Speaker Johnson Unveils Ambitious Plan to ‘Mass Deport’ Bureaucrats from DC
House Speaker Mike Johnson announced on Friday that Republicans have a comprehensive strategy to reshape and reduce federal government operations if they secure majorities in Congress and if former President Donald Trump regains the White House.
In an extensive conversation with Just the News, the Louisiana Republican outlined a proposal aimed at "deporting" thousands of federal bureaucrats from Washington, D.C., relocating them to other regions across the country.
Johnson emphasized that he and other GOP leaders intend to move federal agency offices, personnel, and resources out of the nation’s capital to bring government functions closer to the American people and reduce the influence of "wealthy special interests" that often sway policy and spending decisions.
“There’s a lot of talk about uprooting, you know, these entrenched bureaucracies and putting them out elsewhere around the country,” Johnson stated.
This overhaul of the federal bureaucracy—comprising over two million employees and contractors—aligns with Trump's vision to appoint billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk to oversee a government efficiency office, according to Johnson.
The strategy also includes reallocating federal funds to the states via block grants, a long-standing goal of fiscal conservatives looking to streamline government.
Johnson explained that relocating Washington bureaucrats would likely result in a natural reduction of government size and cost.
“That accomplishes a lot of important goals, but the first would be that you don’t have all these career civil service law-protected bureaucrats,” he said. “Some of them have been camped out of these agencies for decades. They’re nameless, faceless. We don’t know who to hold accountable.”
He further elaborated: “The idea is, if you move the agency to, you know, northern Kansas or southwest New Mexico, or wherever it is around the country, then some of the swamp dwellers will not desire to follow the job to the new, less desirable location. They love the swamp. You know they want to stay. They’ll turn them into lobbyists or something to stay in D.C.”
Johnson described this large-scale relocation as a “business reorganization proposition” for the federal government.
“You’ve got agencies that you can scale down because you have empty cubicles and … almost all the agencies are bloated and inefficient,” he continued. “So you can scale that down. And then in the cubicles that you do need to fill, we’ve had America First Policy Institute and some of our other think tanks that have been working to develop a notebook full of highly qualified, previously vetted, limited government conservatives who have expertise in these areas.”
These comments represent Johnson’s most detailed outline of a GOP vision for reducing government spending and restructuring federal operations. He also mentioned plans to take a “blowtorch” to the regulatory state, leveraging a recent Supreme Court decision that overturned the long-standing “Chevron doctrine.”
Under this ruling, federal bureaucrats can no longer independently create or interpret regulations; they must strictly enforce only those authorized by Congress, Just the News noted.
“We have a once in a lifetime, yeah, once in a lifetime opportunity to really claw back Article 1 authority to the Legislative Branch under the Constitution and have an administration that is in tune with that whole agenda,” Johnson continued. “So look, I just think there’s almost unlimited potential in front of us, and we’ve got to seize that moment.”
Additionally, Speaker Johnson highlighted that a GOP-led Congress would fully support Trump’s previously outlined priorities, including securing the border, deporting undocumented immigrants, tackling inflation, renewing the soon-to-expire Trump tax cuts, and bolstering national security in an increasingly unstable global environment.
“I think within the hour of President Trump taking this oath of office, he’ll issue an executive order to secure that border,” Johnson said. “We’ll come behind that with legislative action to secure it, seal it up, and then we’ll work on having to deal with the fallout of everybody who was allowed in, and that’s a whole agenda thing.”
“But immediately after the border is secured, we go to the economy, because the cost of living is unsustainable, unaffordable, and we know how to fix it … Then we’re going to do that and then somewhere you’re going to have an extension of the Trump era tax cuts,” he added.