The first 10 days of Donald Trump’s presidency have seen such an onslaught of executive orders and implementing actions that Steve Bannon’s strategy to “flood the zone with shit” seems apt. But that characterization is incomplete, and it obscures a more frightening truth: The Trump administration’s actions have been not just voluminous but efficient and effective. Though Trump himself may not appreciate the depth of detail that has gone into these early days, his allies do appear to understand what they are doing, and they seem to have his unquestioning consent to do whatever they like.  

And what they want is very clear: to take full control of the federal government. Not in the way that typifies every change of administration but in a more extreme way designed to eradicate opposition, disempower federal authority, and cause federal bureaucrats to cower. It is an assault on basic governance.

A great deal of thought has gone into this effort already. The executive orders and sundry administrative directives and guidance that have been issued reflect a profound understanding of the federal government and exactly where the weak spots within the bureaucracy might lie.

Read: The strategy behind Trump’s policy blitz

Consider, as a first example, the order that reassigned 20 senior career lawyers within the U.S. Department of Justice. Because of their career status, they could not be unilaterally fired, but Trump’s team did the next best thing by reassigning them to a newly created “Sanctuary Cities” task force. With one administrative act, the senior leaders of public-integrity investigations, counter-intelligence investigations, and crypto-currency investigations—individuals with immense experience in criminal law—were taken off the board and assigned to a body that is, apparently, tasked with taking legal actions against cities that do not assist in Trump’s immigration crackdown. Their former offices were effectively neutered.

As my friend, the former federal prosecutor Randall Eliason, put it: “These are career people. They are not political. They are people who have been in these positions often many, many years or even decades. They have developed a real expertise, and that’s a great resource for the government.” A resource that is now lost.

But this is not merely an attack on expertise. This maneuver has a further effect: to disable opposition. Career employees with this degree of expertise and experience are exactly the type who would embody institutional norms and, thus, exactly the sort who could be expected, in their own way, to form a bulwark of institutional resistance to Trumpian excess. Moreover, three of the prosecuting sections of the DOJ that have been disrupted—public integrity (an anti-corruption unit), counterintelligence (combatting foreign influence), and crypto crime—are precisely the three units whose oversight might interfere with Trump’s activities, or those of his allies.

The same playbook was also used last week to hamstring environmental enforcement, by reassigning four senior environmental lawyers at the DOJ to immigration matters. The leaders of these four litigating sections are four of the most experienced environmental lawyers in the nation. Additionally, the Trump administration has frozen action on all cases handled by the Justice Department’s Environmental Enforcement Section, with substantial practical disruption. Once again, expertise has been lost and the functionality of government institutions has been significantly impaired, with the inevitable result that companies subject to environmental regulation (including Trump’s big corporate supporters) will be less policed.

One could continue with a number of other examples, whether the wholesale reassignment of 160 staffers at the National Security Council (responsible for coordinating crucial national-security matters at the White House), the reassignment of DOJ civil-rights leadership (enforcing DEI mandates), or the appointment Ed Martin (a January 6 denier) as the United States attorney for the District of Columbia. But the themes are always the same: Long-standing expertise is discarded and institutional effectiveness diminished.  

[Read: Trump can’t escape the laws of political gravity]

More to the point, however, these actions are a “deep cut” reflecting significant planning and intent. The chiefs at DOJ’s public-integrity or environmental-enforcement sections are by no means household names. Nobody outside their immediate ambit of authority would know who they are. And yet the extent of knowledge demonstrated by Trump’s team in reassigning them is extensive. Trump’s team knows which high-value targets might offer internal resistance, and it has removed them.

A second pillar of Trump’s effort to take over the government can be seen in his steps to eliminate any independent oversight of his actions.

Here, the headline is his attempted purge of at least a dozen inspectors general.  Inspectors general, as an institution, are perhaps not so little-known as the DOJ section chiefs who were dismissed, but as individuals, they are mostly anonymous. IGs serve as an internal check on waste, fraud, and abuse at federal agencies. They were created by Congress in the 1970s as a semi-independent authority intended to be insulated from presidential control. They routinely report to Congress and the public about misconduct that they identify for corrective action.

Indeed, Congress so highly values the independence, objectivity, and nonpartisanship of IGs that, following Trump’s first presidency, it passed a law strengthening that independence and limiting a president’s removal authority. No doubt recognizing the threat that independent oversight might pose to his planned actions, Trump’s (possibly illegal) removal order is a frontal assault on the careful monitoring Congress has sought to build into the government

To similar effect, the Trump administration has moved to eliminate the Pentagon’s Civilian Protection Center of Excellence. That relatively obscure office (with a budget of only $7 million and 30 staff), little noticed outside the Army, is intended to study ways of reducing civilian harm during combat. But Trump’s secretary of defense, Pete Hegseth, thinks that “restrictive rules of engagement” make defeating the enemy harder, but the protection of civilians is all about careful rules of engagement. Again, the Trump administration’s action reflects both a substantive desire to diminish oversight and a depth of bureaucratic knowledge that is extensive.

That depth can also be seen in Trump’s announced intention to fire three Democratic members of the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board. The PCLOB is an independent bipartisan oversight board reviewing executive-branch law-enforcement and intelligence surveillance activities. Yet, despite its crucial internal importance, the PCLOB is hardly a well-known institution. Save for those, like me, who work in that field, few, if any, outside observers could likely define the board’s role or name its members.

[Jonathan Chait: Trump’s second term might have already peaked]

And still, Trump’s team knew enough to identify an ingenious way of neutering the board. As an independent, statutorily created agency, it could not be eliminated. But the board does require a quorum to operate, and by firing three of its five members this past Monday, Trump effectively eliminated its oversight. As Senator Ron Wyden put it: “By purging the Democratic members of the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board, Trump is kneecapping one of the only independent watchdogs over government surveillance who could alert Congress and the public about surveillance abuses by his administration.” And he is doing so in a highly sophisticated manner.

Along with large-scale actions to reform government, Trump’s orders included a plethora of small-bore, petty-minded actions designed to implement his personal prejudices and desire for revenge. For example, he has stripped Anthony Fauci of his federal security detail. He has also dismissed Admiral Linda Fagan of the Coast Guard, the only woman who has ever led a military branch, on a transparently inaccurate claim of ineffectiveness. Likewise, he has stripped security protection from Mike Pompeo and John Bolton (both of whom are under affirmative threat from Iran). His administration’s ban on “activist” flags at U.S. embassies would be almost comical if it did not exemplify the coldhearted efficiency at the core of Trump’s new presidency. These actions are petty, but they also reflect the comprehensive nature of his purpose and the extent of his team’s planning.

Were it not so dangerous to democratic norms, the efficiency of these early days would almost be admirable, in the same way that one might admire a well-run play by an opposing football team. But politics is not a game, and this nation’s basic security and functioning are at risk. Those who oppose Trump’s actions do not have an incompetent opponent; Trump’s team is savvy and has been planning for this for years. They came ready.

These days in Washington, D.C., among a class of Extremely Beltway types—the name droppers, the strivers, the media gossips—Donald Trump’s threats to exact revenge on his enemies have turned into a highly specific (and highly absurd) status competition.

Olivia Troye has heard the joke so many times that she already has a well-worn comeback prepared. When nervous journalists and teasing D.C. types crack to Troye—a lifelong Republican who served as former Vice President Mike Pence’s homeland-security adviser before becoming an outspoken Trump critic—that they might end up in adjoining Guantánamo Bay cells, she responds: “I had the Gitmo portfolio, so I can give you some tips.”

In a moment of deep uncertainty in the nation’s capital, where Trump took office promising vengeance but where the scope of his intentions remains nebulous, many of Trump’s known critics have unofficially divided into two adjacent camps: those, like Troye, who have real reason to be alarmed by the president’s threats and are quietly taking steps to protect themselves and their family, and those who are loudly—and often facetiously—chattering about how Trump and his posse might throw them in a gulag. (There are also those in Trump’s orbit who are joking, one hopes, about whom they might throw in the hypothetical gulag.)

Whereas many of those branded most prominently with the scarlet R of Resistance are now eager to stay out of Trump’s sight line, other figures in Washington are actively self-identifying as could-be Trump targets, in a very D.C. show of importance. And often the people talking openly about getting thrown in a gulag likely aren’t even important enough for the gulag.

At one of the many swanky parties in the run-up to Trump’s second inauguration, a White House reporter confessed to me that during a recent meeting in outgoing White House Chief of Staff Jeff Zients’s office, the reporter had—mainly in jest—asked to get on the list for a preemptive pardon. In his final The Late Show episode during the Biden administration, Stephen Colbert also played with the gag, telling his audience, “The next time you all see me, Donald Trump will be president. And you may not see me! Next four years—next four years, we’re taking this one day at a time.”

If the classic “D.C. read” is scanning a book’s index for one’s own name and frantically flipping to the listed pages, then even a mention in Appendix B (“Executive Branch Deep State”) of Government Gangsters, written by Trump’s pick for FBI chief, Kash Patel, can serve as a status symbol in certain circles.

[Read: The sound of fear on air]

“For a lot of people, it’s a joke that is a thinly disguised flex—it’s joking about how important you are,” Tommy Vietor, a co-host of Pod Save America who has been on the receiving end of such jokes many times, told me. “It’s sort of become a standard greeting in a lot of circles: ‘See you in the gulags.’ ‘I hope we get the nice gulag.’”

“Then every once in a while,” he added, “someone makes that joke to someone who is actually scared or has hired a lawyer, and it’s not so funny.”

Tim Miller, a former Republican turned ardent Trump critic who writes for The Bulwark, told me that he not only regularly hears the joke but also sometimes finds himself “reflexively making it,” the way remarking on the weather is an almost involuntary conversational crutch. “And then after I do, just clarifying that I don’t actually think I’m going to the gulag and that there are people who are at real risk from this administration, and we should probably focus on that,” he said.

On Inauguration Day, President Joe Biden issued a handful of preemptive pardons that included five members of his family, lawmakers on the January 6 House committee, and people Trump had threatened, including Anthony Fauci, the nation’s top public-health expert during the coronavirus pandemic, and retired General Mark Milley, whom Trump floated the idea of executing after The Atlantic published a profile of him. Others who have attracted Trump’s ire have both publicly and privately lamented that they were not on Biden’s pardon list.

Rachel Vindman, the wife of Lieutenant Colonel Alexander Vindman—who testified before Congress about a 2019 call between Trump and the Ukrainian president during which Trump asked him to investigate Biden’s son Hunter—posted on social media after Biden’s pardons emerged, “Whatever happens to my family, know this: No pardons were offered or discussed. I cannot begin to describe the level of betrayal and hurt I feel.” Her husband appears in Patel’s appendix.

[Read: In praise of mercy]

In the early weeks of his second presidency, Trump has spoken ambiguously about plans to punish his perceived enemies, though he has already taken steps to root out those in the government he believes are part of the anti-Trump “deep state.” In some ways, the list in Patel’s book is instructive. The appendix mentions prominent figures whom Trump has already put on notice or begun targeting: Biden (“the funny thing—maybe the sad thing,” Trump noted in his first post-inauguration interview, with the Fox News host Sean Hannity, is that Biden failed to pardon himself); Trump’s former national security adviser John Bolton (within hours of taking office, Trump pulled U.S. Secret Service protection from Bolton, who faces threats on his life from Iran); and Fauci (last week Trump also terminated Fauci’s security detail). Yet the list also mentions people such as Elizabeth Dibble and Nellie Ohr, alleged deep staters who are hardly household names and whose alleged offenses are too complicated and obscure to quickly explain.

Patel also previously shared on social media a meme that featured him wielding a chainsaw and buzzing off chunks of a log emblazoned with images of alleged enemies, ranging from “Fake News,” CNN, and MSNBC to people such as Biden, the former Republican lawmaker Liz Cheney, and Representative Nancy Pelosi, the former Democratic House speaker.

Just before Election Day, the longtime Trump fundraiser Caroline Wren shared an X post from an Arizona reporter, writing, “He should be the first journalist sent to the gulag.” She later said she was joking. Mike Davis, one of Trump’s most vocal outside legal defenders, has led the unofficial social-media brigade threatening to toss reporters and other perceived enemies into the “gulag,” statements he described to The Washington Post as a “troll” to nettle the left.

But now that Trump, back in the Oval Office, continues to display a willingness to punish those who have crossed him, this sort of declaration from Trump allies can take on a more menacing edge. On Inauguration Day, Davis unleashed more than a dozen posts on X that, depending on the perspective, could be read as trolls or threats. “Dear Congress: We need a supplemental to feed the Vindmans in federal prison,” he wrote in one. “Dear Tony Fauci: Roll the dice. Decline the pardon. And see what happens,” read another. And in a third, using a format he repeated for many of Trump’s enemies, he addressed Biden’s former Homeland Security secretary by name, writing, “Dear Alejandro Mayorkas: No pardons for you and your staff?”

“Nobody is above the law,” Davis said, when I called to ask him about his public posts. “If they’ve done nothing wrong, they have nothing to worry about, and if they’ve done nothing wrong, why did they need a pardon?”

Some of those squarely in the sights of Trump and his allies have begun taking steps to protect themselves. Troye, for instance, has retained a lawyer, and recently made sure that she and her family members had up-to-date passports. Rachel Vindman, meanwhile, told me that she and her family moved from Virginia to Florida two years ago—uprooting their daughter in the middle of sixth grade—in part because they “wanted to live somewhere a little bit more anonymous.” (She was also, she added, ready to leave the D.C. bubble and eager for a “fresh start.”)

[Read: Trump’s first shot in his war on the ‘deep state’]

In many ways, the fear that the mere prospect of retribution has struck in Trump’s opponents—prompting them to hire personal security or nervously bluster about the gulags—could be victory enough for MAGA world. After winning reelection, Trump posted on social media a list of out-of-favor individuals and groups—including “Americans for No Prosperity,” “Dumb as a Rock” John Bolton, and Pence, his former vice president—and said that prospective administration hires should not bother applying if they had worked with or were endorsed by anyone on the list.

“That’s the financial gulag,” one person told me, speaking anonymously because he has worked for three of the people or entities on Trump’s list, and doesn’t want his business to be blackballed. “It’s not quite a gulag, but it does have a chilling effect.”

Similarly, those who did not receive pardons from Biden worry about the financially daunting task of protecting themselves. “Did you not think of the people who are about to get destroyed, who defend themselves, who have no congressional coverage, who are not politicians, who are not millionaires, who don’t have dozens of PACs that are protecting them?” Troye asked. “There are people who worked on government salaries.” (A Biden spokesperson declined to comment on Biden’s relatively selective set of pardons.)

Vindman, who lived in Russia for several years, said that although no one knows exactly what to expect in Trump’s second term, her experience in Moscow might offer a glimpse: Colleagues policed themselves, and other Russians proactively took actions they believed would please Russian President Vladimir Putin.

“It was never a direct ask,” she told me. “It was a more tacit thing.”

[Read: Trump targets his own government]

Vindman, who has friends who regularly check in on her, said she spent Election Night wide awake. Her husband was in Virginia with his twin brother, Eugene Vindman, a Democrat the state’s suburban voters elected to the House, and the task of telling her daughter that Trump had won fell to her. “The hardest part of that was laying in bed awake, worrying,” she said. “She’s in eighth grade, and maybe the last four years of her with us will be marred by that, by this harassment.”

When, over the Thanksgiving holiday, Trump’s close ally Elon Musk accused Alexander Vindman of “treason,” warning that “he will pay the appropriate penalty,” Rachel Vindman told me that her immediate concern was for her in-laws and her 98-year-old grandmother, who heard the comment and worried on her family’s behalf.

But personally, Vindman said she is working to find daily joy and maintain a sense of normalcy for herself and her family. Her husband recently turned his masters thesis into a book, The Folly of Realism, coming out at the end of February. When I asked her if she ever considered urging him not to publish, because it would thrust their family back into public view, she was emphatic: “Do you just say no to it because it might anger them or put you in the spotlight?” she asked. “It’s that kind of quiet defiance of living your life.”

“It could be a mistake. I guess we’ll never know.” She paused, then added, “Well, I guess we will know.”