Many Americans are awakening to the fact that we seem to have no local control of a lot of local things: public schools, our terms of employment, local governments, local elections. That last one popped again recently with the release of my colleague Mollie Hemingway’s deeply reported 2020 election investigation book, “Rigged.”

The claim: 'Deep State' collapses: martial law is in effect, Biden and Congress arrested, official government statements censored, pandemic created by other countries to overthrow U.S. government
In the days since the Jan. 6 U.S. Capitol riot and President Joe Biden's inauguration, social media platforms and online messaging boards have been flooded with conspiracy theories about a nationwide military takeover.

BEYOND THE HEADLINES around the unprecedented storming of Capitol Hill by rampagers and violent extremists, a more mundane group of Washington, D.C., insiders is trickling into the halls of government.

The newly elected Congress is hiring a wave of corporate lobbyists to fill key staff roles.

It’s become a partisan talking point in defense of almost everything President Trump does.

The deep state is the right’s new bogeyman.

I’d wager that until fairly recently, few people had ever heard the phrase. I’d also bet that roughly 99 percent of those who fling the term around have no idea that it’s borrowed from Turkish politics.

Unelected bureaucrats should not wield legislative power.

After the 2016 election, the so-called deep state was confident that it had the power easily to either stop, remove, or delegitimize the outlier Donald Trump and his presidency.

James Comey flatly stated during CNN’s Wednesday town hall in Williamsburg, Virginia that there is no “deep state.”

The attempted sabotaging of a president.

The Justice Department has a whopping 27 open investigations into leaks of classified information with a “political motive,” Attorney General Jeff Sessions revealed Tuesday — that’s three times more than the agency has had in the three years prior.

What better way to decimate the bureaucracy than to convince Americans it’s treacherous?