The Two Meanings of "Efficiency" in Trump's Washington

When Attorney General Pam Bondi called her department "the most efficient Department of Justice in American history," she was describing an agency that had just fired 6,400 people ^[1].

This is the most efficient Department of Justice in American history, and our attorneys will continue to deliver measurable results for the American people. — United States Department of Justice

A Brookings Institution study found that senior White House staff turnover had dropped to 29 percent in Trump's first year — down from 35 percent in 2017 — a stability the study's author attributed directly to loyalty-based hiring that produced "less infighting and less drama" ^[2].

For the other six presidents before President Trump, the average [high level staff] turnover in that first year is typically around 10%, so he's much higher than the average, but I will say it is less than his first term by a good margin. — Kathryn Dunn Tenpas

Two numbers, both presented as evidence that the administration is running well. One measures a purge; the other measures a retention strategy. The administration calls its personnel project "efficiency," and under that label two opposite operations run simultaneously: one keeps loyalists in place, the other removes everyone else. The inside track is stability by design. Brookings found far fewer forced resignations in 2025 than in 2017, and the study's author, Kathryn Dunn Tenpas, concluded that the loyalty screen applied to hiring "paved the way for less infighting and less drama" ^[2]. The White House inner circle is smaller, more ideologically uniform, and more durable than it was eight years ago. The outside track is disruption by design. Twenty-seven Senate-confirmed officials have departed in Trump's first 18 months — six times the Bush-Obama-Biden average and 145 percent higher than Trump's own first term ^[3]. The administration has eliminated 352,000 federal jobs, cutting the workforce to its smallest level since 1966 ^[4]. In June, an executive order reclassified roughly 8,000 senior federal employees as at-will, stripping their civil service protections and making them fireable on the president's say-so ^[5]. The same officials who preside over the stable inner circle also run the purge. OPM Director Scott Kupor, who is now overseeing a selective hiring push to refill some of the emptied positions, calls the at-will reclassification a "high-performance culture" ^[6].

I think good people want to be in a high-performance culture. — Scott Kupor

Bondi calls 6,400 fired DOJ employees "efficiency." Kupor calls firing 8,000 senior officials at will a "high-performance culture." The word stretches to cover keeping people and removing them, because the word is not describing either practice — it is justifying both. What both operations select for becomes clear when you look at what fills the vacancies. Trump has nominated 578 people to Senate-confirmed posts — fewer than any president since Reagan ^[3]. The National Park Service has operated without a confirmed director for over a year, run by an acting director who answers to the president without Senate vetting ^[7]. After removing Tulsi Gabbard as Director of National Intelligence, Trump installed Bill Pulte as acting director — a figure who, by the account of the story reporting the move, "lacks national security experience" and was "appointed as acting director to bypass Senate confirmation" ^[8]. Chris Piper of the Partnership for Public Service made the mechanism explicit.

Each seat left to an acting official is one the president can fill on his own terms without the Senate’s advice and consent: no vetting, no confirmation hearing, no vote. — Chris Piper

Trump himself has said it plainly: "We don't need anything more from Congress" ^[9]. OMB Director Russell Vought stated the goal was for civil servants to be "traumatically affected" and viewed as "villains" ^[9]. The vacancy is not a byproduct of the strategy — it is the strategy. The picture is not seamless. The inner circle's operating culture has been described as an "aesthetarchy" — rule by feelings — with Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth holding tantrums during Pentagon briefings and senior aide Stephen Miller having meltdowns on staff calls ^[10]. Three female Cabinet members were fired in six weeks between March and April 2026 ^[11]. But the Cabinet firings fall in the Senate-confirmed track, not the White House inner circle that Brookings measured. The stability track and the disruption track are not in tension — they are the same project applied to different populations. The surface divide between keeping loyalists and purging everyone else dissolves when you ask what both select for: a government with fewer people who can say no and fewer institutions that can push back. The word "efficiency" is not a description of either practice. It is the cover that lets both run under one name. And the mechanism that delivers both is the vacancy — agencies run by acting directors who answer to the president without Senate vetting, confirmation, or vote.