President Donald Trump and MAGA Republicans love to rail against the “deep state.” In both terms, Trump has argued that his enemies were operating from the bowels of the federal government: FBI agents were out to investigate him, bureaucrats were determined to subvert his policies, and opponents everywhere were willing to leak embarrassing information. In his national address on voting and elections last week, Trump claimed the deep state had kept evidence of election fraud from him in 2020.

There was a notable change between 2017 and 2025. During his first term, Trump complained about these cabals as a foil (along with undocumented immigrants, the “rigged” media and “radical Democrats”) to explain to supporters just what he was up against. During his second term, Trump has tried to purge anyone whom he doesn’t consider trustworthy and to staff his cabinet with loyalists. For example, the Senate appears poised to confirm Todd Blanche as attorney general, the highest law enforcement position in the land, after he proved his bona fides when he worked as the president’s personal attorney. While pundits often discuss the unitary executive theory as some sort of esoteric academic concept born out of conservative legal networks in the 1980s, it is just as much a crass power grab to make sure that nothing and nobody can stand in the president’s way.

President Donald Trump and MAGA Republicans love to rail against the “deep state.” In both terms, Trump has argued that his enemies were operating from the bowels of the federal government: FBI agents were out to investigate him, bureaucrats were determined to subvert his policies, and opponents everywhere were willing to leak embarrassing information. In his national address on voting and elections last week, Trump claimed the deep state had kept evidence of election fraud from him in 2020.

There was a notable change between 2017 and 2025. During his first term, Trump complained about these cabals as a foil (along with undocumented immigrants, the “rigged” media and “radical Democrats”) to explain to supporters just what he was up against. During his second term, Trump has tried to purge anyone whom he doesn’t consider trustworthy and to staff his cabinet with loyalists. For example, the Senate appears poised to confirm Todd Blanche as attorney general, the highest law enforcement position in the land, after he proved his bona fides when he worked as the president’s personal attorney. While pundits often discuss the unitary executive theory as some sort of esoteric academic concept born out of conservative legal networks in the 1980s, it is just as much a crass power grab to make sure that nothing and nobody can stand in the president’s way.

The fears about an out-of-control executive branch are not new. In his farewell address in 1961, President Dwight Eisenhower warned of a “military industrial complex” that........

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