It took 250 years to build what Trump is trying to undo

President Donald Trump’s effort to do as much as possible as quickly as possible to remake the federal government would gut agencies that have existed for decades or longer. His larger plans would remake elements of the government infrastructure that have been around for centuries. From Benjamin Franklin to John F. Kennedy and Richard Nixon to Barack Obama, it took all of US history to build up some of what Trump has talked about trying to tear down, privatize or remake. And that’s not counting the reforms he plans for safety net programs such as Social Security and Medicare, which he says, without evidence, are full of fraud, but which are also on objectively unsustainable paths. US Postal Service The beginnings of the US Postal Service were in place before the Declaration of Independence was signed. Benjamin Franklin was the first postmaster general, and the ability to share information was key to the principle of free speech underpinning the American democratic experiment. Now the USPS is an independent agency of the executive branch and part of the country’s infrastructure overseen by a bipartisan board of governors. More recently, the Postal Service has struggled to remain solvent as modes of communication changed. But while it may lose billions each year – $9.5 billion in the most recent fiscal year – the cost-effective method of shipping it provides is the backbone of many modern businesses. Nearly all USPS financing – $78.5 billion annually – is not from taxpayers but from users of the system. USPS was turned into an independent government agency by Congress in 1970, but Trump has floated the idea of placing it under the Department of Commerce and exerting more control. Both he and Elon Musk have mused about privatizing it. The postmaster general, appointed during Trump’s first term, resigned in March. Internal Revenue Service It was during the Civil War when a temporary income tax was imposed and the Office of the Commissioner of Internal Revenue under the Department of the Treasury was established. The permanent federal income tax was not established until 1913, when the 16th Amendment was ratified and gave Congress the power to tax individual and corporate income. The Bureau of Internal Revenue was rebranded as the Internal Revenue Service, or IRS, in 1953. Now, Trump wants to tax imports through tariffs and pivot away from the taxation of income, although it’s not clear the math will work. Rather than the IRS, Trump wants income generated through tariffs, or taxes on imported goods, to go through an External Revenue Service. Multiple acting commissioners of the IRS resigned in the opening months of Trump’s term rather than share IRS data with immigration officials. 14th Amendment In the 1857 Dred Scott case, probably the US Supreme Court’s worst-ever decision, the high court ruled that no descendant of an enslaved person could be a US citizen. The 14th Amendment, ratified in 1868, sought to correct that wrong by declaring that everyone born in the US would be a citizen. Today, Trump sees that promise of citizenship as a magnet for illegal immigration and wants to bar birthright citizenship from US-born children of undocumented immigrants. The Supreme Court will have to weigh in. National Institutes of Health The US government has been involved in health research in various ways since early in the country’s history, but the National Institutes of Health was officially designated in 1930 with passage of the Ransdell Act – and today it is the bedrock of scientific research in the United States, supporting all manner of projects. The Trump administration’s effort to cut or pause hundreds of grants is affecting universities and researchers across the country. KFF Health News documented 780 grants for research that were cut in whole or in part between February 28 and March 28, although there have been multiple lawsuits. Layoffs and firings at NIH combined with new conditions placed on grants regarding the study of marginalized groups suggest scientific funding is at a turning point in the US. The White House budget blueprint for 2026 would slash NIH funding by nearly $18 billion and consolidate its 27 research institutes into eight entities. Voice of America The brainchild of President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s speechwriter, Voice of America first started broadcasting during World War II, combating Nazi propaganda. It was reinvigorated during the Cold War as the capitalist West squared off with the communist bloc and the agency’s editorial mission was formalized in a 1976 law. Today, the VOA website professes to push “a consistent message of truth, hope and inspiration.” It provides American-style free speech and journalism to the world. Trump’s administration has targeted international broadcasting as unnecessary “frivolous expenditures” and sought to dismantle the agency that oversees Voice of America. Courts have intervened for now. Kari Lake, Trump’s senior presidential adviser now overseeing VOA, announced in May a partnership with far-right One America News Network to provide newsfeed services. NATO There’s always a question about how Trump feels about the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). The White House will say he supports the alliance, formed at the outset of the Cold War as a counterweight to the Soviet Union. But then Trump will complain that other NATO members are not spending enough on defense. Trump has a generally positive relationship with Vladimir Putin and has suggested the Russian president really invaded Ukraine in order to keep Ukraine from joining NATO. Sweden and Finland joined the alliance after Ukraine was invaded. Trump’s mercurial approach to NATO has other members assuming the US will take less of a leadership role. Even if the US remains in NATO during the Trump administration, the relationship feels different under his watch. Department of Health and Human Services What is today known as the Department of Health and Human Services was created as a Cabinet-level agency called Health, Education and Welfare in 1953. A sprawling organization that oversees everything from health programs and nutrition assistance to food safety, HHS is also up for big changes. Under Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the agency has launched an ambitious restructuring plan to consolidate the 28 divisions of HHS into 15, including the Administration for a Healthy America. While the plan envisions a less bureaucratic and bloated HHS, 19 states and the District of Columbia have sued, arguing the consolidation will endanger public health. HHS cuts could hit in many ways. In the White House Budget, Trump calls for ending assistance programs funded through HHS like the Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program, or LIHEAP, which has been helping low-income families since 1981. It currently gives utility assistance to 6 million households. Department of Justice Civil Rights Division After then-Sen. Lyndon B. Johnson broke a Southern filibuster and President Dwight D. Eisenhower signed the 1957 Civil Rights Act into law, the Department of Justice created a special division to make sure elements of that law were carried out. The division enforces federal statutes prohibiting discrimination on the basis of protected characteristics such as race, sex or religion. Now, the Trump administration is pivoting the division away from its historic focus on fighting discrimination against minority groups to one dedicated to rooting out anti-Christian bias, antisemitism and what the new head of the division called “woke ideology,” among other things. Multiple career lawyers have been fired and there will be an exodus of more than 200 others in September, which means the Civil Rights Division under Trump has already been remade. US Agency for International Development Established in 1961 by John F. Kennedy with support from Congress, USAID is meant to push US interests through soft power, including humanitarian aid. Efforts to fight AIDS in Africa, for example, have been funneled through USAID. In 2023, Congress appropriated $40 billion for the agency, which is a lot of money on the world stage, but a small fraction of the trillions spent by the US government each year. Trump and Musk labeled the spending waste and fraud, citing some programs they disagreed with, especially those with a focus on gender. Dismantling USAID was among the first and most visible actions undertaken by the Department of Government Efficiency. Some spending on lifesaving aid has been transferred to the State Department. Trump’s authority to essentially end the agency will ultimately go before courts. Equal Employment Opportunity hiring The Trump administration has made a very big deal of ending diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) programs in the federal government. But it also went much further. In addition to revoking diversity-focused executive orders signed by presidents Bill Clinton and Barack Obama, Trump reached further back in history. On his first day in office Trump rescinded an executive order first signed in 1965 by President Lyndon B. Johnson that said the government should, more than simply guarantee nondiscrimination, provide “equal opportunity in Federal employment for all qualified persons, to prohibit discrimination in employment because of race, creed, color, or national origin.” Trump’s order claims to restore “merit-based opportunity.” National Endowment for the Arts and National Endowment for the Humanities These separate, independent agencies were founded as part of Johnson’s Great Society agenda. They are meant to foster the arts in the US – everything from ballet and film to folk arts. It led to the creation of the American Film Institute, for instance. The National Endowment for the Arts was intended to support artists and programs with grants throughout the country and the National Endowment for the Humanities supports institutions like museums and libraries. For a good example of the kind of humanities research being cut, read this report on the $1.6 million in federal funds for projects meant to capture and digitize stories of the systemic abuse of generations of indigenous children in boarding schools at the hands of the US government. Trump wants to exert more control over which cultural pursuits the government backs. A newly constituted board appointed by Trump elected him as chair of the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, DC, for instance, and House Republicans have proposed spending more than $250 million to rebuild that structure. For comparison, the National Endowments each got $207 million in fiscal year 2024. Trump’s budget proposal includes both the National Endowments for the Arts and Humanities in a list of “small agency eliminations.” Other agencies Trump suggested for elimination include the US Institute of Peace, which he has already sought to close, and the US Interagency Council on Homelessness. Both were created by Congress during Ronald Reagan’s presidency. National Public Radio and Public Broadcasting Service Trump has directed the Corporation for Public Broadcasting to stop providing federal funds for both NPR and PBS. Each of those organizations has roots in the 1967 Public Broadcasting Act. In his first term, Trump also tried to zero out funding for CPB, PBS and NPR, but Congress always replaced it. The organizations get about $535 million in federal funding each year, which goes to both programming and the more than 1,200 local radio and 350 local TV stations that blanket the country and are the backbone of the service. Congress created CPB to be independent of the president’s authority, but Trump has demanded his administration investigate NPR and PBS for discrimination. Environmental Protection Agency When Congress and President Richard Nixon created the Environmental Protection Agency in 1970, it was meant to, well, protect the environment. Now, Administrator Lee Zeldin has announced that the agency under his watch will be focused on the economy and undoing regulation, particularly with regard to the changing climate. “We are driving a dagger straight into the heart of the climate change religion to drive down cost of living for American families, unleash American energy, bring auto jobs back to the US and more,” he said in a video statement. Included in the changes at EPA will be the end of the Energy Star program, in place since the George H.W. Bush administration in 1992, whereby appliances that met certain efficiency standards are marked with a consumer-facing star. Monetary system The world economy runs on the US dollar, a fact that was solidified by Nixon in 1971, when he officially severed the dollar from the value of gold. There have been periodic tweaks, such as in 1985 in the so-called Plaza Accord, when a group of countries agreed at the Plaza Hotel in New York to work together to devalue the dollar. Trump’s economic team – in the form of both Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and Council of Economic Advisers chairman Stephen Miran – now want to further reorder the world economy. Trump talks about his tariffs leading to a manufacturing renaissance, but Miran recently wrote about his desire to somewhat devalue the dollar. Tariffs are meant to lead to trade deals, which would then, in theory, balance the world economy and make it cheaper for the US to finance its massive debt. It’s a complicated and speculative series of actions that could also lead to serious risks for the US economy and could threaten the dollar’s current status as the world’s reserve currency. Impoundment Control Act Trump says presidents should have more power over how the US government spends its money. That’s despite a 1974 law, the Impoundment Control Act, passed by Congress in response to Nixon refusing to spend money appropriated by lawmakers that he opposed. Trump announced plans to challenge the law before taking office, setting up an ultimate showdown with the Supreme Court. Department of Education While it has roots in the federal government that date back to the 1860s, the current Department of Education was created by Congress and President Jimmy Carter in 1979. Multiple Republican presidents have talked about abolishing the department, but Trump is going the furthest. His education secretary, Linda McMahon, has been tasked with winding down the department to the fullest extent allowed by law. Other agencies would take over department functions like the oversight of student loans. States would control their own education systems and Trump has said he wants to give more money directly to them, although much of the department’s function is to distribute federal funds. There is also some irony here since Trump has threatened federal support for schools that continue to pursue diversity programs. Federal Emergency Management Agency The federal government has been helping with disaster relief since 1803, but FEMA as we know it today was not created until 1979. Now it responds to numerous major disasters each year – more than 100 in 2023 – and doles out billions in federal disaster funding. Trump would like to change things. “I say you don’t need FEMA, you need a good state government,” Trump said while touring Los Angeles wildfire damage in January. His administration has denied requests for disaster aid for Arkansas, North Carolina, West Virginia and Washington. Roughly 20% of FEMA’s staff are expected to take a voluntary buyout from the Trump administration’s ad hoc Department of Government Efficiency. The acting FEMA administrator, Cameron Hamilton, told lawmakers on Wednesday that he didn’t think dismantling the agency was in the best interest of the American people. He was escorted out of FEMA headquarters and fired the next day. Consumer Financial Protection Bureau Created in the wake of the Great Recession, the CFPB is meant to look out for American consumers. As CNN’s Jeanne Sahadi describes it, “The broad purpose of the CFPB is to protect consumers from financial abuses and to serve as the central agency for consumer financial protection authorities.” Republicans broadly opposed the creation of the agency and have fought its existence as unnecessary regulation that stifles business. Trump has ordered the CFPB to stop nearly all of its work, and wants to end the bureau altogether, although that would require an act of Congress. His efforts to gut the agency have been challenged in court. But multiple CFPB rules may be in jeopardy, including caps on overdraft fees and a ban on medical debt being included on credit reports. Affordable Care Act Trump is not trying to repeal Obamacare during his second presidential term, but some of his actions could seriously imperil the law. For starters, Republican lawmakers may try to cut federal Medicaid funding to offset tax cuts. Expanding Medicaid, the federal program that funds health insurance aid for the neediest Americans, was a signature element of the Affordable Care Act. Trump may also try to limit access to Medicaid programs for undocumented noncitizens brought to the US as children. Bipartisan infrastructure funding Trump generally opposes federal spending on energy efficiency. His budget favors clawing back $15 billion in funding passed during the Biden administration with help from Republicans for renewable energy programs and carbon capture research. The budget also proposes canceling $6 billion for electric vehicle charging stations and battery development.