The Lawn Bowling Scandal Is Much More Important Than It Sounds

By Seth Mandel

Tuesday, December 31, 2024

 

Sometimes the events most worthy of our outrage can go woefully under-protested simply because they sound silly.

 

The latest example comes to us from the wide sporting world of bowls. Americans are likely most familiar with Bocce, except for Franco-Americans who play pétanque. But all are versions of the same idea that boils down to a form of lawn bowling: Roll (or toss) the ball as close to the target as you can.

 

The World Bowls Tour is what it sounds like: a global league for both indoor and outdoor lawn bowling. The WBT has disinvited qualifying Israeli players from the World Indoor Championship based solely on their nationality. Pressure groups bullied the bowls.

 

Again, from a sporting perspective, Americans may find this more obscure than Cricket. But as an indication of European society’s blithe submission to delirious anti-Semitism, it is deeply worrying. And when Europe succumbs to its Jew-baiting instincts—well, it tends to be bad for everyone.

 

So I recommend quickly getting past one’s discomfort with publicly registering outrage over lawn-bowling competitions. The widespread attempts to establish de facto Jew-bans in global athletics and other leisure activities is ominous; we should acknowledge that they have only come for bowls because they’ve already come for soccer, hockey, rugby, and even Ultimate Frisbee.

 

This isn’t about bowls; it’s about an attempt to have Western social life mimic the ethnic exclusivity of 20th century country clubs.

 

The WBT was surprisingly forthright about its choice: “as a result of the intensity of the situation, the WBT board, in consultation with our event partners and other relevant stakeholders, has made the difficult decision to withdraw the invitation for Israel to participate in the forthcoming World Indoor Championships. This decision affects Daniel Alonim in the World Singles, as well as Amnon Amar and Itai Rigbi in the World Open Pairs.”

 

Well, forthright at first, anyway. The next part of the statement is hilariously Orwellian: “This decision was not taken lightly and has been made in the best interests of the event’s success and integrity. Bowls is, and always has been, a sport that unites people and this choice reflects our commitment to protecting the championships and ensuring they run smoothly for everyone involved.”

 

The sport “unites people,” therefore it must exclude people. The event’s “integrity” was at stake, therefore players who earned their place will no longer be allowed to participate in the competition.

 

I don’t fully blame them for the phrasing, though: Anyone who would apply a nationality ban to a sport in the year 2024 cannot possibly know what “integrity” means.

 

The Telegraph reports that the WBT decision was likely influenced by a ramped-up campaign of anti-Semitism aimed at disrupting last month’s Scottish International Open. The anti-Semites were very angry and noisy, and there is no similar constituency in Europe for non-anti-Semitism, so here we are.

 

In fact, that Scottish campaign seems to have found some success as well, forcing an Israeli competitor out of the Scottish International Open. Scottish Sport for Palestine rejoiced: “Scotland can be proud once again.” (Once again?)

 

If for no other reason, these leagues should refuse to submit to such pressure campaigns because of the campaigns’ sheer dirtbaggery alone. Scottish Sport for Palestine made a poster featuring a now-disinvited Israeli competitor’s name and picture and a description of him as someone who “runs a landscaping business clearing Palestinian land for the occupation.”

 

In other words, because he is a Jew who lives in the Levant, his existence is illegitimate and his rights are automatically limited. That European sporting leagues are susceptible to overt blood-and-soil Palestinian nationalism is unfortunate. Additionally, I don’t know much about this group Scottish Sport for Palestine, but if it is a coalition of Scottish athletes then I question how much pressure they could possibly put on the WBT.

 

Last month, a youth Maccabi Berlin soccer team was chased home from the field by attackers wielding knives and clubs. As I noted at the time, Maccabi Berlin is a legacy organization: Prior to the Holocaust, Jews established clubs like Maccabi precisely because they were excluded from mainstream national sports leagues.

 

So although it may sound unimportant, especially to an American ear, the fuss over lawn bowling is significant. The intent of these campaigners is to sweep Jews out of every corner of nonpolitical social life in Europe, and beyond.

Republicans Should Stick with Mike Johnson as Speaker

National Review Online

Thursday, January 02, 2025

 

When the House of Representatives convenes on Friday, Representative Mike Johnson will face a tricky fight to get reelected as speaker.

 

Going into the vote, there are 219 Republicans and 215 Democrats, with Matt Gaetz’s seat currently vacant. Given that all Democrats are committed to backing Representative Hakeem Jeffries, the most straightforward route for Johnson to become speaker again would be to get 218 Republican votes. But Representative Thomas Massie (R., Ky.) has already vowed to vote “no,” meaning that if any other House Republican stands with him, Johnson would be sunk.

 

The math could change, depending on whether some members don’t show up or some choose to vote “present” (a tactic that allowed Kevin McCarthy to become speaker on the 15th ballot after four days of voting). But the overall picture is the same: Johnson has very little room for error, and even the full-throated endorsement offered by Donald Trump may not be enough to help him clinch the vote.

 

Emerging from nowhere to the speakership, Johnson has filled the role ably. He’s a reliable and thoughtful conservative who has proved a shrewd tactician. Likable and nonthreatening, he will never become a hate figure like some of his predecessors. He has managed the — for anyone in his role — all-important relationship with Trump well, given the circumstances.

 

That said, we agree with some of the conservative complaints against Johnson. We support a more open and transparent budget process focused on rooting out wasteful spending as compared with one in which members are asked to vote on “must pass” end-of-year spending packages that nobody has had time to read or debate, although the congressional reflex toward the latter is nothing new. Allowing the most recent so-called continuing resolution to become a Christmas tree was a mistake, but Johnson adjusted adeptly. We disagree with some of the other criticisms of the speaker — his support for continuing aid to Ukraine, for instance, was the right thing to do and entailed some political risk to himself.

 

It is also important to view Johnson’s leadership in context. Trying to lead a fractious caucus with only a few votes to spare is always going to be a thankless job. It becomes even more difficult to get anything done when the Senate and White House are controlled by the other party, as has been the case during Johnson’s tenure.

 

In the real world, given that there is currently no other candidate who can garner 218 votes and that the House cannot conduct business without a speaker in place, the only alternative to Johnson is chaos. When McCarthy was ousted in October 2023, the House went without a speaker for nearly three weeks. Back then, it meant the House was neutered in the immediate aftermath of the October 7 attacks.

 

This time, a similar period of chaos would mean having no speaker in place to swear in new members and certify the election for President-elect Donald Trump. And if things get really crazy, Trump might not be certified by the time he is set to be sworn in on January 20. (With no certified vice president or elected speaker, this would mean that the president pro tempore would have to be sworn in. If you thought Joe Biden was old, get ready for President Chuck Grassley.)

 

It would be one thing to argue that weeks of chaos would be painful but ultimately lead to a better result. But last time, when a small element of the caucus ousted McCarthy, it ended up with Johnson, who it now argues is just as bad as McCarthy. It is almost a certainty that if Johnson is ousted in favor of somebody else, the replacement would end up running the House in a similar fashion, because the new speaker would be subject to the same constraints as Johnson and McCarthy were.

 

If trying the same thing while hoping for a different result is the definition of insanity, it is time for the insanity to end. Especially given that Republicans already have a worthy speaker in place.

Gaza, Land of Make-Believe

By Seth Mandel

Monday, December 30, 2024

 

Gaza is reality as narrated by the Brothers Grimm. Nothing is as it seems, and the truth is always darker than the way the story is popularly told.

 

Last week, a woman claiming to be a doctor in Gaza got a wave of attention after posting a picture of her feet supposedly swelling from the cold. It turned out that the temperature wasn’t exactly freezing—a low of 50 degrees Fahrenheit. And the good doctor had posted an image not of her own feet but of the main picture on the Wikipedia page for a particular toe condition.

 

In fact, the medical personnel in Gaza are rarely what they seem. A few weeks ago, the New York Times ran a long personal diary from the director of Kamal Adwan Hospital in northern Gaza. The paper’s introduction to the diary mentions dismissively that Israel “claims” Hamas is using the hospital. Readers then get about a thousand words from the hospital chief, Hussam Abu Safyia.

 

Just a few days ago, the IDF rounded up 240 terror suspects from that hospital, including Safyia. According to the IDF, of the first 21 “patients” evacuated from the hospital, 13 were terror operatives who tried escaping on stretchers and in ambulances.

 

This shouldn’t have come as much of a shock: Safyia’s predecessor was a Hamas official who admitted that the hospital was used as a Hamas command hub after the IDF raided Kamal Adwan a year ago.

 

Medical professionals who aren’t what they seem, working at hospitals that aren’t exactly hospitals, fits a general theme of this war.

 

At around the same time the IDF was closing in on Kamal Adwan, headlines in the BBC and CNN accused Israel of killing several journalists in one strike. The predictable outrage ensued before Israel released a Palestinian Islamic Jihad roster found in Gaza that proved the IDF had indeed taken out terrorists, not civilian journalists.

 

In September, the Emmys awarded a Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine activist for her “coverage” of the war, despite her work with the designated terrorist organization being well-known by then. The media have already mourned as fallen journalists a Hamas tank operative, a deputy Hamas commander in its Khan Younis Battalion, a Hamas drone operator, a Palestinian Islamic Jihad rocket specialist, an engineer in Hamas’s Gaza City Brigade and the like, as noted here.

 

As for Kamal Adwan itself, when Hamas operatives returned to the area in the fall, they did their best to draw the IDF to buildings around the hospital itself, hoping to protect the higher-level Hamas officials stationed in the hospital (along with weapons). When it finally cleared the way to the hospital complex, the IDF evacuated the premises, moving hundreds of patients and actual medical personnel to other facilities. Two Hamas cells tried to escape and were eliminated via drone. Medical equipment was then transferred to the nearest hospital, as were the patients. There is so far no evidence of civilian deaths at the complex.

 

That leaves a very different impression from the one pushed by media. But it’s easy to see through the mainstream press’s smokescreen if you try: The medical staff and patients who aren’t medical staff or patients trying to flee the hospital that isn’t a hospital; the journalists who aren’t journalists getting caught in the field of battle rather than at a newsroom working the phones; the teachers who aren’t teachers gathering at schools that aren’t schools.

 

And the aid workers that aren’t aid workers—who are these folks even trying to fool? When Israel’s Channel 12 was finally given access to the Palestinian side of one of the crossings, their cameras surveyed a staggering amount of aid just sitting there, expiring by the day. This is all aid that Israel has approved to be distributed, so it’s waiting for these humanitarian relief organizations to live up to their names. Instead, they mostly complain.

 

So on top of everything we can add humanitarian organizations that aren’t humanitarian organizations.

 

In Gaza, under the umbrella of Hamas, nothing it what it seems. It’s always much more sinister.

The Teamsters’ Imaginary Strike against Amazon

By Sean Higgins

Wednesday, January 01, 2025

 

There was a historic strike by the International Brotherhood of Teamsters workers at Amazon facilities over the Christmas holiday, yet it didn’t appear to slow Amazon’s deliveries, and actual Amazon employees on picket lines were few.

 

That is to say, the strike was more of a publicity stunt by the Teamsters than an actual grassroots revolt by Amazon workers. These holiday season strikes are an old public relations ploy by unions, who are good at creating a narrative and selling it to reporters.

 

The unions know that the holidays are a tough period for news outlets. Not a lot is happening, because most people are on vacation. Many of the outlets’ own reporters are angling for time off. A news story that seems serious, like a labor strike, and that comes with all of the details provided by the union’s media team is something news outlets will usually jump on. Following up on the union’s claims can wait until after the holidays . . . by which time the strike is usually over and everyone has moved on.

 

The Teamsters announced, just prior to Christmas, the “largest-ever strike against Amazon.” Stories in the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, the Associated Press, National Public Radio, and CNN, among others, reported on the walkout. “If your package is delayed during the holidays, you can blame Amazon’s insatiable greed,” declared Teamsters general president Sean O’Brien. Having gotten the headlines they wanted, the Teamsters officially called it off on Christmas Eve.

 

Only the eagle-eyed would notice that while the word “thousands” appeared in some of the headlines, making it seem like a verified fact, the stories attributed that claim to the teamsters. Who knows how many workers really walked out?

 

“There was ONE guy on break protesting at my FC” posted a worker at the subreddit AmazonFC, a worker-created forum. “FC” stands for fulfillment center. A picture on the thread showed a scant four picketers at a site. “Lol there’s like 5 people outside of my building and not even outside the gates like down the road,” said another poster on the same thread. Other posts showed pro- and anti-union comments. There was no clear indication of which side was larger.

 

“There are a lot of nuances here but I want to be clear, the Teamsters don’t represent any Amazon employees despite their claims to the contrary. This entire narrative is a PR play and the Teamsters’ conduct this past year, and this week is illegal,” Amazon spokeswoman Kelly Nantel said.

 

The Teamsters’ effort primarily involves delivery drivers who work for contractors hired by Amazon. Amazon has refused to negotiate with the Teamsters because it doesn’t consider the drivers to be employees. The Teamsters counter that Amazon is a “joint employer” of the drivers.

 

The Teamsters have previously made some inroads to the online retailer. The Amazon Labor Union, a Teamster affiliate, was certified by the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), a federal agency, the winner of an organizing vote at a Staten Island facility in April 2022. But Amazon has contested the result, claiming that the NLRB was biased toward the union.

 

The strikes supposedly happened at ten Amazon locations. Amazon has 110 centers across the country. So, the union actions are happening at less than 10 percent of Amazon facilities. Amazon claimed that the incidents didn’t affect package delivery.

 

There are telltale details in the stories that illustrate that the events are hype. The NPR story reported:

 

A major focus for the picketers seemed to focus on drawing more Amazon workers into the union fold. At multiple locations, strikers targeted drivers leaving to deliver packages with chants urging them to sign up to unionize after they complete their route for the day. “Sign up after your route,” picketers chanted in New York.

 

The New York Times carried a similar report.

 

In other words, despite the “strikes,” Amazon drivers were still showing up and driving off on their assigned routes. That does not fit the definition of a strike, which is workers not showing up at all. It’s likely that the majority of the people at the picket lines were existing Teamsters members who worked for other businesses and showed up to boost the protest.

 

“The truth is that they were unable to get enough support from our employees and partners and have brought in outsiders to harass and intimidate our team,” Amazon said in a statement to reporters.

 

The Teamsters’ efforts recall how, in the 2000s and 2010s, the Service Employees International Union funded an activist group call Walmart Watch while the United Food and Commercial Workers funded a separate one called Wake-Up Walmart. Both groups worked hard to build the narrative that Walmart workers were fed up and ready to join a union. The groups hoped to create a big enough PR problem for Walmart that it would agree to a collective bargaining contract to end the union harassment.

 

It didn’t work. Both groups went defunct when the unions got tired of throwing their money away.

 

A similar scenario is playing out today. For all the Teamsters’ bluster, it’s ultimately up to the Amazon workers themselves if they want a union. They don’t seem convinced.

There’s Cause for Optimism on Campus Free Speech

By Greg Lukianoff

Wednesday, January 01, 2025

 

It’s very hard for me not to be pessimistic about the state of free speech in higher education. As president of the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE), I have first-hand knowledge of just how dire things have been and continue to be on campus.

 

According to FIRE’s Campus Deplatforming Database, where we log all incidents we can find of on-campus attempts to disinvite speakers from campus, shout down speakers, disrupt performances, take down art exhibits, and prevent the screening of films, 2023 was the worst year on record for deplatforming attempts.

 

Or, it was until a few weeks ago.

 

In late November, 2024 officially took the top spot, with 157 deplatforming attempts versus last year’s 156. As of December 20 that number had shot up to 164—and recent shoutdowns of campus speakers, like the disruption of a panel discussion at Pace University, have a lot to do with it. What’s worse, 1 out of 5 cases in FIRE’s database, which goes back all the way to 1998, are from the last two years. Much of that can be attributed to the reaction to the war in Gaza that began in late 2023, with rising incidents of all kinds of censorial and anti-free speech behavior on campus including riots, shoutdowns, and more.

 

That’s not all.

 

This year, FIRE surveyed 6,269 faculty members at 55 major colleges and universities (the largest faculty free speech survey ever conducted), and found that 1 out of 3 admitted to hiding their political views to avoid censorial reprisals. 

 

Still, despite all of this turmoil and bad news there is still room for hope and gratitude, and it’s the perfect time of year to focus on reasons to be thankful and hopeful. I don’t just mean that recent problems on campus have highlighted just how bad things have gotten. While the response to October 7 in higher education, for example, did indeed afford us this realization, there are positive signs to be found.

 

One very promising development this year is the growing rejection of diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) statements in our colleges and universities. As FIRE has argued many times before, these statements—which are often mandatory aspects of faculty hiring and even student admissions processes—are unavoidably political litmus tests.

 

In other words, they are a systematic method for keeping “wrongthinkers” out of academia—what my The Canceling of the American Mind co-author Rikki Schlott and I call “The Conformity Gauntlet.” FIRE even sued the California Community Colleges system on behalf of six professors to stop regulations that would force them to adopt and espouse highly contested DEI concepts. 

 

DEI statements pose a threat not just to free speech and academic freedom on campus, but also to the very principles of free inquiry, truth seeking, and open debate that undergird our institutions of higher learning. Thankfully, many schools have begun to get the message—including MIT, Harvard, UMass-Boston, Ohio State, Syracuse University, and others.

 

Another bit of good news is that many schools, including some of the ones I just mentioned, have begun to adopt policies of institutional neutrality. This is also critically important for our colleges and universities because, as the University of Chicago’s Kalven Report famously stated, “The university is the home and sponsor of critics; it is not itself the critic.” Adopting a policy of institutional neutrality ensures that our institutions of higher learning once again become—and this time remain—centers for free expression and open discourse, where ideas and attitudes can be challenged and examined, and where no ideological orthodoxy is inferred or enforced from on high. We expect this momentum to carry into 2025 and beyond.

 

But perhaps the most promising development this year has been the shattering of academia’s illusion of invulnerability. For too long, higher education has fancied itself untouchable and irreplaceable, but it’s beginning to recognize that neither of these assumptions are true. For one thing, experiments like the University of Austin show that where there’s a will for a totally different structure and approach to higher education, there is also a way. I suspect many more scrappy startups like UATX will pop up in the coming years, and if our legacy institutions don’t start shaping up, they may end up losing their dominance faster than they think. 

 

And thanks to the work of organizations like FIRE and many others, as well as a general cultural shift toward exposing and criticizing these problems in academia, the veil of silence and conformity that allowed the problems in these institutions to fester has been significantly torn. More and more we are hearing from news outlets like the New York Times and others about the rampant dysfunction in higher education, and we are seeing a groundswell of public demand for reform. 

 

There are also great ideas out there for improving our knowledge-creation institutions. FIRE’s annual College Free Speech Rankings, which rate schools based on their free speech policies, were designed to incentivize good behavior on free speech and academic freedom. But they were also meant to inspire ideas for innovation and improvement. Jay Bhattacharya, President-elect Donald Trump’s pick to head the National Institutes of Health, has some great ideas that could be applied in this area. He recommends adopting policies that would better allow younger scholars to compete for NIH grants (as they once did) because they tend to be more open to new ways of thinking and doing research, which is a great way to shake things up and move things forward. Bhattacharya also recommends funding replication studies and making it a rewarding area for young scientists. These two reforms alone could be transformative and vastly improve—and improve trust in—our knowledge-generating institutions.

 

As they say, the first step is acknowledging that there’s a problem, and it’s really starting to look like we’ve hit our mark with both feet.

 

Looking forward to 2025, there are a number of things that can happen in Washington to ensure that these advancements aren’t just flashes in the pan. First, Congress can pass the Respecting the First Amendment on Campus Act, which would require institutions to disclose their policies on free speech and free association, encourage schools to adopt the Chicago Statement’s emphasis on the importance of freedom of speech at institutions of higher learning, and require public schools to better protect the First Amendment rights of students and faculty.

 

Second, President-elect Trump can reinstate the 2020 Title IX regulations, which are far better for protecting due process and free speech on campus than the Biden administration’s revision earlier this year, which eliminated the right to a live hearing to adjudicate sexual abuse allegations, the right to cross-examine one’s accuser and witnesses in real time, and the right to be represented by lawyers in campus sexual misconduct proceedings. Similar to guidance implemented by the Obama administration in 2011 that led to hundreds of lawsuits against universities by those who were falsely accused, the revisions even allow for the return of the “single investigator” model, in which one administrator can serve as prosecutor, judge, and jury. The first Trump administration protected the most basic elements of due process, only to have Biden largely revert to the Obama-era policy. To create a more lasting policy that can’t be undone each time the party in power changes, Congress can also adopt a federal version of FIRE’s state-level model campus due process bill, which would go a long way towards securing students’ rights. Legislatures in Utah, North Dakota, North Carolina, and Louisiana have already adopted these due process protections for students at state public universities.

 

Third, Congress can pass legislation that codifies the Davis standard for hostile environment harassment, laid down by the Supreme Court in a 1999 ruling. The standard, often deliberately watered down by federal regulators so that it allows punishment of protected speech, emphasizes that addressing on-campus harassment requires that the behavior in question be “so severe, pervasive, and objectively offensive” that the targeted student is prevented from learning or participating in campus life. This would ensure that colleges can no longer claim legal cover for violating students’ free speech rights in the name of addressing discriminatory harassment on campus. 

 

And while it’s at it, Congress can also do a better job protecting Jewish students from antisemitic harassment on campus without threatening free speech rights. FIRE has laid out three ways they can do this: codifying Davis, prohibiting on-campus harassment on the basis of religion (with appropriate exceptions to protect religious liberty), and confirming that federal law already protects against harassment based on ethnic stereotyping. 

 

That’s just a few of the ways we can make our campuses safer for free speech in 2025 and beyond. It’s a tall order, and maybe more than a little bit of wishful thinking. But it’s that time of year, isn’t it?

 

In many ways, 2024 was a dark year for free speech. It’s not always easy to keep pushing forward, but one thing that keeps me going is the little bits of progress our work allows us to secure—and the knowledge that all the blood, sweat, tears, and effort really does have an impact. Defending free speech can be a rough gig, but I wouldn’t trade the rewards for anything.

Would You Want Any of These People Teaching Your Student?

By George Leef

Wednesday, January 01, 2025

 

English was one of the fields first conquered by the Left in its long march through our institutions and it has steadily grown worse. Today, college English classes are apt to focus mainly on “progressive” obsessions with race, gender, intersectionality, and so on, rather than on clear writing, Shakespeare’s plays, or great novels.

 

If you are looking for evidence of that horrible trend, consider the Modern Language Association (MLA), the professional organization for professors of English. Its meetings are a window into the thinking of its members. In today’s Martin Center article, Graham Hillard looks at the upcoming MLA conference in New Orleans.

 

Hillard writes:

 

The conference program includes among its listed sessions the following gibberish, gossip, and complaint:

 

·        “Contemporary Astrological Media of Minoritarian Self-Making”;

·        “The Queer Conspiracy of Illegibility”;

·        “Against Resilience: Laziness as Refusal”;

·        “How to Be a Woman Though Male: On Uncertainty and Trans Pedagogy”;

·        “Embracing the Low Road? Hating ‘Men’ in Manifestos”;

·        “The (In)Visibility of Claudia Rankine’s and Donald Glovers’s Public Responses to the 2015 Charleston Shooting”;

·        “‘Just a Young Boy in the Hood’: Imaginative Cartographies of the Ends in UK Rap’s Live Performances”;

·        “Third Space: Queering America in Early American Literature.”

 

Sessions devoted to traditional topics in English? Hardly any.

 

Does this matter?

 

Hillard thinks it does: “These are, after all, our professors, the men and women (and other!) who fill literature and language departments from sea to shining sea. To imagine that the ideology fueling “’Storying Youth Climate Activism in the Face of Political Repression’ has no impact on the classroom is naiveté of the highest order. Furthermore, there are, against all odds, still useful English departments and courses in this country. When the many misbehave, the few are swept up in their reputational tsunami.”

 

It’s no wonder that many college grads can’t write a coherent paragraph but are eager to hector you about all of America’s perceived crises.

There Is No ‘Deep State.’ The Swamp, on the Other Hand …

By Jonah Goldberg

Wednesday, January 01, 2025

 

Donald Trump has promised to do many things once he reoccupies the White House. Among the most famous, and most desired by his biggest fans, is his vow to “drain the swamp” and “demolish the deep state.”

 

The first and arguably most important challenge for such a project is definitional. What is the deep state? And what is the swamp? Are they different? How so?

 

Trump doesn’t have a clear answer. He often uses the terms interchangeably. And he’s not alone. Many in the media do the same.

 

That’s understandable if you try to put yourself inside Trump’s head (something I don’t necessarily recommend). During his first administration, he was repeatedly undermined by leaks and other schemes from within the federal bureaucracy, including his own Cabinet. Whether this was the work of the “deep state” or the “swamp” is something of a tomayto-tomahto distinction for someone who divides the world into friends and enemies. But any serious effort to get rid of either one requires making distinctions.

 

As the metaphor implies, the swamp is a hot, humid, malarial ecosystem teeming with all manner of critters, each with its own self-interested agenda. (And if you’ve spent a summer in D.C., you know the term has more than figurative verisimilitude.) The idea of the nation’s capital being a pestilent redoubt where politicians go native once they contract “Potomac fever” has been around for generations. George W. Bush’s administration even issued a handy memo to his staff on how to spot signs of infection.

 

The term “deep state,” on the other hand, conjures a colder, more sterile image of disciplined, professional, secretive operators networked across government and united around a single, nefarious agenda.

 

The biggest difference between these two concepts is the most important one: The swamp exists; the deep state doesn’t. 

 

My Dispatch colleague Kevin D. Williamson has likened the deep state to the term “Vikings,” a catchall for a disparate “collection of pirates, traders, slavers, settlers, squabbling potentates” and others. Vikings fought Vikings all the time because the Vikings were not a monolithic or unified group.

 

And neither are the warring factions and fiefdoms that make up Washington. For instance, the Wall Street Journal recently reported intense infighting among and within various intelligence agencies over the origins of COVID-19. The FBI—deep state HQ, according to many in Trump World—was fairly convinced that the pandemic started with a lab leak, the newspaper reported, but competing agencies conspired to keep that verdict from reaching the president’s ears.

 

The whole idea that the deep state is an evil organization, like Hydra in the Marvel comics or SPECTRE in the James Bond movies, is little more than a conspiracy theory. It’s based on the bizarre assumption that government bureaucrats and political operatives are incredibly competent and disciplined at doing supersecret stuff but fairly incompetent and lazy in their day jobs.

 

Then there’s the swamp. This catchall term describes something real: Washington’s vast, cacophonous conglomeration of favor-dealing, rent-seeking, back-scratching, self-dealing, special-pleading interests. The Founders called them “factions.”

 

What makes the swamp so hard to drain is the collusion between the state and these factions. Real savings won’t come from purging the federal bureaucracy, a workforce that hasn’t grown appreciably since the 1960s. As the political scientist John J. DiIulio Jr. recently noted, a huge share of the bureaucracy consists of contract managers for private-sector firms. Businesses and nonprofits—from defense contractors to health care systems—employ more than three times as many people who ultimately get paid by taxpayers as the federal government does. 

 

Those factions are also political constituencies. And that’s why I suspect we will hear a lot more about fighting the deep state in 2025 than we will about draining the swamp. The nice thing about conspiracy theories is that they can’t be disproved. Blaming failures on shadowy forces is standard fare for politicians because angering their constituencies is hard.

 

Besides, there’s little evidence that Trump has any desire to drain the swamp so much as to reward those swamp creatures he likes. Industrial policy and protectionism, two of his top priorities, are among the oldest forms of swampiness because they create vast new markets for exemptions, subsidies and anti-competitive lobbying. Indeed, the proliferation of Big Tech moguls and cryptocurrency speculators around Trump makes it seem as if Mar-a-Lago is subsiding into the Everglades before our eyes.