{"id":2662,"date":"2026-04-30T07:16:23","date_gmt":"2026-04-30T11:16:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/alexandrakitty.com\/?p=2662"},"modified":"2026-04-30T07:16:58","modified_gmt":"2026-04-30T11:16:58","slug":"trying-to-rig-the-board-how-the-trump-administration-keeps-failing-to-fix-the-outcome","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/alexandrakitty.com\/index.php\/2026\/04\/30\/trying-to-rig-the-board-how-the-trump-administration-keeps-failing-to-fix-the-outcome\/","title":{"rendered":"Trying to Rig the Board: How the Trump Administration Keeps Failing to Fix the Outcome"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

The Trump administration isn\u2019t just governing; it\u2019s trying to\u00a0pre\u2011arrange<\/strong>\u00a0obedience. The goal isn\u2019t policy debate or persuasion, it\u2019s to quietly re\u2011engineer the conditions under which federal workers think, comply, and dissent. But for all the menace, what stands out right now is how clumsy and failure\u2011prone the project actually is.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Move 1: Seizing people\u2019s vulnerabilities<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Start with the medical\u2011records grab.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The administration\u2019s personnel agency has floated a plan to require every insurer in the federal employee and postal health programs to ship over detailed medical data on millions of workers and their families. Not anonymized trend lines, identifiable claims data: diagnoses, prescriptions, mental\u2011health treatment, reproductive care, the kinds of details that tell you exactly where a person is fragile and how they can be squeezed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

On paper the justification is bland: \u201coversight,\u201d \u201ccost control,\u201d \u201cprogram integrity.\u201d In practice, it is a proposal to consolidate the private vulnerabilities of public servants inside an overtly politicized executive branch that already has a record of retaliating against perceived enemies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

You don\u2019t need to spell out every misuse scenario to feel the intent. This is not about helping workers. It is about putting a hand on the pressure points of people the administration already sees as obstacles or disloyal.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And yet: the push has landed with immediate resistance from health\u2011law experts, privacy advocates, unions, and even the insurers themselves. They\u2019re publicly warning that this would likely violate existing law, that the rationale is vague, and that the architecture required would be a security and liability nightmare. The move reveals the desire to rig the game, but not a lot of competence in actually pulling it off.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Move 2: Decapitating science<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Then there\u2019s the purge of the National Science Board.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In one sweep, the administration fired the entire board that oversees the National Science Foundation and is supposed to provide independent scientific advice to the president and Congress. No scandal. No public case that these particular people had failed in their duties. Just an email informing them their services were no longer required.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

If you\u2019re trying to rig outcomes, this fits: remove the one body specifically created to give science a measure of insulation from day\u2011to\u2011day politics. With no board, there is no institutional memory in the room, no established figures to push back when research funding or scientific judgment collides with ideological convenience.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But again, execution is another story. Emptying the board doesn\u2019t magically give the administration control of science. They still have to find replacements, move them through vetting and confirmations, and live with the fact that the entire scientific community now has a perfect, headline\u2011friendly symbol of what this administration is trying to do. They\u2019ve shown their hand early.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Move 3: Trying to bend the law, and getting checked<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Layer all this on top of the Supreme Court\u2019s ruling yesterday that clipped one of the administration\u2019s more aggressive power grabs. The details of the case matter less here than the pattern: they pushed to expand executive power, to change the legal terrain in their favor, and the highest court in the country said no.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

If the project was to build a seamless obedience machine, law bent to their needs, science decapitated, workers\u2019 private lives wired into a federal database, this is not what success looks like. This is a series of attempts, all publicly visible, all generating more backlash, more litigation, more scrutiny than control.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What they\u2019re really revealing<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Put together, these episodes tell you two things at once.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

First, the intention is clear. This is not random chaos. It\u2019s a pattern of moves aimed at:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    \n
  • making federal workers governable through their health and private vulnerabilities,<\/li>\n\n\n\n
  • stripping away independent expertise that might constrain political whims, and<\/li>\n\n\n\n
  • rewriting rules so obedience is pre\u2011loaded into the legal and institutional fabric.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n

    Second, they\u2019re not nearly as omnipotent as the horror of each individual move might suggest. Courts are pushing back. Insurers are balking. Scientists are speaking out. Unions and professional bodies are lawyering up. The administration keeps lunging for structural control and discovering that other structures still exist.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    Which is exactly why this moment matters. You don\u2019t have to pretend everything is fine; it isn\u2019t. But you also don\u2019t have to treat these moves as evidence of an unstoppable master plan. What they keep exposing, over and over, is a will to rig the outcome colliding with the fact that the board is still full of other players.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    In other words, Donald Trump is a perpetual loser trying to cosplay as a winner.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    The Trump administration isn\u2019t just governing; it\u2019s trying to\u00a0pre\u2011arrange\u00a0obedience. The goal isn\u2019t policy debate or persuasion, it\u2019s to quietly re\u2011engineer the conditions under which federal workers think, comply, and dissent. But for all the menace, what stands out right now is how clumsy and failure\u2011prone the project actually is. Move 1: Seizing people\u2019s vulnerabilities Start […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[612,610,21,611,613,26,42,609],"class_list":["post-2662","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-alexandra-kitty","tag-amanda-seitz","tag-chris-remington","tag-donald-trump","tag-esther-ciammachilli","tag-maia-rosenfeld","tag-propaganda","tag-united-states","tag-wamu"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/alexandrakitty.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2662","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/alexandrakitty.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/alexandrakitty.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alexandrakitty.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alexandrakitty.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2662"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/alexandrakitty.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2662\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2665,"href":"https:\/\/alexandrakitty.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2662\/revisions\/2665"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/alexandrakitty.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2662"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alexandrakitty.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2662"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alexandrakitty.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2662"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}