How many entire government agencies will be eliminated by within one year of Trump taking office?
50
1kṀ15k
2026
69%
0
10%
1
3%
2
3%
3
3%
4
3%
5
10%
6 or more

Resolves on news reports from at least one of:

• ABC

• CBS

• NBC

• PBS

• NPR

• CNN

• Fox

• MSNBC

• Associated Press

• New York Times

• Washington Examiner

• Wall Street Journal

• USA Today

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bought Ṁ5 YES

The heavily bimodal distribution of responses here suggests to me that most of the uncertainty is in how the market will be resolved rather than on the actual material outcomes -- how much of the chaos so far actually amounts to "eliminated"?
So maybe we need a clarification on the criteria? Is what has happened to USAID already, for instance, an "elimination"?

@nonnihil thats right. As far as I know no agency has been formally eliminated yet, only gutted. Jeff provided a list of agencies to go by below. USAID is still up there.

I think more clarification on the definition would be helpful -- the definition of "eliminated" and also the definition of "agency".

That said, there is also some natural bimodality here because of uncertainty about the powers of the President. Either the President has the power to abolish (or perhaps to functionally abolish by, e.g. firing all the staff) agencies created by Congress, or they don't. This question is subject to active litigation, and the Supreme Court will eventually lay out a rule.

If the President can abolish agencies, the administration will probably choose to abolish several. If the President cannot abolish agencies, it's quite unlikely that Congress will act to abolish any, leading to an outcome of zero.

@jb456 He already said he'll use this as the official list of agencies: https://lda.congress.gov/ld/help/default.htm?turl=Documents%2FAppNames.htm

I think that means an agency counts as eliminated if it disappears from that list.

@TimothyJohnson5c16 Got it. I hadn't seen that part of the discussion but it seems like a sensible approach.

I think given the content of the list, which is pretty inclusive (e.g. it includes sub-cabinet agencies that are under other higher-level agencies, for example NHTSA under DOT) it makes a lot of sense for there to be a bimodal 0 or 6+ distribution-- either the administration isn't going to be able to eliminate agencies at all, or there are going to be a lot.

Do we know how many have actually been eliminated so far?

Would you count USAID? It's legally required to keep 15 employees, so technically it still exists: Trump Administration Moves to Eliminate USAID With Final Cuts - The New York Times.

@TimothyJohnson5c16 I don’t know I’m not the market creator. My impression is that so far zero agencies have been formally eliminated.

Does merging 2 agencies count as abolishing one?

@ChrisMillsc5f7 Yes. Any agency that is eliminated may have some of its work taken up by another agency. It's still a reduction in the number of government agencies. We don't want to get into debates about how much of a defunct agency's work is still happening under another banner.

@ChrisMillsc5f7Geometry Dash Merging also means two into one. This is also a feature that is of great interest at this time to reduce social burden and misuse of funds, so spending on the right subjects needs to be optimized.

What counts as an agency?

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