I don't think we need to pick between incompetence and malice here. I think both apply to most of their actions.

Select non-malicious but incompetent people to head departments, gives you plausible deniability when people claim that what's happening is malicious. "No, look, RFK Jr is sincere in his desire to help the American people." He's just really bad at it. Of course, that doesn't speak well to the judgment of the people at the top. They'll try and claim that RFK Jr did a fine job and it was the Deep State that caused the problems.

At this point, I don't see why it should matter if it's criminal negligence or malice.

They know what they are doing is illegal. Or, if they don't, it's because they are actively insisting on not learning it, what shouldn't make any difference.

> I normally defer to Hanlon's Razor, but with this administration it's 50/50 if their actions are due to incompetence or malice.

The incompetent people were hired / appointed[1] as a form of malice against the "Deep State" (read: civil service) specifically, and government and civil society in general.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spoils_system

Hanlon’s razor is funny because it assumes that malicious actors can’t be incompetent and incompetent people can’t act maliciously. It is a fun logical trick that functions by pretending that huge swathes of the population don’t exist, like a sort of inverted cognitive behavioral therapy exercise