Public Health Policy Reviews 31:
The Hunger Games Made Real – Steve Bannon and the “Deconstruction of the Administrative State.”
Sam Seder and Emma Vigeland of “The Majority Report with Sam Seder” report on Steve Bannon being ordered to prison by a federal Judge on June 6th, 2024. Video courtesy of The Majority Report with Sam Seder.
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NOTE: Nazia Saeed, a Human Resources professional living in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates, contributed significant research and writing for parts of this article.
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Emma Vigeland (left) and Sam Seder (right) of “The Majority Report with Sam Seder” report on Steve Bannon being ordered to prison by a federal Judge on June 6th, 2024. Video courtesy of The Majority Report with Sam Seder.
Two weeks ago, YouTube political commentators Sam Seder and Emma Vigeland of The Majority Report gleefully shared news of a federal judge’s June 6th, 2024, order to imprison Steve Bannon.
On July 22nd, 2022, a federal court convicted Bannon – the former chief executive officer of Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign, of contempt of Congress for defying a subpoena issued by the US House Congressional committee investigating the January 6th Capitol riot. Federal Court Judge Carl Nichols sentenced Mr. Bannon to prison in October 2022.
Judge Nichols initially paused Bannon’s four-month sentence after he filed an appeal in November 2022. However, a Washington DC Circuit Court of Appeals panel unanimously rejected Mr. Bannon’s appeals to the case, indicating the seriousness of his offense.
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Photo by LOGAN WEAVER | @LGNWVR on Unsplash.
Why is a fourteen-day-old news story relevant today?
Mr. Seder and Ms. Vigeland often discuss the vindictive pettiness of former US President Donald Trump and his political acolytes in the Make America Great Again (MAGA) movement on their daily show. Bannon is sure to add digital gadflies to the “MAGA” movement like Seder and Vigeland to his “enemies list” if Trump takes back the White House in November.
If recent polling indicates what might happen during the US presidential election, Seder and Vigeland should start to get nervous. On Monday, June 17th, Harry Enten, a senior data analyst working for CNN, reported that indicators suggest former President Donald Trump might secure a historic performance with African American voters for a republican Party nominee in the 2024 election.
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Donald Trump has drastically shrunk the polling deficit with President Joe Biden among Black voters in the six battleground states that will decide the election.
In a May New York Times/Siena College poll, Biden leads Trump 70% to 18% among African American voters. However, Mr. Biden received 86% of the Black vote in 2020. “That’s a 16-point drop, John,” Enten told CNN host John Berman.
“I keep looking for signs that this is going to go back to normal, and I don’t see it yet in the polling of anything right now,” Enten continued. “We’re careening towards a historic performance for a Republican presidential candidate, the likes of which we have not seen in six decades,” said Enten.
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Steve Bannon in July 2023. Photo image courtesy of Wikipedia Commons.
So, it is possible that Steve Bannon—who also hosts a political podcast called “Steve Bannon’s War Room,” will be the political commentator who gets the “last laugh” in November.
Maybe we should explain to readers why President Biden is becoming so unpopular with African American voters, but our priority is public health policy. Thus, we are inclined to describe why Steve Bannon’s return to power in November will be dangerous for America and international diplomacy.
After Donald Trump’s 2016 election win, he appointed Bannon as White House Chief Strategist, a role he served from January 2017 to August 2017. Before he joined the Trump campaign in 2016, Bannon gained national prominence as the executive chairman of Breitbart News, a far-right news and opinion website.
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The “Deconstruction of the Administrative State”
Steve Bannon shakes hands with former White House Chief of Staff Reince Priebus at CPAC in 2017. Photo image courtesy of Wikipedia Commons.
Steve Bannon’s experience as a surface warfare officer in the Navy and as the chairman of Breitbart News makes him an effective political propagandist.
At the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in 2017, Steve Bannon famously called for the “deconstruction of the administrative state.” This infamous phrase from Bannon perfectly summarizes an over fifty (50) yearlong desire among American political conservatives and libertarians to reduce the size, effectiveness, and public influence of federal agencies and government bureaucracies.
Bannon believes federal bureaucracies represent an overreach of government power, stifling economic growth and individual freedoms through excessive regulation. What would Bannon’s call to “deconstruct the administrative state” look like if implemented?
The Trump administration gave the United States a clue during the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic.
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Photo by Kelly Sikkema on Unsplash.
The coronavirus spread rapidly across the planet after the outbreak began in the Chinese city of Wuhan in December 2019.
According to the World Health Organization (WHO), COVID-19 became a global pandemic in March 2020. Many aspects of human life across the earth ended due to the international “social distancing” and government-imposed lockdowns caused by COVID-19.
Indeed, American society—as we knew it—ground to an unprecedented standstill because of the coronavirus’s contagious nature. The intensity of the public health crises, social isolation, lack of money, and rapidly dwindling public resources eventually killed over one million people in the US.
Donald Trump and the Congressional Republicans still asked the Supreme Court to strike down the Affordable Care Act (ACA or “Obamacare”) during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic in June 2020.
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Impact on Public Health and Welfare Services
Photo by CDC on Unsplash.
Bannon’s envisioned ‘deconstruction of the administrative state’ would have profound implications for public health and welfare services in the United States.
Federal agencies such as the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), and the Education Department play critical roles in safeguarding public health, safety, the environment, and public literacy. These agencies establish and enforce regulations that manage infectious disease outbreaks, ensure the safety of food, drugs, and medical devices, protect the US public and the environment from pollution – and educate American children.
Trump, Bannon, the GOP, and libertarian businessmen like Elon Musk advocate replacing federal agencies with business associations, private philanthropic organizations, religious institutions, private education initiatives, military academies, and private prisons.
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NFL Hall of Famer and pro football legend Brett Favre (left) poses for a photo with former US President Donald J. Trump (right) at the Trump National Golf Club on Saturday, July 25th, 2020, in Bedminster, New Jersey. Official White House Photo by Tia Dufour.
Steve Bannon’s call for the “deconstruction of the administrative state” represents a radical shift in government functions.
We already have multiple examples of what form dissolving bureaucratic apparatuses and government regulations would look like in numerous conservative “red” states run by politically right-wing “MAGA” governors like Tate Reeves in Mississippi, Sarah Sanders in Arkansas, and Ron DeSantis in Florida.
A water crisis continues to plague Mississippi after the Pearl River flooded in 2022 due to severe storms. In 2023, Mississippi native and NFL Hall of Fame quarterback Brett Farve became embroiled in the state’s most significant historical welfare fraud case.
Sarah Sanders has repealed child labor laws in Arkansas, and Florida has faced chronic public health emergencies since Ron DeSantis became governor in 2019.
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Theatrical release poster for the 2012 film The Hunger Games, starring actress Jennifer Lawrence. Photo image courtesy of Wikipedia Commons.
Donald Trump, Steve Bannon, and national Republican Party proponents argue that “deconstructing the administrative state” would lead to greater economic freedom and efficiency.
However, the negative impacts on public health, safety, and welfare services nationally and statewide in the limited circumstances presented in this essay starkly contradict the propaganda from Mr. Trump and Steve Bannon.
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TOMORROW: Democracies at Risk – The Impact of Steve Bannon’s Vision for the Americas and Europe.
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Arguing for more authoritarianism? When the heck did the progressive liberals and far-left marxist types all start falling prey to the belief that American's are so dumb and incapable of personal autonomy, that we should sign over more rights to the state? The irony of a public arm of the civilian public health lobby warning of the danger's in distributing propaganda, is one of the most humorous things I've seen in a while. "Water crisis" 🙄 Riiiiight. Funny that you mention the Pearl River Indian reservation flood, as if its a humanitarian catastrophe or something. In the entire region, the population is around 3,000. You could have even mentioned the ongoing polluted water of Flint Michigan, or East Palestine Ohio, who's people are dropping dead like flys and loosing legitimate civil cases against the corrupt corporations responsible. But no single publicly funded, political lobbying organization is more committed to propagating misleading, fear mongering disinformation, than that of "Public Health" sector.