At a time when Americans worry — with good reason — that the state apparatus is being used to punish political enemies of those in power, a government employee has just been caught doing what many fear has become a practice ordinary: politicizing the use of government. power. A Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) official who ordered workers to deny aid to Trump supporters affected by Hurricane Milton has made a strong case for those of us who want to keep government small and remote to minimize the danger that represents him.

When officials only help their political friends

“More than 22,000 FEMA employees every day adhere to FEMA’s core values ​​and are dedicated to helping people before, during and after disasters, often sacrificing time with their own families to help disaster survivors,” FEMA Administrator Deanne Criswell RECORDED in a November 9 press release. “Recently, a FEMA employee departed from these values ​​to advise her survivor assistance team not to go to homes with yard signs supporting President-elect Trump.”

Criswell added, “This employee has been terminated and we have referred the matter to the Office of Special Counsel.”

Criswell was responding to a story broken from Daily Wireto Leif Le Mahieu, that a FEMA supervisor named Marn’i Washington “told workers in a message to ‘avoid homes that advertise Trump'” as they canvassed Lake Placid, Fla., to identify residents who may qualify for federal aid” after Hurricane Milton. The supervisor “conveyed this message both verbally and in a group chat used by the support team.”

The Daily Wire The story included screenshots of the directives to FEMA employees, though no further evidence is needed after Criswell acknowledged the point and fired the supervisor. The question now is, if one supervisor issued such orders, how many others did the same without being caught? If you ask the American people, they suspect that such political weaponry is common.

Low public trust

In February 2024, after years of allegations of abuse of police, regulatory and prosecution powers by government officials, the Harvard/CAPS/Harris polls asked Americans about the issue. Asked: “Do you think today’s Democrats are engaging in racketeering — a campaign that uses government and the legal system in biased ways to eliminate a political opponent?” 58% of respondents said yes. The “yes” vote attracted 81% of Republicans, but also 50% of independents and even 42% of Democrats.

In December 2022, months after the FBI raided former President Donald Trump’s former (and now future) Mar-a-Lago estate for tampering with classified documents, only half of respondents expressed a lot of trust in the FBI, according to a survey by the McCourtney Institute for Democracy/APM Research Lab. Fifty-one percent of Republicans said the FBI is biased against Trump, while 24% of Democrats said it is biased against the left. Belief that “FBI agents are fair” was lowest among the youngest respondents at 31 percent, rising with age to 50 percent among the oldest cohort.

A history of political weapons

The use of government agencies as political weapons is not new. Over a decade ago, the Internal Revenue Service faced allegations (confirmed by the Treasury’s Inspector General for Tax Administration) that it targeted “Tea Party” groups for unfair treatment when they applied for tax-exempt status.

“The Obama administration is not the first to face criticism for using the Internal Revenue Service as a political hit squad,” Christian Science Monitor noted in a 2013 story on the subject. “Since the advent of the federal income tax about a century ago, several presidents — or their zealous underlings — have directed the IRS to turn its formidable police powers on political rivals.

Also, “the FBI … has placed more emphasis on domestic dissent than on organized crime and, some say, has let its efforts against foreign spies suffer because of the time it spends vetting American protest groups,” the Committee said Church in the US Senate. claimed in 1976.

Compared to the havoc wreaked by the attention of prosecutors, FBI agents, and tax collectors, the politically motivated neglect of a FEMA supervisor seems like small potatoes. But it’s maddening for taxpayers to support government agencies that then selectively spend those funds on supporters of the powers that be. When a government official is caught denying services to opponents of the current administration, concerns inevitably arise that the rot runs much deeper. It is perfectly fair to wonder how many American taxpayers have suffered delays, neglect or abuse from petty, politicized bureaucrats whose salaries are funded by people they despise.

Therefore, in denying aid to Floridians whose politics she loathed, Mar’i Washington did the American people a service by politicizing her response to a hurricane. If something as seemingly removed from partisan bickering as disaster relief can be conditioned on espousing the “correct” political views, then any government service can be weaponized to help the friends of the powerful and harm those with divergent views.

If you can’t trust the government, shrink it

The solution is not to be found in a changing of the bureaucratic guard. Vice President-elect JD Vance wants to “seize the administrative state for our purposes” and replace existing bureaucrats with “our people,” as he he commented in a 2021 interview. That would certainly ensure that Trump supporters would benefit from government services — but only until political power changes hands again. Meanwhile, critics of the new administration, or government in general, would likely continue to be targeted by tax-funded political operatives, with nothing changed except the identities of those who will get the leg up.

It is too much to ask that government agencies be depoliticized in the way they operate. Government is essentially a political entity. We live in an age where the devotees of the dominant political tribes they hate each other and look for every opportunity to to harm their enemies. It is impossible to believe that the political factions of this country are capable of fairly administering the great powers of government without wielding them against enemies, when this was beyond the reach of their predecessors in less trying times.

Now, as always, the answer to abusive government is Less government. Instead of giving the Washington Marn’i of the world more power with which to help friends and hurt enemies, they should have less to do. Or they can work for independent organizations that can’t force people they don’t like to fund them. Government agencies and officials cannot be trusted, so we should give them less to do.