It’s common sense: nearly every political comment that President Donald Trump makes— along with most remarks made by Republican representatives — is evidently true because of their innate, superior intuition regarding public policy. Who needs years of research, expertise or critical thinking when every policy decision made by elected officials can be boiled down to practical, common sense?
Take, for instance, the claim made by House Speaker Mike Johnson who justified implementing stricter Medicaid requirements as common sense. Requiring U.S. citizens to work, volunteer or attend an educational program for at least 80 hours per month in order to qualify for Medicaid should not be publicly accepted just because elected officials claim it to make sense. Instead, we should question public policy claims that attempt to reduce national issues, such as healthcare, with simplified reasoning.
Republicans justifying their claims with the notion that it is common sense is no more than an excuse for an abuse of political power.
The Trump administration laying off federal employees is not for the purpose of creating an efficient government but to establish an autocratic executive branch. Determining which federal agencies and departments to remove is simple; basically, any agency with “the elements of the Federal bureaucracy that the president has determined are unnecessary” is subject for removal.
How exactly does the president determine which agency gets dismantled? Based on the new hiring guidelines set by the administration, any agency that is not in alignment with the nation’s interests or the administration priorities is a red flag. In other words, Trump is directly attacking agencies that are made up of a majority of women and people of color. The attack on women and people of color is for one main reason: to reinforce the Republican party’s agenda of anti-diversity and anti-equity. By implementing his own party’s agenda, Trump is furthering his own interest of attaining more political power.
Now, if it was actually for the benefit of the American people, the federal cuts would be justified. However, these cuts are largely reducing essential agency services while implementing Republican loyalists. In one of his executive orders responsible for reducing federal government spending, Trump targeted seven agencies, including the U.S. Agency for Global Media. The Agency for Global Media is responsible for managing Voice of America, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty and Radio Free Asia — all media outlets that provide unbiased, balanced news across the world. While leaving many federal workers under administrative leave, Trump unilaterally appointed loyalist Kari Lake — who unsuccessfully ran for senator and governor in Arizona — as senior advisor of the agency. The issue with Trump’s appointment of Lake is that it disregarded the advisory board responsible for the oversight of the agency.
Judge Royce C. Lamberth — an appointee of former President Ronald Reagan — criticized Lake for both discontinuing the agency’s mission of serving as a reliable source of news and for unlawfully firing the Voice of America Director Michael Abramowitz. If the administration were truly cutting down the federal workforce to make it more efficient, it would be done in a legal and careful manner. After all, following the law is what Americans are taught to do, right?
Replacing essential agencies with federal Republican loyalists has been a disservice to the American people. During the September government shutdown, the Trump administration decided that the best course of action was to continue federal layoffs, instead of working towards bipartisan agreement. The Department of Health and Human Services, the Department of Education, the Department of Housing and Urban Development, the Treasury Department, and the Environmental Protection Agency received a reduction in force amidst the shutdown. The actions taken by the Trump administration during the shutdown are not common sense but cynical. In an attempt to blame Democrats for the shutdown, Trump further deteriorated the government instead of addressing the issue: the lack of bipartisan negotiation.
The departments responsible for educating future generations, providing public health safety and ensuring the continued protection of our environment are the federal workforce our president has deemed unnecessary. Firing the abundance of expert federal workers and replacing them with loyalist, Republican “bureaucrats” is not standing up for the people. Republican leaders are creating an authoritarian government, disregarding the significance and the impact they are having on the U.S.
The common sense that Republicans stand by is no more than an excuse for a reach towards political power. The rationality Republicans use has become a dangerous tool, masking injustice as practical knowledge. To live in a world that antagonizes expert knowledge — while only valuing common sense knowledge — does not seem like a very practical world to live in according to my common sense.
Alex Alejo is an Opinion Staff Writer. He can be reached at aalejosa@uci.edu.
