OPINION:
The deep state has decided that President Biden is “too big to fail.”
Americans first heard this phrase during the Great Recession, when the federal government bailed out big banks with political connections. But today, Washington is bailing out Mr. Biden’s reelection campaign. The bureaucrats in the nation’s capital don’t fear the economy’s collapse, but rather what would happen to their own power if Donald Trump were elected president. These unelected yet extremely powerful officials are using every lever of power to register and turn out Biden voters — an unprecedented strategy that is as dangerous as it is undemocratic.
The deep state is terrified for good reason. Mr. Trump has promised to dismantle the permanent bureaucracy from top to bottom, which means hundreds of thousands — if not millions — of bureaucrats could soon find themselves out of a job. For them, stopping Mr. Trump is a matter of self-preservation, but it’s also a tall order. Given Mr. Biden’s faltering health, economically disastrous policies and record of global chaos, he needs help overcoming one of the worst records in generations, reflected in his historic unpopularity.
But the vast federal government may have the strength to overcome Mr. Biden’s weakness. Shortly after his election, he signed an executive order that transformed every federal agency — there are more than 400 — into voter-turnout machines. Through Freedom of Information Act requests, the Foundation for Government Accountability, a conservative think tank, has uncovered documents showing how the deep state is aiding Mr. Biden’s reelection strategy.
The Biden administration tried to stop us from getting these documents. We asked the Department of Justice for information about the implementation of the president’s executive order, but DOJ gave us only a handful of redacted documents. All we could tell was that the White House hosted a “listening session” with agency representatives and far-left groups in 2021 to craft plans to carry out Mr. Biden’s executive order.
After we requested more details, DOJ stonewalled us for more than a year, arguing that revealing these documents would “confuse” the public. The federal courts had to intervene, yet it still took DOJ until this spring to finally give us its notes about what happened in the meeting.
We were shocked by what we found. A who’s who of far-left groups — the American Civil Liberties Union, the Demos think tank, the Sentencing Project, the League of Women Voters and beyond — gave the Biden administration a blueprint for turning the bureaucracy into a powerful reelection tool. The groups told agencies how to set up voter infrastructure in jails and prisons, how to make voter registration mandatory at naturalization ceremonies, and how to turn all agencies that provide public assistance into get-out-the-vote machines.
DOJ even documented an immigration group supporting voter registration efforts for noncitizens. And the bureaucracy was told to help federal employees “take the day off” come Election Day and help election workers. That’s nearly 3 million workers — the majority of them liberal Democrats. As one leftist group said in the White House meeting, voter registration is “just the first hurdle.” After that, the goal is turning out voters and ultimately controlling the outcome of the election.
The bureaucracy immediately swung into action, recognizing the chance to protect itself and prevent Donald Trump from retaking power. Since 2021, the permanent bureaucracy has moved to implement essentially everything those far-left groups demanded and more.
The Department of Health and Human Services is sending voter registration information to every enrollee in Healthcare.gov — more than 21 million people. The Social Security Administration is touting voter registration at more than 1,200 offices nationwide. The Department of Agriculture is telling welfare recipients how to vote, as is the Department of Housing and Urban Development. The Department of Education is paying work-study participants to turn out voters.
At agency after agency, the deep state is almost certainly doing even more outside the public eye. And sure enough, the Biden administration has empowered federal workers to take off work to run Election Day itself.
Perhaps most troubling is that agencies have empowered many groups in that 2021 meeting to register voters on the federal government’s behalf. There is no oversight, raising serious doubts that left-wing groups will follow state and federal election laws, including those related to voter identification and noncitizen voting. The federal government has outsourced voter drives to groups that are likely to turn out left-wing voters and maybe even bend the rules to keep their preferred candidate in office.
These are the actions of a permanent bureaucracy that desperately wants to keep its control over Washington and ultimately America. President Biden is their vehicle for maintaining power — a figurehead they view as too big to fail. But the real power lies with Americans, who aren’t as small and insignificant as the deep state thinks. The permanent bureaucracy may be strong, but the voters may prove stronger.
• Stewart Whitson is senior director of federal affairs at the Foundation for Government Accountability.
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