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Notes -
Why would they need to? Security will be the ones helping them "lock the new guys out of the building" and "keep[ing] the other guys coming in."
No they won't, because, in a sense, they already have. Even if it's "some other agency," it's still fully-captured, still staffed by the same sort of people, in full agreement. The managers of their pay system will side with them automatically. It's all one big, totally-captured Permanent Bureaucracy, the "separate parts" in lock-step with one another.
How does that solve the problem?
Again, how do they enforce this duty?
So Trump fires a political appointee whose nominal subordinates refuse to obey, and replaces them. What prevents the agency from continuing to #Resist the new Trump appointee?
Who are just as captured and will side with them against a Republican president. The whole point is that nobody is going to obey. Every group with the power to enforce any firings outside the direct appointment level is already part of the #Resistance, and are going to side with their fellow Defenders of Our Democracy against Cheeto Hitler's ordering them to help make him Führer.
How so? Who's going to arrest them?
Let's start here. Trump needs to replace the security at the EPA, because even though they're literal nobodies who were hired on contract from the private sector on a "lowest cost" basis and don't come from anything like the same political milieu as deep state EPA, for some reason, I guess due to having interacted with deep state EPA for long enough on the job, they're riled up into a frenzy and are just refusing to obey orders.
Trump goes to ICE and says, "Some fucking lefties at EPA who want to take your big ass trucks from you need to be taught a lesson, and I'm giving you the authority to take over security at EPA." Do you think that some rednecks from ICE will "obey"? Do you think that the current lowest cost contract security at the EPA will physically fight them?
Obey Trump? No. Because while the rank and file might be "rednecks," they're going to do what their immediate supervisor back in the office tells them, and that guy's another Lefty permanent bureaucrat.
I wish I remember where it was, but I recall about a year or so ago, reading a bit on a "2nd Amendment" forum, where the usual narrative on "door-to-door confiscation" — that "they" can't get the people needed to do it because the cops are 1. on our side and/or 2. too afraid of getting shot, and thus won't do it even if ordered — was raised, and a Chicago cop chimed in to disagree. If "his boss" tells him to go door-to-door taking people's guns? He'll do it, no matter his personal opinion on the 2nd Amendment, because he has kids, and a mortgage, and his pension to think about, and what would happen to you at your work if you told your immediate supervisor that you weren't going to obey an explicit order from him? And besides, the people he'd be confiscating the guns from skew old and law-abiding, and he's patrolled some of Chicago's worst neighborhoods, so he'd rather be doing the door-to-door confiscation over returning to the latter, because he's probably less likely to be shot.
The rank and file guy is going to put concern for his [Gollum voice]precious pension[/Gollum voice] over abstract political principles and a distant (and questionable) authority. "The mountains are high, and the Emperor is far away." Your immediate superior has a lot more power over your job and your pension than a distant, embattled, GOP president. In this scenario, they might as well be meat robots.
And the supervisor at ICE will point out that he has no authority to arrest the EPA guys even if they were doing something wrong — which he doesn't think they are — and so he's not going to issue illegal orders to obstruct Federal employees in performance of their duties, in response to illegal orders from a would-be dictator.
So no, I don't think "current lowest cost contract security at the EPA" will physically fight them, or anyone else, because nobody will be coming.
It doesn't matter who Trump (or DeSantis, or any other Republican president) orders to enforce his attempts to remove the disobedient bureaucracy — FBI, ICE, or anyone else, none of them will obey. Not one. The "separate agencies" are all one big, singular machine, in lockstep, and not one part of it will turn against the rest on orders of a Republican.
You don't think Trump could find one Republican ICE supervisor willing to march on the EPA? One?
It seems like your big mental hurdle is this dogmatic assertion that a Republican president couldn't find even one DC cop to escort an uncooperative bureaucrat out of the office. It's true, if all federal employees are under a magickal gaesa which prevents them from percieving the President, his influence will be limited. But if (as I suspect is more true) the President could convince some dudes with guns from the most red agency he can find that Uncooperative Agency X are disobeying legitimate orders, then somebody is "coming", and now the near-minimum wage contractor mall cops at EPA headquarters have to decide whether they believe in the Invisible Dictatorship of the Experts enough to die for it, or if it might just be better to go home because men with bulletproof vests are shouting at them very angrily.
Well, suppose he does find a few. Then those few guys get outnumbered and outgunned by the FBI, who arrest them for the Federal crime of interfering with a Federal official — the aforementioned uncooperative bureaucrat — in the course of his duties. Because that's what it's called when you try to forcibly drag a non-fired Federal employee out of what is still his place of work.
The FBI? Who work for the president? Whose director is appointed by the president? Who's going to order them to do that?
This gets into the coordination problem again - even if every bureaucrat to a man was a diehard technocrat, if all the bigwigs who give orders according to their technocratic rules are not organizing resistance to the President because those same bigwigs are appointed by him, there's no one with the authority to actually kick off the great #Resistance Coup, even if they'd like to.
Even if they're all fanatics, Joe TrustTheScience, non-ranking FBI agent, can't just declare "I am now the Anti-President, all Experts rally to me!" and then the two million other fanatics who have never heard of him swear feudal homage to him on the spot.
Compare how the Soviet coup attempt in 1991 fell apart. The new junta tried to establish themselves as the new authority on the strength of their communist bona fides, but because communism was all about Party Discipline and Obeying the Great Comrade, military units in Leningrad didn't listen to them because nowhere in the Communist Party Bylaws does it say a coalition of losers and has-beens can become the new dictatorship if they feel like it.
To put it another way, maybe the two million experts can all agree they hate [Republican President], but I doubt they'd all agree on who should be [Unelected Democrat President].
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The supervisor at ICE is also a redneck with a big ass truck.
Frankly, dude, you're delusional. This is a clear hallmark of someone who has lost touch with reality. This is precisely analogous to how everyone on the left worked themselves up into an insane tizzy when Trump became president the first time. "What if he just does this?! What if he just does that?! What if he ignores the supreme court and and and and just orders a nuclear strike because he's grumpy?!" Your delusions about literally millions of people across thousands of agencies being one singular machine in lockstep are exactly on this level of crazy. I'm thinking that you don't need to reason through things on an internet forum; you need meds... or a primetime show on MSNBC.
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