The only consistent message from Donald Trump

We've now entered another partial government shutdown – this one affecting Homeland Security services only because stubbornness over Donald Trump's insistence of shielding ICE and border police tactics.

But, we are told, it won't affect the deportations because DHS already got so much money for its enforcement activity. Instead, the Coast Guard, TSA and FEMA employees will be asked to work for no pay, even as Secretary Kristi Noem struggles to avoid blame by the public and even Trump for creating what feels a political problem.

Even if it did not seem as if every action in this Trump administration is motivated by partisan politics or adjudged for "support for the Trump agenda," we're hearing an extraordinary series of actions caused by plain old incompetence.

The ordered 10-day shutdown – and reopening — of the El Paso airport this week, which spawned multiple explanations from the same government turned out to be an erroneous use of anti-drone technology by the Customs and Border Protection against a party balloon.

The abrupt closure of El Paso's airspace followed the border agency's use poor use of an anti-drone laser on loan from the Department of Defense without giving aviation officials enough time to assess the risks to commercial aircraft.

That seems bad in several aspects but certainly was worsened by an inability for different agencies to hear the same story. At various points, we supposedly were reacting to Mexican drug cartel drone attacks, prompting international frictions. In any case, the shutdown scrambled civilian travel in and out of a major city and interfered with the city's emergency services, including medical emergencies. If it was an emergency, wouldn't it also have affected adjoining Juarez across the Rio Grande?

Are we supposed to believe that this "emergency" was too quick or too complex for different agencies to call each other and to rely on the same information? If so, why is the military giving out anti-drone technology to people who don't know how to use it without knowing if civilian aircraft will be affected? It is too much to ask for competence in the use of weapons?

Over and over, we hear bits of errant communications, of botched plans, of contradictory policies in which one part of this administration knows nothing about actions of the other. Where is government competence?

Mistaken Disclosures
Often, we are hearing courtroom admissions by Justice Department lawyers that the "facts" they were given about various immigration cases are incorrect or missing, or necessary communications to meet court orders that simply never happened.

One theme running through Attorney General Pam Bondi's disastrous session with House Judiciary Committee members looking at Jeffrey Epstein file documents being released was the failure to protect personal information of many victimized by Epstein while great pains were taken to mask the identity of wealthy men associating with Epstein.

The Justice Department's explanation, of course, was that it was a lot of paper to go through, and mistakes could happen, despite having assigned more than 500 prosecutors and researchers to comb through the files.

Critics were quick to point out that mistakes don't run one way, that something more nefarious was afoot in warning away more of the reported thousand abused as young women not to step forward.

Meanwhile, in Washington, the Internal Revenue Service improperly shared confidential tax information of thousands of individuals with immigration enforcement officials, The Washington Post reported. In sworn testimony, an IRS official provided confidential taxpayer information even when Homeland Security could not provide sufficient data to positively identify a specific individual.

An IRS lawyer said, "Once taxpayer data is opened to immigration enforcement, mistakes are inevitable and the consequences fall on innocent people."

Are we to accept a government that makes "mistakes" that run afoul of personal privacy – once again in the name of a deportation campaign without limits or rules? This is the same government that now demands that all states turn over detailed personal information from voter rolls and accept that it is a benign request to ensure well-run elections.

Consistent Inconsistency
Much as with the early "DOGE" actions, even objectionable policy changes by an incoming administration have overrun any understanding about competence. Agencies shut one day were re-opened the next, fired federal workers were asked to return. Tariffs were set and changed, for no apparent reason other than to fit Trump's whim. International agreements and treaties suddenly became optional for this government.

The only consistent message from Trump is that loyalty matters more than substance.

On Wednesday, the Trump administration fired Donald T. Kinsella, 79, a new U.S. attorney in New York State, five hours after he was named by a federal appeals court. The court had acted weeks after having found that Trump's designated appointment never went before the Senate for confirmation and was in the job illegally. The irony, of course, was that the Justice Department cited the Constitution as insisting that the appointment needed to come from the president, skipping over the requirement that it must get approval of the Senate as well.

The New York appointment followed other U.S. attorney removals in New Jersey and Virginia over the same issue. With a majority Republican Senate, why does Trump even need to follow this legally unstable route to name someone meant to enforce the law? The answer seems to lie in the choices of candidates who lack legal experience but ooze in political loyalty.

That's why we're seeing grand juries of ordinary citizens rejecting U.S. Attorney-presented prosecutions on criminal charges against former FBI Director James B. Comey Jr., New York State Attorney General Letitia James, Fed Board member Lisa Cook, and, this week, six sitting Democratic members of Congress who issued a video repeating what the military's own conduct code says about rejecting illegal military orders.

This week also saw the disclosure of reasoning behind seizure of 2020 ballots in Atlanta. According to search warrant applications, the Justice Department, acting on Trump's behalf, were replaying the same allegations about election outcomes in Fulton County that have been repeatedly debunked. There is no new evidence, though the search warrant allowed seizure of ballots seemingly meant to find it.

The documents relied on claims from election conspiracists, including Kurt Olsen, considered in the first Trump administration as a fringe character, who now is the White House director of "election security and integrity," with the power to refer criminal investigations.

This was the seizure at which Tulsi Gabbard, director of national intelligence, with no authority to operate inside the country, was physically present – again with a host of contradictory explanations.

The Wall Street Journal brought us a host of weird goings-on at the Homeland Security Department, from serious failures to the inane, but all stemming from an incompetence in Secretary Kristi Noem.

At some point, it should become obvious that even if we can get by the obvious political actions, this administration is missing a basic governmental competence.