Everything they do is meant to sew mistrust. It doesn’t need to have any other benefit. I don’t think they are trying to hide anything, and I don’t think this is about staffing - they just want to wreck government and your trust in it.

These things create very subtle but definite opportunities for conflict. And conflict can be twisted very easily by media organizations.

Even if only four researchers out of a hundred or thousand who visit every year complain, if that complaint is caught on camara we have a "Liberal Karen exploiting and abusing federal employees just trying to do their jobs. Why can't she go through the approval process like everyone else?".

And maybe that woman just wanted to research, not be exploited to increase protection for federal services. Maybe she just wanted transparent processes for helping those employees and a public who respected those dedicated public sector workers who help us navigate the system.

Because increased funding for protection of federal workers by that kind of drama scenario does create conservative or authoritarian momentum. Even if it's not reflected as that affiliation on voting cards, it's a deep mindset.

I know in a dozen years the Karen stereotype will be seen as the sexist trope it is. But sometimes we create these feedback systems, inadvertently or purposefully, that reinforce those tropes.

I can see situations where there maybe someone considered a "Left" leaning PhD researcher may have access revoked due to lack of "business purposes". Can't have those pesky progressives looking up inconvenient facts.

More broadly, ignorance and stupidity amongst the general population benefit some politicians.

Taking your points in reverse order:

> I could more see this as being just random action without any real purpose, or aimed at petty revenge on someone, or something.

This was essentially my first point, and I think we are in agreement.

> I dunno. I'm very much not a Trump fan, but I don't see how restricting access to "national information" would help him. And if it would, how does restricting access to one of them help him?

I did not intend to claim that the closure necessarily helps Trump himself. My point was that reducing access to public information (either wholesale, or by placing additional hurdles) hurts democracy and favors autocracy.

It doesn't need to 'help him', he is sufficiently motivated to do stuff for the simple reason that it hurts people he sees as enemies.

He has a record as long as his public life of being capricious, vindictive, and petty. This is ancient, settled history by this point, as clear as the sun rising in the East.

Remember that the Trump administration are active enemies of open inquiry, justice and accountability - and they have done a solid job illegally dismantling the federal government due to extremist ideology.

If an organization is a source of inconvenient truth to a ruler, or serves the public without a profit motive, it will be ruined by this administration.