The FBI budget is supposedly around 9 billion with 35,000 or so employees they deign to admit having. Can’t really see anything happening to it at this point. That’s a 9 billion dollar dug in tick that knows a bunch of dirty laundry with lots of folks willing to go to the mat to keep it dug in and sucking. It was probably too late 75+ years ago to do anything about any of the alphabet agencies, which basically function as guardians of the bureaucratic establishment empire in DC in order to keep themselves and their families fed and living well for generations.
It’s hard for me to picture any modern politician getting rid of any alphabet agency or even reducing their budgets in the era of the 24 news cycle and media disaster porn. There’s just too many ways the agency can retaliate.
Freegards
Reagan campaigned on getting rid of Jimmy Carter’s fledgling Department of Education ... and failed. And look at its size and all the things it is doing today.
When the “9 wise men on the court, caught up in the politics of the age, re-intepreted our Constitution from one that limited the givernment to its enumerated powers to one of no limits on its powers, and the other two branches went along with it - the rest is history. Also, the “9 wise men” decades later holding in the Chevron case basically allowed the agencies to act with nearly the same unlimited powers. Here is also another reality and was pointed out by Nixon’s right hand man HR Haldeman - the agencies are recalcitrant, most of it Demonikraps, and all of it beyond the reach of the POTUS - including firing these “civil servants”. Its worse than the spoils system after the Civil War.