President Donald Trump has taken aim at the rot in the federal bureaucracy, but he will continue to face an entrenched deep state because the rules protect it, warns a radio host who once helped President Ronald Reagan combat the bureaucracy. Americans may not know that radio host and author Hugh Hewitt once worked in the heart of the executive branch, serving as general counsel and deputy director at the Office of Personnel Management, the human resources department of the federal government. Hewitt praised Trump’s work, but he also laid out the gargantuan task ahead of the president and others who would attempt to reform the administrative state. “I just am very impressed with the first, now it’s 102 days,” Hewitt told The Daily Signal in an interview at the Job Creators Network’s Freedom Fighters Summit Friday. “President Trump is resolved not to have this stand in his way, so I think flooding the zone is a very conscious strategy to overwhelm” the bureaucracy, he explained. Hewitt laid out five reasons the deep state exists, and gave some hope that Trump would succeed in at least partly reforming it. 1. The Civil Service Reform Act Some Reagan veterans praised the Civil Service Reform Act of 1978 as a tool to restrain the federal bureaucracy, but Hewitt described it as a “nightmare.” He noted that the law created the Office of Personnel Management, the Merit Systems Protection Board, and the Office of Special Counsel, among other entities: “It just like subdivides into a hydra and gets bigger and bigger and less and less effective.” The Civil Service Reform Act created systems that allow a president’s “political” appointees to oversee the ostensibly nonpolitical “career” bureaucrats. While the law aimed to make government more accountable to the people’s elected representatives, Hewitt suggested that it insulated the bureaucracy. 2. Deep State Unions Among other things, the act codified how unions could represent federal employees. Even President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, the architect of the New Deal expansion of the government, opposed federal government unions; but President John F. Kennedy first allowed them in 1962, and the Civil Service Reform Act established clear rules for them. “Their job is to protect their members,” Hewitt noted of the public sector unions. “They take their union dues, and I don’t blame them.” “I was a lawyer in the private sector,” he added. “Your job is to protect your client, if and you take your money from your union dues and you go off and you spend it on defending every single member of every single union to the Nth degree and make it miserable.” “So, it’s their job to throw sand in the gears … and they’re very good at it,” Hewitt added. “The only way to change that is to change the statute.” As I revealed in my book “The Woketopus: The Dark Money Cabal Manipulating the Federal Government,” public sector unions helped the left-wing nonprofits that staffed and advised the Biden administration. Now, public sector unions are acting like a deep state, teaming up with those nonprofits to sue Trump and block his reforms. 3. Tenure in Place “The idea of ‘tenure in place’ is the worst thing that happened to the republic,” Hewitt argued. He noted that federal regulations “keep you in place [on the job] absent an extraordinary set of findings and a series of appeals to the Merit Systems Protection Board,” so it gets very hard to fire deep state bureaucrats. Heads of executive agencies “don’t want to waste their time on firing a [high-ranking bureaucrat] who has not done his or her job for 10 years,” he noted. “They’ll move them down the hallway. There are so many hallways full of people who don’t know how to do their jobs.” “Unless and until we can repeal [the Civil Service Reform Act], we will have a deadweight administrative state.” 4. Deep State ‘Burrowing In’ Hewitt also described the phenomenon of “burrowing in.” While presidents appoint more than 3,000 people for positions within the government who serve at the pleasure of the president, the federal government directly employs roughly 2.3 million people, most of whom serve in career positions. Political appointees often apply to switch to “career” positions in order to stay in government permanently. “‘Burrowing’ is a term of art, and at the end of every administration, those who like the gig, you know, 35-hour work weeks and remote work forever … they convert from being a Schedule C or a Schedule A that’s been hired under a political authority to a career service GS-protected, and that’s called burrowing,” Hewitt explained. “It’s not supposed to happen,” he noted. “It happens in a Democratic administration like crazy, like Day One. They get there, they start to burrow in from their positions.” “They don’t have to do anything to frustrate an agenda,” Hewitt added. “So much of the failure to reform the federal government is the inertia of people who are not interested in changing their routine.” The bureaucrats don’t have to take direct action to undermine a president’s agenda; they just have to be slow in responding to new orders and use bureaucratic explanations to cover for their inaction. 5. Need for a Realignment Hewitt said “there’s no way” to make the government more accountable “until and unless you can fire people.” If anyone asks him, “What’s your magic reform?” Hewitt said his answer is, “Just allow every head of agency every year the ability to fire 1% of its workforce, no questions asked, for any reason.” “The idea of accountability will make the federal government spring to life,” he said. Hewitt said many attempts at political realignment—where certain elections illustrate a sea change in public opinion—become “stillborn” because the leaders elected during that alignment may be go too far for Congress’ willingness for change. Yet Trump represents something new. “I think President Trump has consciously decided to go to the center to try and expand his majority,” he said. “And if that is the case, I’m the happiest person in the world because—absent realignment and a supermajority in the Senate—you really can’t get much done.” Hewitt noted that only “supermajorities in both houses” of Congress enables a president to “change the legislative timber of the country in ways both fundamental and enduring.” He suggested that if the Republican Congress can pass Trump’s “one big beautiful bill” in the budget reconciliation process and it helps the economy ahead of the 2026 midterms, Republicans may expand their majorities in Congress and Trump can root out the deep state. The post 5 Reasons Trump Will Find It Hard to Slay the Deep State Hydra, According to Hugh Hewitt appeared first on The Daily Signal.

THE CENTER SQUARE—Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is being sued by California, New York, Washington, Arizona, Colorado, and other states over what they call the dismantling of the U.S. Health and Human Services Department. Plaintiffs in the suit filed Monday against the HHS secretary also include Connecticut, Delaware, the District of Columbia, Delaware, Hawaii, Illinois, Maine, Maryland, Michigan, Minnesota, New Jersey, New Mexico, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont, and Wisconsin.  Filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of Rhode Island, the suit challenges Kennedy’s March 27 directive cutting about 10,000 jobs. At the time, the Health and Human Services Department said the cuts, which were in response to President Donald Trump’s executive order on the same day calling for reductions at federal agencies, would save $1.8 billion a year. But Monday’s lawsuit says the Trump administration has stripped the department of the resources it needs to do its job. “On April 1, 2025, when the termination notices went out and employees were immediately expelled from their work email, laptops, and offices, work across the vast and complicated Department came to a sudden halt,” according to the lawsuit. “Throughout HHS, critical offices were left unable to perform statutory functions. There was no one to answer the phone, factories went into shutdown mode, experiments were abandoned, trainings were canceled, site visits were postponed, application portals were closed, laboratories stopped testing for infectious diseases, such as hepatitis, and partnerships were immediately suspended.” “The Food and Drug Administration missed a vaccine application deadline and canceled a critical test for the bird flu virus, suspending that testing program for the year,” the complaint reads. The coalition of states is urging the federal court to halt the mass firings, reverse what it calls the illegal reorganization, and restore critical health services, according to a press release from the Arizona Attorney General’s Office. The lawsuit also protests the closing of half the department’s 10 regional offices, including one in San Francisco, according to the California Attorney’s General Office. The office goes on to explain the lawsuit contends the cuts violated the Administrative Procedure Act, is beyond the scope of presidential power, and violates the Appropriations Clause and Separation of Powers doctrine of the U.S. Constitution. The suit contends the health cuts were especially harsh on several federal agencies: the Centers of Disease Control and Prevention, the Food and Drug Administration, the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, the Administration for Children and Family, and the Administration for Community Living. Officials from those agencies are listed as defendants in the lawsuit along with Kennedy. The complaint goes on to say Kennedy didn’t restructure the department carefully or legally and admitted there were going to be mistakes. The secretary did say 20% of the reductions could be errors, as reported by CBS News and other media. “The terminations and reorganizations happened quickly, but the consequences are severe, complicated and potentially irreversible,” Monday’s lawsuit reads. “Plaintiff States are already suffering consequences of these terminations and reorganizations.” But Kennedy argued the cuts, which involve restructuring the department from 28 divisions to 15, will make government more efficient. “We aren’t just reducing bureaucratic sprawl. We are realigning the organization with its core mission and our new priorities in reversing the chronic disease epidemic,” he said. “This department will do more—a lot more—at a lower cost to the taxpayer.” The post 20 Blue States Sue to Reverse HHS Cuts appeared first on The Daily Signal.

The Left's Favorite Streamer Compares the Houthis to Anne Frank

DHS: We'll Pay You to Self-Deport!

A former teacher in Wisconsin is facing serious accusations of having an illicit sexual relationship with an underage student that allegedly happened several years ago, according to court documents. Rebecca Ryan, 43, was arrested on April 29 and charged with three counts of sexual assault by school staff, according to the Post-Crescent. Each charge reportedly carries a maximum prison sentence of three years and three years of extended supervision. Sgt. Schnese of the Appleton Police Department questioned Ryan and noted that 'she was breathing with shallow breaths' during the interrogation. Ryan is barred from having contact with the alleged victim or having any unsupervised contact with any children under the age of 18 that is not related to her. Ryan is currently being detained at the Outagamie County Jail on $50,000 bond, according to jail records. According to the criminal complaint obtained by WLUK-TV, the former student — who is now 25 years old — informed police in March that he was an alleged victim of child sex abuse by a former teacher when he was a 17-year-old student at Appleton West High School.The alleged victim said the sexual encounters occurred during the first semester of his senior year, between September 2017 and January 2018.The alleged victim claimed that it was Ryan who sexually abused him.The former student told detectives that the first time he had a sexual encounter with the teacher was in a vehicle in the overflow parking lot of Appleton West High School, according to the criminal complaint. The alleged victim also claimed that he and the teacher had sex on two other occasions inside a vehicle at two different parking lots, and the last sexual encounter happened before he turned 18 years old. Officers with the Appleton Police Department reportedly had the alleged victim call Ryan while police recorded the phone call. When the former student asked Ryan if she was still teaching, she allegedly replied that she is no longer a teacher and is now a nanny. The alleged victim reportedly asked Ryan if she would be willing to talk about their time together in high school. She reportedly responded, "I mean, I guess. It depends on what. I don't know. Ugh. I can talk to you about general."According to the affidavit, the alleged victim elaborated, "Like us having sex and stuff." Ryan reportedly replied with a nervous laugh and said, "No." She allegedly told the former student to "hold on a second," and he remained on the line for about three minutes without any response from Ryan, so he hung up on the call. The alleged victim purportedly called Ryan back, but the call was sent to her voicemail. Sgt. Schnese of the Appleton Police Department questioned Ryan and noted that "she was breathing with shallow breaths" during the interrogation. He wrote in the affidavit, "Shortly thereafter, Rebecca placed her head in her hands and said, 'I did not sleep with [VICTIM 1].'"The Appleton School District noted that Ryan had been employed by the district from August 29, 2016, through Feb. 9, 2018. The school district added, "During her time with the district, there were no reports or allegations involving inappropriate contact with students. We are committed to partnering with the Appleton Police Department as needed to support any ongoing investigations."Ryan is scheduled to appear in court for a preliminary hearing on May 6.Like Blaze News? Bypass the censors, sign up for our newsletters, and get stories like this direct to your inbox. Sign up!

President Donald Trump signed an executive order banning gain-of-function research on pandemic pathogens that many believe was the true source of the coronavirus pandemic. The research typically involves modification of existing viruses in order to make them more infectious and studying the outcomes in order to prevent and treat possible pandemics. 'Researchers have not acknowledged the legitimate potential for societal harms that this kind of research poses.' After the global pandemic, many theorized that the source of the virus was a laboratory leak involving gain-of-function research, possibly at the Wuhan Institute of Virology. The theory was initially ridiculed as a racist conspiracy theory by many, but has since been corroborated by more evidence. The administration said the order would "drastically reduce" lab-related incidents involving gain-of-function research "like that conducted on bat coronaviruses in China by the EcoHealth Alliance and Wuhan Institute of Virology."Trump's order ends federal funding for the research in countries like China, Iran, and others without sufficient oversight. It also orders U.S. agencies to identify such research that might imperil public safety and end federal funding for any programs. "For decades, policies overseeing gain-of-function research on pathogens, toxins, and potential pathogens have lacked adequate enforcement, transparency, and top-down oversight," read a fact sheet from the administration. "Researchers have not acknowledged the legitimate potential for societal harms that this kind of research poses." Dr. Anthony Fauci, the former director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, was among the most prominent critics of the lab-leak theory and defended the use of gain-of-function research. "President Trump has long theorized that COVID-19 originated from a lab leak at the Wuhan Institute of Virology and has consistently pushed for transparency in investigating its origins," said the statement from the administration. The Obama, Biden, and first Trump administrations all previously implemented policies pausing or limiting gain-of-function research. Like Blaze News? Bypass the censors, sign up for our newsletters, and get stories like this direct to your inbox. Sign up here!

The legal status of hundreds of thousands of migrants from Venezuela, Haiti, Cuba, and Nicaragua will be continued after a federal appeals court ruled against the Trump administration. President Donald Trump revoked the Temporary Protected Status for the migrants as a part of his effort for mass deportations from the U.S. The administration had appealed a judge's order to halt the revocation of legal status, but the request was rejected on Monday. 'We need to follow the rule of law and not some advice from an activist judge who makes a foolish ruling.' The U.S. Department of Homeland Security had terminated a TPS extension for 600,000 Venezuelans in January that had been issued under the former Biden administration. In April, San Francisco-based U.S. District Judge Edward Chen blocked the termination of TPS and suggested that the action was motivated by racism. "The secretary made sweeping negative generalizations about Venezuelan TPS beneficiaries," said Chen of DHS Sec. Kristi Noem. "Acting on the basis of a negative group stereotype and generalizing such stereotype to the entire group is the classic example of racism." The 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals based in Boston, Massachusetts, denied Trump's appeal of a separate and similar order from the U.S. District Judge Indira Talwani, who was appointed by former President Barack Obama. "The early termination, without any case-by-case justification, of legal status for noncitizens who have complied with DHS programs and entered the country lawfully undermines the rule of law," said Talwani in her ruling. Trump's border czar, Tom Homan, vehemently criticized the ruling that opposed Trump's order. "TPS isn't meant to be decades long," Homan said previously. "TPS needs to be temporary in nature. We need to follow the rule of law and not some advice from an activist judge who makes a foolish ruling."Like Blaze News? Bypass the censors, sign up for our newsletters, and get stories like this direct to your inbox. Sign up here!

Casting for Hollywood Bowl Production of 'Jesus Christ Superstar' Is FAR MORE Offensive Than Trump Pic

Karmelo Anthony’s Spokesman Digs His Hole Even Deeper

While Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 is the current darling of the video game scene, even the game's conception is special too. Most games are developed by people who applied to a studio or were recruited by agencies, but for Expedition 33's Lead Writer, the key to their employment was Reddit.