The Great Demolition

Trump is destroying American state capacity. Welcome to the anti-New Deal.

Donald Trump at the Kennedy Center on March 17, 2025 in Washington, DC. (Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images.)

A headstrong president inherits an economy being remade by technology, a global climate of high tension and rising authoritarian powers, and a government whose perceived fecklessness has left Americans disgusted. He races to adopt an ambitious new program, installing true believers throughout the government, bending Congress to his will, and overwhelming opposition with the pace and audacity of his plans. Along the way, he lays the groundwork to rebuild the constitutional order and America’s very place in the world.

Such were the opening months of the Franklin Delano Roosevelt administration. And such are the opening months of the second Donald J. Trump administration—but with some crucial differences. Almost a century ago, FDR launched a massive program that empowered the government to reconstruct a devastated economy. Today, Trump has embarked upon a massive program that dismantles the government and threatens to strangle an otherwise-promising economy.

Americans are now experiencing the historic first 100 days of the Roosevelt presidency in reverse. That was the New Deal. This is the Great Demolition.

What FDR Wrought

As the historian Ira Katznelson shows in his book Fear Itself, the disaster of the Depression and the rise of European fascism led many Americans in the 1930s to ask whether democracy was up to the task of ordering modern society. This was no isolated sentiment. The nation’s most prominent journalist, Walter Lippmann, openly called for Congress to cede its powers to the president, granting, as he put it, “the widest and fullest powers under the most liberal interpretation of the Constitution.” Roosevelt himself in his first inaugural address warned that if Congress did not do what he believed necessary, he would ask lawmakers for “broad Executive power to wage war against the emergency, as great as the power that would be given to me if we were in fact invaded by a foreign foe.”

But the darker prescriptions did not materialize. Within days, Congress passed the Emergency Banking Act, which retroactively blessed the bank holiday FDR had declared and created sweeping new federal powers to regulate and backstop financial institutions. There swiftly followed laws enabling major cuts to federal salaries and veterans’ benefits; establishing massive public works; creating deep agricultural subsidies; providing mortgage assistance, deposit insurance, and farm credit; and more.

It was an unprecedented burst of lawmaking that promised to give the executive branch previously unheard-of powers. In the jargon of political science, it was a surge in “state capacity”—the ability of a government to implement complex tasks while keeping electoral politics at arm’s length. Roosevelt’s programs remain pillars of the American economy today, enabling modern banking, not to mention the entire individual financial life-cycle from savings through home-buying through retirement.

But, as Katznelson notes, “the central role of Congress was maintained. Even more, the crucial lawmaking role that it undertook offered a practical answer to critics who thought the days of legislative institutions had passed.” And Congress developed new ways to supervise the administrative state it had created.

Of course, Roosevelt would later push even harder against the prevailing order, seeking to pack the Supreme Court and purge congressional Democrats who defied him. But while both efforts were norm-shattering—and also laid down important markers for the continued expansion of the presidency—neither circumvented the legal procedures for making such changes. Both ended in failure.

The Great Demolition

President Trump’s unilateral campaign to dismantle state capacity at home and shake the postwar liberal alliance abroad resembles the first 100 days of the New Deal in terms of its ambition and the backdrop of social upheaval. But the immediate causes and implementing strategy could hardly be more different. Trump’s campaign is based on a grotesquely distorted account of the problems we face, and his solution has not been to summon Congress to action but rather to sideline it.

The American economy has made a strong recovery from the pandemic and has largely beaten off the resulting inflation, and the emergencies Trump purports to be addressing are the stuff of conspiracy theories. The president argues that illegal immigration is not merely a serious problem, but a war-like “invasion,” and that America is beset by an “enemy within” whose redoubts include the media and, crucially, the federal government (or “deep state”) itself.

His approach to this “crisis” has not been to ask Congress for extraordinary powers, but simply to take them: bullying and firing federal workers in defiance of the law, freezing appropriated funds, decapitating and shutting down agencies created by Congress. And the Republican-led Congress, far from objecting to these moves, has largely responded by applauding and approving the nominations of scandalously unqualified individuals to key posts in government. (The reduction of congressional Republicans to mere cheerleaders reflects a key difference between Trump and FDR: Roosevelt was elected with a sweeping mandate that reflected the real crisis the country was in, and his Democrats held overwhelming majorities in Congress. This made the lawful path to a constitutional restructuring much easier than it would be for today’s razor-thin, splintered GOP majority.)

---

---

Of course, the fact that Trump managed to build a stunning political comeback and refashion the GOP in his image is indicative of the real problems facing America. The prosperity generated by the capitalist system that FDR saved in the New Deal has multiplied many times over, but the life satisfaction of average Americans has lagged. Rising premiums to education have benefited the third of Americans with college degrees and the regions where they congregate, leaving the rest of the country feeling abandoned. The blossoming of the internet age has upended recreation and social life as well as traditional working arrangements in industries ranging from retail to media to tax preparation.

Meanwhile, the administrative state built by FDR and expanded upon by every subsequent president has grown sclerotic; interactions with the bureaucracy too often leave Americans deeply frustrated. Enormous problems like undocumented immigration and the opioid epidemic fester for years with no effective solution. In areas ranging from housing to infrastructure to health care to innovation to finance, incumbent interests use the machinery of the state to strangle developments that would redound to the common good.

Donald Trump’s answer seems to be that liberal democracy is not up to the job. According to the logic of the Great Demolition, liberal democracy is largely a front for the machinations of a “woke elite” that has brought us to this sorry state of affairs. It means the “censorship” and sidelining of far-right critics that Vice President J.D. Vance recently bemoaned in Germany. As in the 1930s, Americans are drawn to whispers that only strongman rule can liberate the majority to speak its mind and enact its will.

And so, rather than redirecting or building on the state capacity that prior generations established, Trump’s program is to tear it down to a degree that has no parallel in American history. How far he can take this program remains to be seen, but the facts he has already created on the ground will have lasting consequences.

---

What Erratic Government Does to a Country

---

If it persists, the indiscriminate de-staffing and disempowering of the administrative state will amount to a reduction in both the gasoline and the engine oil available to America’s innovation economy. We will see less of the basic scientific research that leads to the new materials, drugs, and technologies that wealth is built on. We will see a decline in the capacity of American universities to attract top-flight talent, and, eventually, to offer undergraduates world-class education. We will see fewer of the inspections and routine monitoring that give the mass public the confidence to participate in the markets for food, medicine, air travel, the financial system, and other industries. We will eventually see lower innovation, higher prices, and less employment.

It is possible that, just as the New Deal had its largest effect in the long run, the Great Demolition will work its damage only over decades. But it is also possible that we are courting a catastrophe, such as a financial panic or another pandemic, that a better-prepared government could have foreseen.

The Anti-New Deal

The New Deal was transformative not only economically, but also constitutionally. The rise of the administrative state hastened the rise of presidency-centered partisanship and the decline of party organizations that previously constrained the chief executive. Over the long run, that has left us with a deep legitimacy problem. As the political scientist Sidney Milkis puts it, “We are left with the odd situation that both Democrats and Republicans crave the power of the modern presidency, while half the nation hates the president.”

The urgent constitutional task for our times is to resolve this paradox—not to deepen it by maiming Congress and the courts and further subordinating parties to the executive while simultaneously undermining its ability to actually solve problems. The New Deal was a staggeringly ambitious effort to pull Americans back from the abyss. The superpower built on those achievements is now being systematically degraded with the same level of ambition. The effect may be to pull us back from frustrated prosperity to something far worse.

David Dagan is director of academic and editorial affairs at the Niskanen Center, where he edits the journal Hypertext. He writes on liberalism in the face of war and authoritarian populism at The Liberal Fortress.

A version of this essay originally appeared on the website of the Niskanen Center.

---

Follow Persuasion on X, LinkedIn, and YouTube to keep up with our latest articles, podcasts, and events, as well as updates from excellent writers across our network.

And, to receive pieces like this in your inbox and support our work, subscribe below: