Outside the Beltway

Public misconceptions about federal waste invite tolerance for questionable workarounds to the constitutionally prescribed manner of determining appropriations.

The Trump administration treats personally disfavored American institutions the way past administrations treated foreign adversaries. His goal is political submission.

Salting the earth and breaking the law.

A judge says OPM has no authority to fire workers in other agencies.

In the immortal words of Emily Litella, “Never mind.”

Beware the Ides of March.

The cruelty is indeed the point.

They’re leaving their dogs.

The people who safeguard our nuclear weapons and put out forest fires have been fired.

The inevitable happened, inevitably.

A Valentine’s Day massacre.

Just beyond parody at this point.

A brilliant plan with absolutely no conceivable downsides.

An entire Congressionally-created agency seems to have been shut down by fiat.

An evil genius controls the key levers of government.

The administration is compiling a list of every single agent who participated in the January 6 investigations.

The new administration is gutting the senior ranks of the civil service.

Piling absurdity atop cruelty.

Federal workers are afraid and in the dark.

Agencies are quickly seeking to comply with the President’s order.

Multiple executive orders aim at rooting out the Deep State.

Normal transition . . . and potential red flags.

Legions of unpaid drones . . . ? . . . budget cuts.

He’s aggressively using relief for public service workers.

The court amplified its power at the expense of the administrative state.

The IRS has finally created a website to allow some people to do it for free.

A major effort to capture the diversity of America.

Sorry, Senator Rubio.

A tale of slow-moving bureaucracy.

The personnel bureaucracy reinterpreted regulations.

Safety, trade-offs, and risk assessment.

Affluence comes with a cost.

Constant flight delays and other frustrations require a solution.

“Cooking with gas” could become a thing of the past. But it probably won’t.

There’s training on uncomfortable subjects. Oh noes!

Should Secretary Pete have done more?

Are we too regulated for our own good?

Because of course it was.

Antiquated counting methods lead to misallocation of resources.

An irresponsible Trump-era practice continues.

You’re a monster, Dr. Grinch, Your heart’s an empty hole.

Trump’s last Secretary of Defense is being stymied by preclearance review.

Another example of structural racism.

An outrage was averted by an act of kindness.

The politics of science comes full circle.

When an apolitical process gets politicized.

Why is making the obvious call so hard for the GSA Administrator?

A perfectly reasonable initiative with a significant downside.

A bipartisan bill will protect the tax preparation industry at the expense of the citizenry.