What do withdrawing from the Paris Climate Agreement, gutting the federal Department of Education, defunding UNRWA and the UN Human Rights Council, pulling out of the World Health Organisation,
killing off DEI, trussing the Consumer Protection Financial Bureau like a chicken for roasting, shutting the US Agency for International Development and sanctioning the International Criminal Court have in common?
Through the blizzard of executive orders, the outlines of a unifying theme in the Trump presidency are clear. Donald Trump wants to end institutional capture in all its forms. Though his execution, aided and abetted by Elon Musk, may well be occasionally ham-fisted and certainly deserves scrutiny, the US President’s instincts are sound.
When a political, social, cultural or legal institution is established for a public purpose, and given power and resources for that purpose, it becomes immediately, and forever, a target for a range of groups that would use its power and resources for their own ends. Whoever the hijackers are, it falls under the umbrella term:
institutional capture.
There are subspecies of institutional capture. When a regulatory body succumbs to the vested interests of those it’s charged to regulate, it’s called regulatory capture. When employees commandeer an institution to suit their own ends, it’s called provider capture.
Some organisations start out captured and get only worse. Like
the UN Human Rights Councilwith Standing Item 7 aimed at one country – Israel – despite decades’ long and wicked violations of human rights by other countries.
Foreign Minister Penny Wong in the Senate at Parliament House in Canberra. Picture: Martin Ollman
Other institutions go bad over time; for example, when provider capture sets in. In Australia, the ABC is a prime example of what happens when employees and other insiders hijack a taxpayer-funded media organisation in the service of their own pet causes, including most recently Trump hysteria, anti-Israel coverage, the voice and climate alarmism.
The
International Criminal Court is a textbook case of a legal institution captured by the politics of its employees and paymasters. The ICC has jurisdiction over its member states, meaning those countries that signed the Rome Statute that established the court. Israel didn’t sign up and Gaza is not a state. Yet
ICC prosecutors issued warrants for the arrest of Israel’s Prime Minister and former defence minister.
Australian Foreign Minister Penny Wong responded swiftly. Australia will always abide by “international law”, she said when arrest warrants were issued. But what if “law” is being commandeered for political purposes?
Unless Wong was talking out of both sides of her mouth, that means she’s committing Australia, as a signatory to the Rome Statute, to arresting democratically elected leaders of a country that is not subject to the ICC’s jurisdiction – should they set foot on Australian soil.
Well, last week the rubber hit the road. The ICC’s political exploits and presidential sanctions ordered against the court on February 6 raise serious issues for American allies – including Australia.
Trump’s sanctions – freezing all property and other interests in the US and denying entry into America – apply to “any person” determined by the US Secretary of State to have “directly engaged in any effort by the ICC to investigate, arrest, detain or prosecute” the Israeli Prime Minister and former defence minister.
That might mean that if the Foreign Minister took any action to arrest Benjamin Netanyahu, should he visit Australia, Trump’s ICC sanctions might apply to her, and to any other government or police official involved in the arrest. We’re waiting to hear the Foreign Minister’s response to that conundrum.
The ICC screamed provider capture from its inception. The whimsical decision to sign the Rome Statute by then foreign minister Alexander Downer – not normally known for falling for fickle international politics – now carries potentially disastrous consequences for Downer’s successor, for the Albanese government and for our federal police, too.
Downer, who honourably now admits his blunder, says we should give notice of our intention to withdraw from the Rome Statute. There’s a 12-month notice period, kind of like a decree nisi marking a separation period in a divorce. If Wong doesn’t start the clock, then surely Peter Dutton will if he wins government.
There are other lessons from Trump’s determination to strip back the encrusted capture of public institutions by vested interests and return these institutions to what Trump sees as their proper purpose. And if they can’t be saved, then off with their heads, so to speak.
When no one is cleaning house, institutional capture enables dirty corruption and the perversion of its original objectives. Look at UNRWA, where staff members included Hamas terrorists and whose modus operandi has become the perpetuation of Palestinian victimhood.
Indeed, much of the horror and revulsion at Trump’s “Riviera” plan for Gaza is fuelled by Hamas and its allies not wanting the Palestinians to have peace or a better life. Hamas wants the Palestinians to remain a permanent refugee people controlled by them and devoted to their Islamist ideology – with any reconstruction money going to more tunnels, weapons and Qatari holiday homes for Hamas leaders. UNRWA and its supporters are Hamas’s useful idiots.
Trump’s critics may carp that he is ignorant of history, but neither is he captured by it. Why not consider whether Gaza can be transformed into a Mediterranean Dubai, or at minimum a boring backwater of peace? Any plan that strikes fear into the raison d’etre of Hamas and its ideological allies is worth consideration.
Similarly, Trump has called stumps on USAID, the 10,000-person, $US40bn ($63.75bn) foreign assistance agency that, for decades, has been accused and found guilty of fraud and meddling in the political affairs of foreign countries. As The Wall Street Journal noted last week, with $US40bn to throw about, USAID was bound to hit some good targets. But bad stuff was happening too. Republican senator Joni Ernst wrote this week about her efforts to uncover widespread fraud, USAID money being funnelled into the sex trade, into dangerous research at Wuhan.
That’s on top of millions of dollars reaching terrorist organisations. Not to mention provider capture steering USAID money into pet projects: LGBT groups in Serbia, a transgender clinic in India and electric cars in Vietnam.
Trump’s drastic action, shutting the doors on USAID and folding it into the State Department, has kicked off a battle between the executive, on the one hand, and congress and the courts on the other. That’s as it should be. Just as Trump is trying to rein in overreach at USAID, he too may be guilty of executive overreach.
Given the Republicans control congress, the best protection against executive overreach will likely come from the courts that Trump stacked when he was the 45th president. In 2024, the US Supreme Court threw out the so-called Chevron deference doctrine. Established by a differently constituted Supreme Court 40 years ago, the deference doctrine effectively instructed courts that government agencies, not judges, should decide how to interpret vague laws. That was a recipe for mission creep.
By overturning Chevron, the Supreme Court put the brakes on bodies such as the Environmental Protection Agency overstepping their remit. It’s quite possible the Roberts Supreme Court could become the main constraint on Trump’s executive overreach. Who knows, even Democrats may grow to love a conservative Supreme Court.
Whatever the outcome, no one should be surprised that President Trump’s first instincts are overwhelmingly iconoclastic. He campaigned on draining the swamp and up-ending the deep state. Pick a phrase, and he’s on to it.
Few have succeeded in stemming the left’s long march through the institutions. Trump wants to be remembered for giving it a red-hot go.
Whether Trump’s presidency will be characterised as creative destruction or just destruction will have to await the judgment of history. In the meantime, we should all take the opportunity Trump offers us to re-examine everything we currently take for granted about institutions.