The long period of unelected administrative state officials wielding unchecked power to persecute political opponents must end, and DOGE can serve as an instrument alongside courts to bring that end about.

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Consider the following inverse relationship, and its obvious implications.  

As the federal workforce has grown and government power has expanded over recent decades, public trust in government has plummeted to record lows.  

While most government employees are conscientious, well-intentioned, hardworking people, too many are the sorts of mendacious, malevolent activists whom the Founding Fathers listed in the Declaration of Independence as bases for casting off British rule.  

Now, with the Trump administration’s formation of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), the overdue effort to root out such rogue bureaucrats is finally underway.  

For too long, unelected figures embedded within sprawling administrative state agencies have operated with impunity, weaponizing their unchecked authority against disfavored citizens while avoiding public scrutiny or repercussion.  

Nowhere was that abuse more evident than in the case of Lois Lerner, the former Internal Revenue Service (IRS) official who targeted conservative and libertarian nonprofit organizations on the basis of ideology.  Her abuse of power wasn’t isolated, but rather symptomatic of a larger rot:  an entrenched bureaucratic class that considers itself above the law.  

Lerner’s IRS tenure epitomized the danger of unchecked bureaucratic power.  Under her authority, the IRS systematically targeted conservative and pro-Israel organizations, subjecting them to excessive scrutiny and delay.  Those groups were subjected to a labyrinth of red tape and unreasonable demands, simply because their views contravened those of Lerner and the Obama administration.  

When hauled before Congress to testify about her activities, Lerner arrogantly invoked her Fifth Amendment privilege while simultaneously delivering a self-serving defense of herself.  Ultimately, she retired with a full pension and no criminal repercussion, which underscores the glaring lack of accountability for rogue federal bureaucrats.  Had a private citizen engaged in similar misconduct, the consequences would’ve been swift and severe.  In the realm of federal agencies, however, the Lerner class of bureaucrats operates behind layers of immunity.  

That’s where DOGE comes in.  

It represents a critical step toward enforcing transparency, streamlining wasteful agencies, holding rogue actors accountable for misconduct and ultimately restoring government accountability.  In that effort, DOGE’s mission includes investigating misconduct within agencies, recommending disciplinary action and implementing oversight mechanisms to prevent future abuse.  

The long period of unelected administrative state officials wielding unchecked power to persecute political opponents must end, and DOGE can serve as an instrument alongside courts to bring that end about.  

In addition to that mission, DOGE will focus on eliminating bureaucratic waste, that hallmark of Washington, D.C., excess.  Bloated agencies with redundant missions – like USAID – continue to siphon taxpayer dollars while delivering little by way of return benefit.  DOGE will scrutinize those inefficiencies, consolidate overlapping functions and recommend budget cuts to ensure more responsible spending of taxpayer dollars.  

Naturally, those entrenched interests and the mainstream media object to those reforms.  They claim that oversight mechanisms already exist, ignoring the fact that those very mechanisms failed to prevent abuses like those perpetrated by Lerner and the IRS.  They’ll also trot out the stale rationalization that increased oversight will politicize government operations, which is ironic coming from those who’ve spent decades weaponizing federal agencies to enforce political orthodoxies.  

Obviously, those reactions originate from a sense of fear – fear that their immunity and unchecked authority may finally approach its termination.  

If left unchecked by initiatives like DOGE, the abuses illustrated by the Lerner scandal will only fester at the IRS and other agencies.  Yesterday, it was Lerner targeting conservative and pro-Israel nonprofits.  Tomorrow, it might be a different bureaucrat weaponizing the Department of Justice (DOJ), the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) or the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) against disfavored people or organizations.  

Without meaningful reform at long last, that cycle will simply endure and metastasize.  

DOGE offers more than yet another bureaucratic reshuffling.  It initiates a necessary counteroffensive against a deep state that threatens the integrity of our governmental system.  

The federal bureaucratic leviathan and people like Lois Lerner have enjoyed free rein far too long.  Through DOGE, the Trump administration sends a clear message that the long era of unaccountable bureaucracy must end.  Americans of good faith who seek a more honest and more effective government of the people, by the people and for the people should applaud its effort to drain the proverbial swamp, restore greater fairness and ensure that no government official remains above the law.