Letters | What Donald Trump really wants with US government shutdown: it’s not the border wall
- The president has shown disdain for many of the agencies affected by the longest-ever US government shutdown. He is draining ‘the swamp’
President Donald Trump’s intentional assault on federal agencies is a direct result of his promise on the campaign trail to “drain the swamp”. On December 22, multiple departments of the US federal government began a partial shutdown. Think about it. When has the president shown any of these departments the respect and support that they deserve?
In Trump’s administration, the Department of Agriculture has been treated as a pawn in a reckless trade war with China. The Department of Commerce is a body riddled with controversy and irrelevant to Trump’s primary economic goals.
The Department of Homeland Security has come under intense fire for its handling of the migrant crisis at the southern border, with Trump himself threatening to fire the director more than once. In fact, he has continuously authorised executive-level actions that directly contradict the congressional mandate of the department.
The departments of Housing and Urban Development and the Interior are irrelevant to Trump. His contest with the Department of Justice has been well-publicised. And if ever there was a federal department gutted from the inside out by an incoming US president, it was the Environmental Protection Agency in 2016-17.
On December 27, limited staffing at the Securities and Exchange Commission started affecting the reviews of company stock offerings, as well as mergers and acquisitions.