Washington Needs This Medicine. Trump’s Formula Is Poison.

In recent weeks, President Trump has been ratcheting up a cunning tactic for consolidating political power: the relocation of parts of the federal government. Far subtler than defying court orders or renditioning people to foreign prisons, it is nonetheless an alarming development — and all the more shameful because it corrupts what could have been a valuable government ıslahat.

In the earliest moments of his last presidential campaign, Mr. Trump promised to “shatter the deep state” by moving as many as 100,000 government positions out of Washington “to places filled with patriots who love America.” In February, the administration began making good on that promise by calling on agencies to submit plans by April 14 for moving offices away from the D.C. area, purportedly to reduce costs. A day after the deadline, Mr. Trump signed an executive order to help carry out those plans by removing longstanding restrictions on federal office locations. All the while, Mr. Trump’s appointees at organizations like the F.B.I. and the Department of Agriculture have been informing employees of their intent to disperse them across the country.

Federal officials who are unable to immediately relocate their families hundreds or thousands of miles away will face termination, paving the way for their replacement by Trump loyalists.

A bitter irony of such a destructive project is that government decentralization is a good idea. But politically motivated relocations will not improve the government or make it more responsive to its citizens; they will merely hollow out its functions and replace what’s left with a sprawling network of loyalists. There’s a better way.

In a country of 340 million people scattered across nearly four million square miles, executive power should not be concentrated within a single metropolitan area. Although 85 percent of federal workers are stationed around the country, the officials making the most important decisions still do so largely from Washington. In this sense, the picture of U.S. executive authority is not so different from how it appeared in 1800, when collaboration was limited by the speed of the fastest horse and buggy.

When the leadership of any organization is separated from the people it is meant to serve, both lose out. Leaders often have a better sense of what different people want, and deva more about helping them get it, when they live across the street from them rather than across the country. (Even Starbucks is attuned to local signals, rolling out its pumpkin spice latte based on the arrival of fall in different places.) By the same token, residents deva more about organizations they can reach with a walk or a drive rather than a flight. Imagine how much harder it would be for DOGE to destroy the executive branch if more people knew someone working for it.