Commentary: Trump’s New Cabinet Signals a Renewed Dedication to the American Experiment in Self-Governance

Donald Trump wasted no time coming up with a list of nominees for his cabinet that will send shockwaves through the D.C. Swamp. Elected mere weeks ago, he’s already completed his list of potential nominees for the 15 secretary positions. Despite speed bumps with a couple of Trump’s nominees, most have been received by the American public with approval. With some notable exceptions, his nominees have mostly signaled a desire to disrupt the status quo, slash and burn the regulatory state, and severely curtail the bureaucracies that have invaded too much of the lives of American citizens.

“He wants a revolution, and I think he’s going to get one.” So said Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. of Donald Trump, in his recent interview with Tucker Carlson. Trump has nominated Kennedy for Secretary of Health and Human Services.

Some of Trump’s nominations rely less on traditional competency in running a large bureaucratic agency, like Linda McMahon at the Department of Education. And that seems to be the point. Not that McMahon lacks qualifications—she’s run a large corporation and a senate campaign, and she held the position atop the Small Business Administration in Trump’s first term. But in the Department of Education, she will be tasked with unwinding a whole bunch of bureaucratic rot that has led to educational outcomes significantly worse than before this cabinet-level agency formed under Jimmy Carter.

(Read more: The Department of Education is Even Worse Than You Think)

As Speaker of the House Mike Johnson (R-LA) put it, the nominees by Trump are “disruptors, by design.” They will not simply govern over the status quo.

The list of nominations has already caused fear and loathing in Washington, D.C. Media reports indicate hundreds of employees at each of the Departments of Defense, Justice, and HHS, along with the CIA and other intelligence arms, have said they will submit their resignations or retire.

Good start.

Crusaders for Smaller Government

“They are not radicals or nihilists,” says Victor Davis Hanson. “Rather, they are reformers who are trying to trim or eliminate bloated government machinery, or return institutions and agencies to their normal functions and original missions. In contrast, the last few years of Biden governance chaos and near insurrection were abnormal—and dangerous.”

Along with the cabinet level nominations, Trump has created an ad hoc Department of Government Efficiency—or DOGE. He’s tasked Vivek Ramaswamy and Elon Musk with rooting out and eliminating waste, fraud, and abuse across the federal government. In a joint piece at the Wall Street Journal explaining their approach, Musk and Ramaswamy write:

Our nation was founded on the basic idea that the people we elect run the government. That isn’t how America functions today. Most legal edicts aren’t laws enacted by Congress but “rules and regulations” promulgated by unelected bureaucrats—tens of thousands of them each year. Most government enforcement decisions and discretionary expenditures aren’t made by the democratically elected president or even his political appointees but by millions of unelected, unappointed civil servants within government agencies who view themselves as immune from firing thanks to civil-service protections.

This is antidemocratic and antithetical to the Founders’ vision. It imposes massive direct and indirect costs on taxpayers. Thankfully, we have a historic opportunity to solve the problem.

The entire piece is worthy of examination, but there’s a central point here: As they put it, “We are assisting the Trump transition team to identify and hire a lean team of small-government crusaders.” Trump seems to have learned some valuable lessons from his first term, in which he admits he started out not knowing how to hire trustworthy standard-bearers in important positions.

Trump’s picks share another trait: much more fealty to the Constitution of the United States. Musk and Ramaswamy said it plainly in their WSJ piece: The current administrative state does not match the vision of the Founders. Congress has failed to do its job and provide meaningful oversight. The vision for DOGE includes providing a needed impetus from the outside to spur Congress and the executive branch to action to rein in the abuses of the federal government.

Time to Use the Constitution to Reform Government

That fealty to the Constitution takes another form, as well. Many of his picks have publicly endorsed the Convention of States project to propose amendments to the Constitution. Article V of the U.S. Constitution allows for two methods of amending our foundational document, via Congress or via a convention.

The prospective members of Trump’s administration that have prominently endorsed the Convention of States project include:

• Vice President-elect JD Vance
• Senator Marco Rubio (R-FL), nominee for Secretary of State
• Pete Hegseth, nominee for Secretary of Defense
• Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL), nominee for Attorney General (withdrawn)
• Vivek Ramaswamy, DOGE
• Former Governor Mike Huckabee (R-AR), nominee for Ambassador to Israel
• Karoline Leavitt, announced as Trump’s Press Secretary

In addition to these nominees, several other Trump connections have endorsed an Article V Convention. Trump nominated Tulsi Gabbard for Director of National Intelligence; Gabbard’s father introduced the legislation to apply for a Convention of States in the Hawaii legislature. Dr. Ben Carson, who served in Trump’s first term as Secretary of Health and Human Services (HHS), has endorsed the idea as well. Mark Meadows, who served as Trump’s chief of staff in his first term, also endorsed a Convention of States. And Ken Cuccinelli, who served as Deputy Secretary of Homeland Security under Trump, has endorsed the idea.

The Convention of States Project Facebook page put together several clips of these prominent Trump supporters explaining why they want to see a Convention of States:

On the blog of the Convention of States Project, Heritage Foundation president (and Convention endorser) Kevin Roberts says the incoming Trump-Vance administration has thought about the prospect as a long-term compliment to their short-term goals of slashing the federal government:

Mark Meckler, the founder and president of the Convention of States Project, addressed the need for an Article V convention in a video. Meckler noted Trump’s positive actions in his first term got completely undone in the first five days of the Biden-Harris administration. The back and forth between presidents points out the need for constitutional amendments to permanently enshrine the radical changes Trump and America First voters wish to see in the federal government.

How a Convention of States Works

Many Americans don’t realize that two methods of amending the Constitution exist, because we’ve only ever successfully amended it through Congress. But Article V of the Constitution lays out a second method, by calling a convention of the states via applications by the state legislatures [emphasis added]:

The Congress, whenever two thirds of both Houses shall deem it necessary, shall propose Amendments to this Constitution, or, on the Application of the Legislatures of two thirds of the several States, shall call a Convention for proposing Amendments, which, in either Case, shall be valid to all Intents and Purposes, as Part of this Constitution, when ratified by the Legislatures of three fourths of the several States, or by Conventions in three fourths thereof, as the one or the other Mode of Ratification may be proposed by the Congress; Provided that no Amendment which may be made prior to the Year One thousand eight hundred and eight shall in any Manner affect the first and fourth Clauses in the Ninth Section of the first Article; and that no State, without its Consent, shall be deprived of its equal Suffrage in the Senate.

Note the Framers of the Constitution provided both methods of ratifying amendments that would hold equal legal weight. It would take two thirds, or the legislatures of 34 states, to pass a resolution applying for a convention. Congress must then set the convention—and then let the convention itself propose amendments. Those amendments must match the purpose of the application for the convention. In other words, all applications for a convention must have a similar purpose, and the amendment(s) that emerge must match that subject. After the amendments are proposed, it takes three fourths of the states—38 in total—to ratify an amendment.

One can easily see the Framers set the bar intentionally high for adding to the Constitution. Despite that high bar, they also foresaw a time in America’s future in which despots would take over and loyalty to our founding principles would erode. That’s why they included the means to fix an out-of-control government in the foundation of our government.

In the Pocket Guide to an Article V Convention, Meckler lays out how it would work:

Who gets to decide what’s best for you and your family? Should you have the power to decide? Or should some out-of-touch bureaucrat in Washington, D.C., have the power to decide? It’s time we shift the national conversation away from what government should do to “fix” our problems. It’s time we decide for ourselves whether the federal government should be involved at all in matters that affect us personally. No matter the political issue of the day, the establishment in Washington loves to deliberate on what they will do. They want the American people to ponder, “What will they decide?” What will Congress decide about health care? Taxes? Education? Fiscal responsibility? Instead of focusing on the better question: Who should decide? Should the government decide what to do about your health care, or should you and your doctor decide? Should D.C. bureaucrats decide what to do about education, or should you, your spouse, and your children’s teachers decide? Should nine Supreme Court Justices decide what constitutes a marriage, or should you, your community, and your state decide?

Trump 2.0 and a Rededication to Self-Governance

The men who fought the War for Independence and set up our system of governance believed we didn’t need a monarchy or a dictator—that free people have every right and ability to govern themselves. What has evolved over the past century-plus in our federal government is an affront to that concept. The American people understand this instinctively, which explains why they’ve elected Donald Trump at least twice to break through the regulatory state.

President Trump has deliberately put in place disruptors in his next administration—men and women who will oversee the dismantling of ossified bureaucracies, persecution of political enemies, and unelected rulemaking apparatuses. These structures are antithetical to America’s founding principles, antithetical to personal liberty, and antithetical to common sense.

Trump instinctively understands how the Swamp undermines America’s greatness. He proposes to put a cleanup crew in place to accomplish both the short-term and long-term fixes America needs to return to its constitutional foundations.

(Read more: A Fair and Balanced Look at How Trump’s Victory Destroyed Corporate Media Forever)