Additionally, since the Reagan era, government institutions have been defunded, attacked and undermined by successive (primarily Republican) adminstrations. The inevitable ineffectiveness that results is then used as an argument for further defunding.
But here's the one mistake the article makes: it's confusing Democrats with progressives and fundamentally mischaracterizes Democratic Party motivations.
There are like maybe 4 actual progressives in the Democratic Party at the Federal level. The Democratic Party hates actual progressives. Just look at the primary in the Texas 28th just recently. Pelosi and Clyburn went out of their way to campaign for Henry Cuellar who is pro-gun and the only anti-abortion Democrat in Congress over the actual progressive Cisneros.
The Democrats (including Biden) were architects of the 1994 Crime Bill that is perhaps the biggest factor in mass incarceration in the US. Not so fun fact: the US is ~3% of the world population but has ~25% of the world's prisoners.
The entire purpose of the Democratic Party is to say "look at how terrible the Republicans are" and use that for fundraising. In any European country the Democrats would be considered a conservative (probably center right) party.
So it's not that the Democrats are too focused on policy rather than administrative capacity (as the article argues) but rather they're focused entirely on aesthetics. The Democratic Party loves nothing more than appearing to do something without having to do anything.
Let me add something to the specific example of the Fifth Circuit:
> A very good example of this comes in the form of a recent 5th Circuit decision that essentially gutted the ability of the SEC to do much of its job. In Jarkesy v. Securities and Exchange Commission, the court ruled that the SEC’s use of administrative hearings violated the right to a jury trial, and therefore was unconstitutional. This is a major break from almost a century of precedent that accepted that the SEC could employ administrative hearings and administrative law judges.
What people need to realize here is that courts aren't apolitical polymaths presiding in a vacuum. Courts (including the Supreme Court) are and have always been political. If you look at the 5th Circuit appeals court judges [1], 12 are appointed by Republicans, 5 by Democrats. Undermining institutions like the SEC is not an accident. It's by design. It's part of a system that doesn't want the capital-owning class regulated.
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Court_of_Appeals...