt Gaetz, for example, as Attorney General – questioning his credentials while attempting to fan the flames of faux outrage for his threat to institutional norms – should be ignored completely.  In fact, these are pundits who masquerade as journalists. In reality, they are nothing more than mouthpieces for Big Pharma and the military-industrial complex. As they pretend to wax furiously on television they betray their roles as regime apparatchiks; essentially, public faces for the regnant bureaucracy and ruling class that presides over it, who realize that they no longer have a leg to stand on.  They have no authority whatsoever to speak about “norms.” The norms in place today are meant to protect them at the public’s expense.   The norms they claim might be violated by a Gaetz or Gabbard instead are those artificial contrivances enacted over years and years of bureaucratic occupation of government of the people.  These norms do not exist in the Constitution, nor in the Bill of Rights – indeed, they were enacted to prevent those fundamental liberties from being realized to their fullest potential for all Americans.  Thus, the norm-shattering characteristics of the present crop of nominees ought to be welcomed with open arms; if they did not pose a danger to the regime, they would not be the targets of a propaganda campaign by fake television pundits working overtime to besmirch them.

Our government was founded on an explicit — and revolutionary — prerogative: namely, to ensure life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.  That prerogative necessarily calls for limited government – the pursuit of happiness is only possible if the encumbrances that please tyrants, from regulatory control over business – in the name of diversity and equity – to the censorship of dissident voices, are allowed to take hold.  It cannot be achieved any other way. Ordered liberty withers on the vine when bureaucrats bully themselves into the private affairs of free men, and demand they be coerced to their dictates, rather than the dictates of one’s own conscience which ought to be the only guardrail of a free people.  The bureaucratic tyranny pervasive today was never, ever supposed to happen in America – that tyranny has gotten as far as it has on these shores is both a travesty and searing wakeup call for all Americans, who have a sacred duty to revive their noble heritage of freedom so that it might too be passed down to their descendants much as their forefathers did.

Elissa Slotkin, who perhaps illegitimately won her Senate race over Mike Rogers in Michigan, recently excoriated President Trump’s choice of Pete Hegseth, the former Fox News commentator and Army National Guard officer, as Secretary of Defense.  In particular, the Senator-elect condemned Hegseth’s commitment to prioritizing merit, rather than diversity, as the main goal of America’s military.  That we have even reached a point in society and history where someone like Slotkin, who thinks the task of a military is to create more job opportunities for transgender people or the morbidly obese, is deemed worthy of the Senate, is a scary indictment of our present state of affairs – and speaks to just how advanced our decline as a society is.  

It also speaks to how pivotal it is for radical reformers, of Hegseth and Gaetz’s ilk, are to ensure the political mandate on which President Trump was elected is realized to its maximum potential.  This is a government in need of serious, serious reform.  That point cannot possibly be overstated.

The average Washington paper-pusher has done no real work over the last fifty years.  Instead, like parasites, they leech off the diminishing lifeblood of the dying Republic.  The city feels viscerally hollow, as if it were paper mâché or a Hollywood set.  Government workers are like bugmen that overwhelmingly have no real skill sets to offer.  There is no industry in our capitol city, merely service workers who do not know how to build things of tangible value – or even fathom what it might take to visualize such a feat, and are beholden increasingly to a digital sphere, one that both masquerades their infinite inadequacies while shielding them from the bitter truths of the real world.  The reality is that America demands reform, at least of the degree represented by some of these cabinet picks — and likely much more than that.

If you take Amtrak down from Boston to Washington, virtually every major city along the way – from Philadelphia to Baltimore to the Capitol of the Empire – looks as though it was hit by nuclear bomb.  The devastation to our cities – depleted, barren, ugly, dead – is indicative of a government that has completely and totally failed the people.  America was once the envy of the Free World, now it is an object of scorn and ridicule the world over.  Heritage Americans are increasingly replaced, if not killed, by illegal aliens from the Third World.  What remains of our civilizational birthright is squandered by the day of that undeserving ruling class that has occupied our Capitol City, illegitimately, for quite some time now.

This was never how America was supposed to be.  Things must change dramatically in order to right the ship of state.  America can be revived, it certainly harbors some embers of that dynamism that made it great in past generations, however it will not be revived unless it is permitted to do so.   The first step towards making that happen is allowing Americans to proverbially breathe once again.  To toss off the suffocating heavy hand of government from their backs, reified in everything from the Big Pharmaceutical lobby which ghoulishly profits off illness, to the tech companies, working hand-in-glove with intelligence agencies, that feast off the public’s ignorance – and keeping the population demoralized and thinking they are not the progeny of a once great and mighty people, who can solve so many of the world’s problems if only given the freedom once again to do so.  This cocktail of progressive, woke, and culturally Marxist ideologies that have long festered in the pantheon of nanny state power must come to an end.  

It may be a bitter – if not fatal – pill to swallow for the bureaucrat, who, lacking any real talents, will have to find work elsewhere, using their hands to actually create things of value for maybe the first time ever.  But for the rest of us – for the majority of Americans who voted to change course and restore American democracy in its truest formulation – it will be to our benefit.  Americans have forgotten the taste of freedom. For the first time in living memory, they will finally get a chance to experience – with the appointment of this Super Cabinet – their sacred birthright and remember why it is that America is so extraordinary, and why their heritage so worthy of preserving.

Paul Ingrassia, a graduate of Fordham University and Cornell Law School, is an Attorney; Communications Director of the NCLU; a two-time Claremont Fellow, and is on the Board of Advisors of the NYYR Club and the Italian American Civil Rights League. He writes a widely read Substack that is regularly posted on Truth Social by President Trump. Follow Paul on X @PaulIngrassia, Substack, Truth Social, Instagram, and Rumble.

The opinions expressed by columnists are their own and do not necessarily represent the views of AMAC or AMAC Action.