To get a preliminary sense of how deep and how entrenched the deep state is, consider the State of Virginia. Glenn Youngkin, a Republican, did not control either house of the state legislature. Nevertheless, he managed to get immense reforms accomplished in his four years as governor. But the Dems didn’t mind, not really. Why? Because they knew they could instantly roll back Youngkin’s initiatives as soon as they retook the governorship.
That just happened. And it took Abigail Spanberger, the new Governor, about 15 minutes to return Virginia to la-la land. She had campaigned on “affordability” but rejoined the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative, a climate-change scam that will raise everyone’s utility bills. She introduced a 3.8 percent “net investment tax” on individuals, trusts and estates. She stopped cooperating with ICE in deporting illegal aliens. She said abortion was A-OK, right up to the moment of birth (why stop there?). She reinstituted DEI programs throughout the government and the state’s educational system. She undid reforms to the state’s voting system, making it easier for Democrats to “massage” the vote tally. And that’s just the tip of the proverbial deep-state iceberg.
If the last year has shown anything, it is how deep and interconnected the deep state’s tentacles are
I write on the first anniversary of Donald Trump’s second term. He and his team have accomplished extraordinary things. He has sealed the southern border. He has deported or sparked the self-deportation of some two and a half million illegal aliens. He has vastly increased America’s production of energy, with the result that gas prices have plummeted. He has gone far in eradicating DEI initiatives in the federal government and in the country’s educational system. He decapitated the Maduro regime in Venezuela, undermining that country’s status as a haven for America’s enemies. He has trimmed the deficit by billions. His economic policies have sparked growth not seen in decades: 4.3 percent in the third quarter of last year and an estimated 5.3 percent in the fourth.
What happens next? Will some Spanberger appear to throw a spanner in the works? If the Republicans lose the House in the midterm elections, Trump will be impeached before you can say Kangaroo Court. Would he be convicted? Probably not. But you never know. Then there is 2028. Will the Republicans keep the White House? I think the odds are good, especially since many avenues of voter fraud have been shut down.
But if the last year has shown anything, it has shown how deep and interconnected the deep state’s tentacles are. The fraud conducted by the “Somali community” in Minneapolis is much in the news now. But I am not sure its real significance has been taken on board by the public. Don’t be distracted by the sight of insanity put forth by the anti-ICE demonstrators. Focus on the two faces of the fraud: the amount of money involved and the ends to which the money is put.
As to the amount, remember the immortal words of 20th-century senator Everett Dirksen: “A billion here, a billion there, and pretty soon you’re talking about real money.” We are routinely bombarded with incomprehensibly large numbers. The federal debt is said to be about $38 trillion. What does that mean? Nothing good, of that you can be sure. But back in the realm of lower earth orbit: what does $1 billion mean? A million seconds, I recently learned, is about eleven and a half days. A billion seconds is closing in on 32 years.
The last time I looked, the Somali welfare fraud in Minnesota was estimated to total $9 billion. That’s $9 billion in Medicaid and other pockets of taxpayer money that was shuffled into various fraudulent enterprises run by the “Somali community.” And that is just Minnesota. Wait until we conduct audits in California, Illinois, Idaho, Maine, New York and other blue-state redoubts.
Who knows how many hundreds of billions have been shoveled into those pits of fraudulence? Elon Musk thinks he knows. Altogether, he estimates, the various veins of fraud – the social-security payments to dead people, the welfare scams run by Somalis and other groups, the NGO fraud conducted by progressive collectives with their fingers in the government till – it all adds up, Musk thinks, to somewhere between $1.5 and $2 trillion a year, some 25 percent of the government’s annual expenditures of $7-point-something trillion.
Which brings me to the purpose of the fraud. It is twofold. On the one hand, the fraud is a means to perpetuate and extend the boundaries of the deep state. All those taxpayer-funded programs, acronyms, endowments, initiatives. They have benign-sounding names. Take the National Endowment for Democracy, for example. What started out as a vehicle for representing US interests became a wholly owned subsidiary of progressive causes.
As Russell Vought, Director of the Office of Management and Budget, noted, “In March 2025, it was discovered that the NED funded the Ukraine disinformation organization that doxxed US journalists, called for prosecutions of allies of the President… and attacked others as ‘foreign propagandists of the Russian Federation.’ NED also funded the now-infamous Disinformation Index Foundation that targeted and blacklisted conservative media outlets.” Vought eliminated funding for the NED, but lo and behold, the money was restored by a Congress subservient to a progressive uniparty that nurtures and protects the deep state.
On the other hand, the purpose of the fraud is to cultivate Democratic voters. The money goes to institutions and initiatives staffed by Democrats for the purpose of employing and electing Democrats. Be forewarned: we have not yet discovered the effective combination of garlic, holy water, decapitation and wooden stake through the heart that can extinguish this vampire. If Trump can discover the correct formula, he will be the savior of the country.
This article was originally published in The Spectator’s February 2, 2026 World edition.
Comments