The deep state has been getting a makeover of late. Don’t be fooled.

A recent New York Times video piece might be called Exhibit A. It begins with a sinister voice: “Donald Trump is obsessed with the deep state, and many Republicans are widening his paranoia.” Then it spends the next five minutes taking “a trip across America” to poke fun at Trump, telling us that the deep state is really just NASA scientists saving us from asteroid annihilation, EPA administrators getting the lead out of our drinking water, and Department of Labor directors keeping our kids from working in slaughterhouses.

It’s a clever piece but a deceptive one. Because for every conscientious public servant like Scott Bellamy, Radhika Fox, and Nancy Alcantara, there are a dozen Kevin Clinesmiths, Eric Ciaramellas, Alexander Vindmans, and Miles Taylors, all bent on undermining efforts at reform and thereby preserving what they have. As former Congressman Jason Chaffetz wrote in his 2018 book, The Deep State: How an Army of Bureaucrats Protected Barack Obama and Is Working to Destroy the Trump Agenda, “The Deep State is a vast, self-perpetuating bureaucracy whose aim is singular: to exist again tomorrow and the day after, to replicate itself, to be indestructible and nearly impossible to disrupt.”

Think about it: Had Hillary Clinton or — work with us — Jeb Bush been elected president in 2016 instead of Donald Trump, we’d never have heard of the names Kevin Clinesmith, Eric Ciaramella, Alexander Vindman, and Miles Taylor.

And we’d have been treated to the same old status quo: a government that long ago lost its way.

Given this, it’s understandable that Trump wants to destroy the deep state, wants to get rid of the anti-reform saboteurs that will otherwise infect his administration and threaten to bring it down just like they attempted. “I will shatter the Deep State, and restore government that is controlled by the People,” he’s said, adding, “Either the deep state destroys America, or we destroy the deep state.”

This laudable goal, though, is much easier said than done. Trump’s second-term agenda does include a detailed plan for dismantling the deep state: reissuing a 2020 executive order restoring the president’s authority to fire rogue bureaucrats; overhauling federal departments and agencies; firing all of the corrupt actors in our intelligence apparatus; establishing a Truth and Reconciliation Commission to declassify and publish all documents on deep state spying, censorship, and abuses of power; cracking down on government leakers who collude with the media to create false narratives; making all inspectors general independent from the departments they oversee; and more.

The task seems monumental. But with Trump’s agenda, coupled with The Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025, it’s at least encouraging that conservatives have been giving it plenty of thought. As we noted back in December, we wish him well.

Still, the Left is taking Trump seriously. So much so that it’s taken to writing apocalyptic op-eds on behalf of the deep state. As Donald Moynihan, a professor of public policy at Georgetown, writes of Trump’s plans: “This is not an empty threat. He has a real and plausible plan to utterly transform American government. It will undermine the quality of that government and it will threaten [wait for it!] our democracy.”

Joe Biden and his handlers know what’s at stake, and they too have joined the fray. Late last week, Team Biden finalized rules that are meant to protect the jobs of untold thousands federal bureaucrats just is case he wins the election on November 5. As The Washington Times reports, “Mr. Biden said his rules would insulate employees from such political pressure by making it tougher to reclassify their jobs and then fire them. ‘Day in and day out, career civil servants provide the expertise and continuity necessary for our democracy to function,’ Mr. Biden said. ‘This rule is a step toward combatting corruption and partisan interference to ensure civil servants are able to focus on the most important task at hand: delivering for the American people.’”

Whatever, dude. Toward the end of his administration, Trump sought to reclassify certain civil service workers because it’s become nearabout impossible to fire poor performers, resisters, and saboteurs. This “Schedule F” order was promptly revoked by Joe Biden when he took office. Imagine that.

As The Times continues, Biden’s new rule, which was finalized Thursday by the Office of Personnel Management, “will make it tougher for Mr. Trump or another administration, but not impossible, to surmount. To overcome a regulation, a president must either go through the rulemaking process again, which can take months or years, or persuade Congress to pass legislation.” (Good luck overcoming a Senate filibuster, Mr. President.)

New York Times columnist Frank Bruni was perhaps a visionary of the coming battle, extolling the virtues of the deep state back in December 2020, back before Anthony Fauci was exposed for the lying, money-grubbing, narcissistic, ChiCom apologist that he is. As Bruni wrote: “President Trump was right about the ‘deep state’ — sort of. There exist, in government, people and forces rigged to foil disruption.”

Bruni was right about the deep state — sort of. There exist, in government, people and forces rigged to foil reform, not disruption.

There. We fixed it for him.