[apical_dendrite]

You're making an assumption that the professional career civil servants are in charge. The whole theme of this administration is that they are dismantling the administrative state and the civil service. The political echelon has made it extremely clear that if they want something, the civil service cannot stop them from getting it, regardless of tradition or legality. So when DOGE says they want probationary employees fired, but the law says that probationary employees can only be fired for performance or conduct reasons, then OPM directs the agencies to fire probationary employees for performance, and the agency carries out that directive. Does it matter that nobody has actually assessed the performance of these employees? Or that OPM has no authority to direct an agency to fire anyone? No. You see this pattern again and again - agencies giving DOGE root access to systems, the administration ignoring statutes that say they have to notify congress or provide a reason before firing someone, etc. Dismantling agencies despite statutes that explicitly state that only Congress can do that.

There are absolutely no institutional guardrails. If Mike Waltz says he wants to put his personal contacts into Signal, nobody is going to stop him from doing that because they know from numerous examples that the administration does not care about laws or civil service protections an is happy to fire anyone who stands in their way.