Years ago, I had a beautiful Australian Shepherd named–you guessed it–Cromwell. Cromwell was an alpha male. One day, my wife and I were talking to a neighbor who owned a smaller dog named Dallas. Dallas got excited and peed on my wife’s foot. Cromwell responded by standing over Dallas and peeing on him. The message was unmistakable.
That is the spirit that inspired the DOGE personnel cuts. They aren’t about making government more efficient; in the short run, they will certainly reduce levels of service, and there are no guarantees about what happens in the long run. They aren’t about saving money; the savings are miniscule. No, the point of the cuts is to prove to federal employees that Donald Trump owns their souls, so they had better not try to obstruct them the way they did in his last term. He’s the alpha; they’re nobody.
That’s the message to Canada, Mexico, and the EU, too.