Culture

Trump vs. the Bureaucrats

Published

1 year ago

January 11, 2025

Much of what the Civil Service does takes place behind the scenes instead of on center stage. Basic public goods that Americans take for granted, like clean air and safe drinking water, rely on a complex infrastructure of regulation and enforcement. The American way of making policy means that benefits, such as they are, are often channeled through the tax code. The political scientist Suzanne Mettler calls this invisible work “the submerged state.”

During the first decades of the 20th century, the rapid growth of the administrative state aroused suspicions. When President Franklin D. Roosevelt created new federal agencies and programs in the 1930s to address the Depression, small-government conservatives were outraged. A group of businesspeople created the American Liberty League to attack the New Deal on constitutional grounds, charging it with executive branch overreach — a “strategic choice,” says the legal scholar Gillian Metzger, who notes that any attempt to go after the New Deal for burdening elite economic interests would have been a hard sell to a suffering public. In the lurid rhetoric of one Liberty League pamphlet, “The federal bureaucracy has become a vast organism spreading its tentacles over the business and private life of the citizens of the country.”

Conservative denunciations of the administrative state have continued to couch objections in terms of the Constitution and bureaucratic treachery. In “Unmasking the Administrative State” (2019), the conservative political scientist John Marini warned that the growth of government bureaucracy “had opened up the prospect of the greatest tyranny of all.” Two years later, Trump’s 1776 Commission published a report that compared President Woodrow Wilson to Mussolini: “Like the progressives, Mussolini sought to centralize power under the management of so-called experts.”

Fears of an undemocratic, overweening bureaucracy haven’t only served as a right-wing talking point. Some of the administrative state’s most pointed critics have been intellectuals on the left, like the anthropologists James C. Scott and David Graeber, each of whom has argued that a domineering bureaucratic state is hostile to local ways of living. But anarchist critiques like theirs are harder to marshal into a mass political movement. In 2015, a time when the Tea Party, a MAGA precursor, was already well underway, Graeber lamented that the right had figured out how to politicize antipathy toward the bureaucracy, deploying the rhetoric of “anti-bureaucratic individualism” to push through a free-market agenda that guts social services while bolstering business interests.

An ‘Unrelenting, Fantastical Assault on Specialized Knowledge’

The MAGA thrashing of bureaucracy, though, is of a different order. The political scientists Russell Muirhead and Nancy L. Rosenblum distinguish between critiques of government and Trump’s vows to hobble it. “Every modern state is an administrative state,” they declare in their spirited new book, “Ungoverning: The Attack on the Administrative State and the Politics of Chaos.” They take a common complaint about bureaucracy — its inescapability — to highlight its necessity. A bureaucracy filled by professionals and experts who administer the day-to-day functions of governing is the price we pay to live together in a big, complex, populous society.

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Culture

Try This Quiz on Thrilling Books That Became Popular Movies

Published

3 days ago

February 23, 2026

Press Room

Try This Quiz on Thrilling Books That Became Popular Movies

Welcome to Great Adaptations, the Book Review’s regular multiple-choice quiz about printed works that have gone on to find new life as movies, television shows, theatrical productions and more. This week’s challenge highlights thrillers first published as novels (or graphic novels) that were adapted into popular films. Just tap or click your answers to the five questions below. And scroll down after you finish the last question for links to the books and their screen versions.

Culture

Test Your Knowledge of the Authors and Events That Helped Shape the United States

Published

1 week ago

February 16, 2026

Press Room

Test Your Knowledge of the Authors and Events That Helped Shape the United States

Welcome to Lit Trivia, the Book Review’s regular quiz about books, authors and literary culture. In honor of Gen. George Washington’s birthday on Feb. 22, this week’s super-size challenge is focused on the literature and history related to the American Revolution. In the 10 multiple-choice questions below, tap or click on the answer you think is correct. After the last question, you’ll find links to exhibits, books and other materials related to this intense chapter in the country’s story, including an award-winning biography of the general and first U.S. president.

Culture

Video: How Much Do You Know About Romance Books?

Published

2 weeks ago

February 13, 2026

Press Room

Video: How Much Do You Know About Romance Books?

Let’s play romance roulette. No genre has dominated the books world in the last few years. Like romance, it accounts for the biggest percentage of book sales, their avid fan bases. Everyone has been talking about romance as a Book Review editor and as a fan of the genre myself, I put together a to z glossary of 101 terms that you should know if you want to understand the world of romance are cinnamon roll. You may think a cinnamon roll is a delicious breakfast treat, but in a romance novel, this refers to a typically male character who is so sweet and tender and precious that you just want to protect him and his beautiful heart from the world. Ooh, a rake. This is basically the Playboy of historical romance. He defies societal rules. He drinks, he gambles. He’s out on the town all night and is a very prolific lover with a bit of a reputation as a ladies’ man. FEI these are super strong, super sexy, super powerful, immortal, fairy like creatures. One of my favorite discoveries in terms that I learned was stern brunch daddy. A lot of daddy’s usually a male love interest who seems very intimidating and alpha, but then turns out to be a total softie who just wants to make his love interest brunch. I think there’s a misconception that because these books can follow these typical patterns, that they can be predictable and boring. But I think what makes a really great romance novel is the way that these writers use the tropes in interesting ways, or subvert them. If you can think of it, there’s probably a romance novel about it. Oops, there’s only one bed. This is one of my personal favorite tropes is a twist on forced proximity. Characters find themselves in very close quarters, where inevitably sparks start to fly. Why choose is the porkulus dose of the romance world. Sometimes the best way to resolve a love triangle is by turning it into a circle, where everyone is invited to play. Oops, we lost one spice level. There’s a really wide spectrum. You can range from really low heat or no spice, what might also be called kisses. Only then you start to get into what we call closed door or fade to Black. These books go right up to the moment of intimacy, and then you get into what we call open door, which is more explicit. And sometimes these can get very high heat or spicy and even start verging into kink. There’s one thing that almost every romance novel has in common. It’s that no matter what the characters get up to in the end, it ends with a happily ever after. I say almost every romance novel. Sometimes you’re just happy for now.