The fact that the NY Times casually adopts Trump's "deep state" framing to refer to career government officials who cooperate with legal processes is a sign of just how normalized our descent into autocracy has become.
It's easy to pick on the Times here, but I think this tells us much more about what's happen to all of us than to them specifically. Just a couple years ago, sane people understood the "deep state" as nothing more than fringe conspiracy theory, undeserving of serious attention.
I read the Times' usage here as mostly ironic with a bit of a wink and nod. But the fact that that's even possible reveals volumes about the way the current narrative has made even the most ordinary of democratic institutions casually suspect.
