The creeping cost of incompetence
Malicious capitalism is good business for those with the cash and stomach for it
Currently, the United States has no FEMA administrator. The U.S. also doesn’t have a Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. NASA is being run by an acting administrator, Janet Petro, who at least has space and engineering experience. USAID is stewarded by its chief information officer in an acting capacity. Michael Rigas is the acting head of the GSA, while simultaneously serving as the U.S. Deputy Secretary of State for Management and Resources. The previous GSA administrator, Stephen Ehikian, stayed on through September 1 as deputy, before leaving for the private sector.
The biggest cost of this lack of competent care is economic, and the biggest payer is most of us Americans, while rich foreigners, kings, and tech bros stuff their stockings full. Welcome to the gilded age.
By law, the head of FEMA must have experience in emergency management. The last person to run the agency, David Richardson, resigned after a mere six months. He did not have prior experience in emergency management, and in fact also held a position with the Department of Homeland Security as assistant secretary in the Countering Weapons of Mass Destruction Office. The Trump administration named Karen Evans as the new administrator, effective December 1, providing the Senate approves. While Evans has solid policy and government chops, she does not have emergency management experience, other than her role as an “adviser” for the last five months, after her nomination as Under Secretary of Homeland Security for Management was withdrawn in July.
The center-of-attention-in-the-news ICE has not had a Senate-confirmed chief since before President Donald Trump’s first term. Sarah Saldaña served under President Barack Obama until just before Trump was inaugurated. At first, Caleb Vitello, a long-serving deportation officer, was named to head the agency, but lasted just one month. Todd Lyons, another ERO veteran, assumed the acting title. Chuck Ezell ran OPM as the acting director until July 15, when Scott Kupor, a venture capitalist, took over. At least Kupor was confirmed by the Senate.
The Department of Justice is stuffed with Trump loyalists. From Attorney General Pam Bondi on down, the rule is if you had anything to do with prior cases against the current president, your days are numbered (or you’re already gone). But this has left a terrible hole in competent investigators and attorneys. It may be the only silver lining in Trump’s retribution campaign that the lawyers prosecuting James Comey are more incompetent than the ones who originally went after Trump. The main sin of Comey and crew, along with Jack Smith, was that they swung for the fences and overreached. The sins of Lindsey Halligan, Trump’s personally chosen vessel to go after Comey, are ones of simple incompetence, unless she face-planted on purpose, in which case it was a failure of ethics—possibly both.
Federal District Judge Michael Nachmanoff picked Halligan apart in what the New York Times called an “excruciatingly awkward hearing” in his courtroom in Alexandria, Virginia. The judge got Halligan to admit that the grand jury never saw the final version of the indictment against Comey. She only showed it to the foreperson, who signed it. This will likely lead to motions by Comey’s attorneys to dismiss the case. Details emerged regarding previous DOJ attorneys on the case and memos describing their reasons for not bringing charges. Comey claims this prosecution is vindictive on its face, and Judge Nachmanoff may well rule in agreement.
The star sentences in the NYT’s description of the hearing speak for themselves: “The government’s team consisted of Ms. Halligan, a former White House aide and personal lawyer to Mr. Trump who is working on the first criminal case of her career. She was accompanied by Mr. Lemons and another assistant U.S. attorney, Gabriel Diaz, both of whom have experience with criminal proceedings but were brought in from a U.S. attorney’s office in North Carolina after no one in the Alexandria office would take the job.” (Emphasis mine.)
While the Trump administration has enjoyed some success at the Supreme Court, there’s been turnover at the Solicitor General office. D. John Sauer took over the position after being confirmed by the Senate in early April. Sauer served as a federal prosecutor, and was the Solicitor General of Missouri for eight years prior to his nomination. He is a member of the Federalist Society and a magna cum laude graduate of Harvard Law. The most prolific deputy solicitor, Edwin S. Kneedler, retired on April 30, after his 160th and final argument, receiving a rare (even unprecedented) standing ovation from the Justices in session.
The Office of the Inspector General’s org chart is dated July 14, 2025 and shows the top position as “Vacant”. DOJ’s technology leadership stack has several “acting” CIOs (some, like Dung “Zoom” Phan, at OIG, are listed as “acting” on the org chart but not on the CIO list). The Bureau of Prisons and Antitrust Division both have acting CIOs, along with the Executive Office for Immigration Review. There’s plenty of bench depth in the federal workforce, but with layoffs, attrition, and uncertainty, the brain drain is evident.
Secretary of Defense War Pete Hegseth measures competence in pull-ups, pushups, and miles, not strategic sense or mental capacity. Looking good in uniform, and being able to kill unquestioningly on command is the order of the day at the Pentagon, which is now all but empty of journalists covering the puzzle palace. This has led to chaos, according to multiple reports. Some former officials and officers are practically begging for Hegseth to fail. The list of purged high-level officers is troubling to an almost frightening level.
Joint Chiefs Chair Gen. C.Q. Brown, Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Lisa Franchetti, Coast Guard Commandant Adm. Linda Fagan, and Air Force second in command, Gen. James Slife: all gone in February. In April, senior adviser Dan Caldwell, deputy chief of staff Darin Selnick and Colin Carroll, chief of staff to the deputy Defense secretary, were all fired. Hegseth’s Chief of Staff, Joe Kasper, left in late April for a lobbying gig.
These were joined this year by Gen. Tim Haugh, former head of the NSA and Cyber Command, Vice Adm. Nancy Lacore, chief of Navy Reserve, Vice Adm. Shoshana Chatfield, who worked with NATO, and Rear Adm. Jamie Sands, who ran Naval Special Warfare Command (think SEALs). Gen. David Allvin left his position as Air Force Chief of Staff after serving only two of his four year appointment. Doug Beck resigned his position as head of the Defense Innovation Unit.
The National Weather Service, after being mercilessly cut, began hiring again in August. At NOAA, in all areas, cuts have devastated programs like the Fisheries’ science centers. Even if the Trump administration reverses course and tries to fill these positions, who would take the jobs? And if the jobs are filled, would those people be as competent as the ones who left for early retirement or greener pastures?
One of the most safety-related jobs in the country, air traffic controllers are in short supply. Congress (and CNN) have even played with the idea that AI could help fill the gap. (No.) The Trump administration has, to its credit, committed to some training help to bolster the number of controllers. The FAA has worked with a list of colleges to provide training that would allow the bottleneck of the FAA Academy to be bypassed. The problem isn’t with desire, it’s with leadership and the political system that’s been plaguing our government. As the old Yiddish saying goes, the fish stinks at the head.
The government can recover from bad politics. It can even recover from ethical lapses. It recovered from Watergate. The military can recover from bad doctrine. It recovered from the Robert McNamara days of body counts and carpet bombing. It recovered from Vietnam, and from the western NATO malaise of the 1970s and 80s (think: Stripes). The Department of Justice and FBI can recover from capricious management and power plays. Remember, the FBI was run by one autocrat, J. Edgar Hoover, for 37 years (or 48, depending on if you count the BOI years). But the loss of professional competence, and the actions of the incompetent which must be unwound, coupled with ethical, management, and doctrinal lapses, spells a kind of corruption that will be difficult to grapple with, in its scope, and its depth.
We’re less than a year into the Trump 2.0 administration. Just think how far the rot can creep in three more years, if things don’t change. The country is just beginning to taste the fruit of incompetence. We’re seeing inflation, instability, trade issues, job issues, and lawfare. It’s possible that the president could begin bringing in more and better people, but given what happened in his first term, it’s unlikely.
It’s possible that nutjobs like RFK Jr. will burn themselves out, but who will replace them? It’s possible that the position of Surgeon General, which has been filled by Denise Hinton, a nurse, in an acting capacity since Trump took office, can find a doctor willing to serve (and competent to serve). It’s possible someone other than the acting head of the CDC, Jim O’Neill, can take on the role. O’Neill worked for Peter Theil, and was active in various therapeutic companies, the latest focusing on Alzheimers. We don’t have a medical doctor as the Surgeon General, and the head of the CDC has Bachelors and Masters degrees in humanities (think: art, philosophy, literature). We don’t have a general or high-level DOD wonk as SecDef; we have a former Fox News reporter whose highest rank was major in the U.S. Army.
It’s possible that competent lawyers will fill top positions at the Justice Department. It’s possible that our military will not be purged over and over for political alignment. It’s possible our president will change. But is it likely? I’m not betting a penny on it. (Oh, there are no more new pennies.)
The smart money is going somewhere in the space bordered by solipsism, sycophancy, and catastrophism. The smart money is betting against government competence before 2029. The smart money isn’t flowing out of America, it’s flowing into the cracks where incompetence creates business opportunities, and corruption creates cash cows. Net treasury international capital (TIC) data shows an inflow of $187.1 billion in August and $190.1 billion in September. Most foreign money is flowing in, not out. Incompetence has a market, if one has the money and the stomach for it.
Meanwhile, the rest of America, including most of us who don’t have lots of free cash flow to burn, and don’t have the wherewithal to throw $1 trillion at the U.S. in exchange for F-35 fighters and Abrams tanks, will suffer inflation, job insecurity, and various strains of worry, especially immigrants (even the legal ones). This is MAGA. This is what got voted in to office in 2024. The fish stinks at the head.
The creeping cost of incompetence is not a net zero venture. It’s 99 percent on the not-ultra-rich, with the 1 percent cleaning up. If you’re good with that kind of malicious capitalism, then go ahead and call everyone else a communist. But don’t expect a handout when the creep hits your door, or your job, or your family.
Hey, but don’t worry. The Democrats will have the next 16 years after 2028 to unravel this mess, because that’s the real gift MAGA is wrapping today for Republicans.
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