Month: February 2025

President Trump in just two weeks back in office has moved with astonishing speed and boundless ambition to overturn the existing political, economic, cultural and international order in an even more far-reaching way than many of his supporters or critics had imagined possible.
Mr. Trump has thrown the nation’s capital into turmoil by purging enemies at home, attacking allies abroad, shuttering one agency while targeting others, handing the tools of government to an unelected billionaire, ignoring multiple laws, trying to rewrite the Constitution and even flirting with staying in power beyond his two-term limit.
— Peter Baker, February 4, 2025

No living American has seen anything like this from a President of the United States. Nor has anyone in our lifetimes witnessed a Congress willingly abdicate its authority so completely — across the board — to a President. The Republican Party has swept away constitutional checks and balances.

In the opening weeks of Donald Trump’s second go-round in the White House, Republicans in Congress are willing to play the parts that Trump assigns them while rejecting the role that the authors of the Constitution prescribed.

The First Branch

Article I of the Constitution of the United States creates the Congress, one of three co-equal branches of government with shared powers. The founders sought to establish an effective government while preserving personal liberty. Understanding human nature, they recognized that ambitious men within any of the branches could overstep their authority and threaten our liberty — but that these encroachments could be kept in check by equally ambitious men within the other branches. This would guarantee that the constitutional framework created, with authority shared by the legislature, the executive, and the judiciary, would remain in balance. Corruption and attempts to seize power at the expense of the other branches would be constrained.

As James Madison explained (referring to branches as ‘departments’) in the Federalist Papers, No. 51:

In order to lay a due foundation for that separate and distinct exercise of the different powers of government, which to a certain extent is admitted on all hands to be essential to the preservation of liberty, it is evident that each department should have a will of its own…
. . .
It is equally evident, that the members of each department should be as little dependent as possible on those of the others, for the emoluments annexed to their offices…. But the great security against a gradual concentration of the several powers in the same department, consists in giving to those who administer each department the necessary constitutional means and personal motives to resist encroachments of the others…. Ambition must be made to counteract ambition. The interest of the man must be connected with the constitutional rights of the place. It may be a reflection on human nature, that such devices should be necessary to control the abuses of government. But what is government itself, but the greatest of all reflections on human nature? If men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary. In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men, the great difficulty lies in this: you must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place oblige it to control itself.

The founding fathers’ ingenious design, inspired by a clear-eyed understanding of human nature, has worked well enough that the Constitution is still in place, with three functioning branches, after more than 235 years.

Skewed incentives

But this framework of checks and balances is falling short in 2025. Although the framers did not foresee the influence of political parties, for much of American history party politics did not unravel the effectiveness of the framers’ design. Presidents acquired extraordinary power over time, but Congress still retained enough independence to serve as a check on the executive. (Mostly, though not comprehensively.) But not now: 2025 is an outlier.

Today the Republican majority that controls both chambers of Congress is shrugging its shoulders as the executive branch encroaches on the legislative branch, while trampling on the Constitution and the rule of law along the way. In deference to their leader in the White House, Republicans have chosen to relinquish the authority and responsibility the Constitution has vested in Congress.

Advice and consent has become auto-consent. Congressional oversight of the executive branch is gone. Exacting retribution at home, threatening our allies, giving a billionaire the keys and codes to federal departments — every senseless whim or wish of our impulsive president gets a pass, along with the lawless pursuit of goals that have eluded the traditional GOP for decades.

The incentives have become skewed by a dominating chief executive who — with a thumbs-up or thumbs-down — can control the fortunes of the legislators in his party. Donald Trump is capable of crushing the personal ambitions of Republicans in the House and the Senate. He (with the assistance of primary voters) has purged the party of dissenters unwilling to accept lies and lawless conduct. Republicans understand their peril if they dare oppose him. Their obeisance to the chief executive prevails over their fidelity to the Constitution. To wit:

Sen. Thom Tillis, R-N.C., did acknowledge that an executive branch move to turn off a federal agency “runs afoul of the Constitution in the strictest sense.” But he argued that former President Joe Biden took similar steps.
“It’s not uncommon for presidents to flex a little bit on where they can spend and where they can stop spending,” Tillis said. “Nobody should bellyache about that.”

For ambitious members of the legislative branch, fear and a rational assessment of their vulnerability has changed the calculations that Madison counted on. Instead of preserving the constitutional framework and with it Americans’ liberty, the incentives in play push in the opposite direction.

Grasping for the win

As if Trump’s domination of the GOP weren’t incentive enough, a lawless Elon Musk unleashed by Trump is furiously shuttering federal agencies, shedding employees, and denying funding for the administrative state. In short, he is shrinking government, a longstanding goal of Republicans. That’s an additional incentive and another reason why there’s no bellyaching.

Moreover, as Jonathan Chait observes, this conflict features “an inherent partisan asymmetry” that makes things even sweeter for Republicans:

If Trump and Musk succeed in taking the power of the purse from Congress, they will effectively reset the rules of the game in favor of the right. Congress’s spending powers would be redefined as setting a ceiling on spending, but not a floor. A world in which the president could cut spending without exposing Congress to accountability would hand small-government conservatives the opportunity to carry out policies they’ve long desired but been too afraid to vote for.

Rigging the rules

Republicans have chafed at their failure to win elections with an unpopular agenda. So the GOP, powered by the anti-democratic and anti-Democratic animus of the Roberts’ Court, has resorted to voter suppression, extreme gerrymandering, and an unprecedented deluge of special interest money to win elections.

But even when they win, Republicans haven’t succeeded in shrinking the federal government, since cutting popular programs is unpopular. That’s even more aggravating, which is why fanatics on the right have demonized the Democratic Party, as in “The Flight 93 Election,” — a screed that seemed out of the conservative mainstream in 2016, but isn’t any longer.

Finally, rejecting democracy outright

David Frum warned a year into the first Trump term, “If conservatives become convinced that they cannot win democratically, they will not abandon conservatism. They will reject democracy.” The events of January 6 confirmed Frum’s view. A majority of House Republicans refused to accept Joe Biden’s victory, as did the rioters who attacked the Capitol earlier that day. An increasing number of Republicans have come to justify even violence.

By now the whole of the GOP has fallen in line with Trump. He can, unchecked by the legislative branch: act lawlessly and empower others to act lawlessly; incite violence and pardon those who employ violence in his name; surround himself with men and women unqualified for public service who are, however, loyal to him. (Partial list.)

What Madison and the framers did and didn’t foresee

Madison recognized that men were not angels. He didn’t expect that officials would inevitably act courageously, place principle before personal advantage, or put country over party partisan interest. On the contrary, he anticipated that ambitious men (and let’s add women, though he didn’t foresee this) — if left unchecked — would likely engage in corruption, greed, power grabs, and other self-serving schemes.

His solution, “Ambition must be made to counter ambition,” relied on ambitious individuals within one branch of government, jealously guarding the authority of that branch and fending off incursions from the ambitious individuals within the other two branches.

This constitutional design, however, is failing us. Donald Trump dominates his party more completely than any president in modern history. Republicans in the Senate and the House fear him and follow him because, if he chooses to do so, he can end their careers. So they dare not challenge him. Every incentive is in his favor and opposed to the constitutional authority of the legislative branch.

The framers were right to focus on personal ambition. The framework they established gave Congress “the necessary constitutional means and personal motives to resist encroachments,” but in 2025 the incentive structure has uncoupled personal ambition from a jealous defense of the legislative branch.

President Donald Trump’s allies, beginning with Elon Musk, are waging a campaign to destroy the capacity of the federal government to do its job on behalf of Americans. No Republican will stand in the way of this campaign of destruction. No Republican will push back against the erosion of congressional authority.

This authoritarian campaign and disregard of the Constitution will stop when the incentives change for Republicans or when Republicans lose their majority. Pushing for those changes is the task of the Democratic Party, its allies, and other opponents of the MAGA agenda.

In my previous post I highlighted the severe damage Trump’s cronies were inflicting on the capacity of the federal government:

Shutting down agencies, blocking distribution of funds, purging personnel throughout the executive branch, and trampling over the Constitution and the law of the land. All of this will have profound long-term consequences. 
And that’s the point. To do permanent damage. To unravel the administrative readiness of the federal government. To render the state incapable of serving working- and middle-class Americans.

I wrote this with a sense of urgency, because if this effort continues apace, it will take only days or weeks for the folks Trump has unleashed to inflict enormous harm. So much so that even with good faith efforts to recover, it could take years or decades to rebuild from the rubble. (And there isn’t the slightest reason to suppose that recovery efforts would take place under favorable circumstances.)

Meanwhile, the world’s richest man and most frenzied oligarch leading the lawless wrecking crew, while incongruously claiming the mantle of democracy, is in a hurry:

We’re never going to get another chance like this.
It’s now or never.

Hysterical reactions like this is how you know that @DOGE is doing work that really matters.

This is the one shot the American people have to defeat BUREAUcracy, rule of the bureaucrats, and restore DEMOcracy, rule of the people. We’re never going to get another chance like… https://t.co/rwBqcp7veQ

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) February 4, 2025

This is a lawless enterprise, so of course Elon Musk, the Project 2025 fanatics, and MAGA loyalists are in a hurry to complete the dirty deed. The Roberts Court, departing sharply from constitutional principles, granted Trump broad immunity from criminal prosecution while in office. Through his pardon power, Trump can exempt everyone acting under his authority from criminal liability as well.

Is this the perfect crime? (Or crime spree?) It’s happening right before our eyes, but can anyone stop it?

The Democrats lack clout.

The Democrats have finally woken up to this crisis, but — locked out by voters in the November 2024 — have little institutional power to push back. They are ▪ trying to get the attention of the public, ▪ preparing to use leverage in their negotiations over the budget and the debt limit, and ▪ turning to the third branch for help by filing lawsuits.

▪ But Musk is immune from repercussions from anyone except Trump, who is gaga over having Musk in his corner drawing monumental attention to the president’s second go-round in the White House. The public is split. The MAGA faction is with Trump, while the Democrats who are alert to the crisis are just not well-positioned to do much more in February 2025 than they were in November 2024.

▪ With the narrow Republican majorities, the minority party in Congress has significant leverage regarding legislation, but this isn’t a legislative battle; the legislative crunch time is a month or more away; and what do laws matter when there is a lawless chief executive who has empowered a rogue agent?

▪ Democratic governors, attorneys general, and other allies will seek judicial remedies. There will be victories (and defeats), but we’ve seen Trump successfully evade accountability for his criminal conduct in the January 6 and classified documents cases. The courts are slow to act; too many judges (and justices) are corrupt partisans; and the tools the judiciary commands are hardly unlimited.

At the moment, this doesn’t feel much like a winning hand. But it’s going to have to do for now.

The Republicans are onboard with Trump’s agenda.

If just a handful of Republicans in either house were to offer objections to Musk’s lawless and unconstitutional power grab, they could at least slow things down. But the incentives (like those of billionaires and corporate America) count against standing in Trump’s way.

If they objected, their careers would be threatened and perhaps their personal safety. There were reports that a number of House Republicans who declined to vote for Trump’s second impeachment because they feared violence directed at them and their families. Such considerations look more likely today, after the Trump pardons of violent criminals, than they did in 2021.

Moreover, Congressional Republicans are aligned with Trump’s war on federal agencies and spending. For decades the Republican Party has sought to limit the regulatory scope of the federal government and to cut taxes to fund these activities. Shrinking government is the party’s holy grail. That’s what Musk is doing on Trump’s watch.

Having come this far with Trump, no Congressional Republican has dared object to the unlawful means Musk has employed to hollow out the federal workforce or to block distribution of approved funding. No one has objected that the process has been reckless or haphazard; that Americans may be denied assistance; that Trump is U.S. is ceding influence internationally; that collateral damage, such as personal data breaches, are likely.

There may be murmurings about this or that, but no Republican dares to raise a hand to put a stop to it. Instead, they stay silent, duck questions about lawless conduct, play whataboutism, or actively endorse what’s going on.

All the while, they await a victory to shrink the size and scope of the federal government. Finally, Social Security, Medicare, EPA, HEW, and other alphabet agencies may be tamed.

It’s no wonder that Republicans haven’t objected to Musk’s methods. Instead they’ve decided to just take the win.

The battle at this early stage on behalf of the rule of law; a robust, effective federal government; and American strength and security is up to the Democratic Party.

Donald Trump, Elon Musk, Project 2025, and the contemporary Republican Party are shredding the capacity of the federal government to do its job — starting with keeping Americans safe and secure.

The mainstream media is so bound by standard journalistic conventions of evenhanded, unbiased reporting it has failed to tell a clear story with sufficient heft. Steve Bannon has explained the winning strategy for the MAGA crew: “Flood the zone with shit.” The media can’t resist the bait, so disinformation and distraction prevail. This time around Trump’s enablers have unleashed a deluge of presidential initiatives (in contrast to Bannon’s trolling and tales) to overwhelm.

If Democrats were speaking out clearly, the media would report that. But Democrats are adrift and have been ever so slow to step up.

Republicans are bound to Trump, whose “Republican allies play the parts he assigns them” (as Barton Gelman observed in another context in November 2020). So, no help from even from ‘serious’ Republicans in the United States Senate or elsewhere.

Garrett Graff — “Musk’s Junta Establishes Him as Head of Government” does a bit of pretending to illustrate the failures of the media and the opposition to communicate the threat:

I’ve long believed that the American media would be more clear-eyed about the rise and return of Donald Trump if it was happening overseas in a foreign country, where we’re used to foreign correspondents writing with more incisive authority. Having watched with growing alarm the developments of the last 24 and 36 hours in Washington, I thought I’d take a stab at just such a dispatch. Here’s a story that should be written this weekend…

The first two paragraphs of Graff’s report on what’s happening in the U.S.A. as though it were happening abroad are enough to convey the big-picture failure he sees. But he has elaborated convincingly:

Throughout the week’s fast-moving seizure of power—one that seems increasingly irreversible by the hour—neither loyalist nor opposition parliamentary leaders raised meaningful objection to the new regime or the unraveling of the country’s constitutional system of checks and balances. A few members of the geriatric legislature body offered scattered social media posts condemning the move, but parliament — where both houses are controlled by so-called “MAGA” members handpicked for their loyalty to the president — went home early for the weekend even as Musk’s forces spread through the capital streets.

This playbook is not Donald Trump’s.

Donald Trump is ignorant of and indifferent to public policy. His only interest is himself. He’s playing at being king, serving up retribution, and enriching himself. He cares not a whit for the nation’s security or the general welfare or the prospects of democratic institutions going forward. He’ll bask in the spotlight no matter what generates the attention.

But the folks he has let in the door — including Musk and the Project 2025 crew — are crippling the capacity of our government. Shutting down agencies, blocking distribution of funds, purging personnel throughout the executive branch, and trampling over the Constitution and the law of the land. All of this will have profound long-term consequences. 

And that’s the point. To do permanent damage. To unravel the administrative readiness of the federal government. To render the state incapable of serving working- and middle-class Americans. The oligarchs (and even mere corporate and financial interests) mostly just need government to stay off their backs, which  the petty corruption we are witnessing in plain sight will ensure. 

Americans know that government is failing them.

I was struck by a handful of survey responses related to government in the recent New York Times/Ipsos poll. Images from the survey’s Topline and Methodology:

Look at the survey results for Q4., Q5., Q6., and Q7.

More than two-thirds of Americans believe “the economic system in this country unfairly favors the wealthy.” Can our government respond effectively to this challenge? Is it possible to push back against this tide?

Sixty percent of Americans believe the government is “almost always wasteful and inefficient,” while seventy-two percent believe “government is mostly working to benefit itself and the elites.” (This disillusionment makes agreement regarding a disengaged America, as revealed in Q7., more likely.)

When the federal government fails to do its job(s), the result is cynicism. Failures are guaranteed if the rampages Trump has unleashed continue. Stripping the government of resources and qualified personnel, undermining the rationale of departments and agencies, and misusing the power of the state will accelerate the decline.

Public confidence in government is in short supply. Democrats are the party of government, the party that welcomes public policy solutions to improve our lives. Can Democrats make government work for Americans? A plurality of voters suggested in November 2024 that the party has failed on this score.

Turning this around will be a tall order, made even taller and steeper if the government has been stripped of capacity. Successfully pushing back against the power of the wealthy (which Republicans and Democrats alike agree is too great) will require a responsive, resilient government. The Trump-MAGA crew — led by the world’s richest man — are intent on snuffing out that possibility.

This is a crisis. And it is as if we are sleepwalking through it. The oligarchs, with corporate America and members of the Republican Party, are fine with this. It is up to the leadership of the Democratic Party to step up.

The voters have stripped the Democratic Party of control over all three branches of government. But it is free to communicate, if the party leadership can find its voice.

“The job of the opposition is quite literally to oppose,” as Josh Marshall reminds us. “Get to it.”

Post Script: This morning, David Kurtz concluded TPM’s Morning Memo with this excerpt from Timothy Snyder (discussing the “oligarchs around Trump“):

Theirs is a logic of destruction. It is very hard to create a large, legitimate, functioning government. The oligarchs have no plan to govern. They will take what they can, and disable the rest. The destruction is the point. They don’t want to control the existing order. They want disorder in which their relative power will grow.

The sentence, “The destruction is the point,” immediately brought to mind Adam Serwer’s “The cruelty is the point.” It also crisply expressed the theme — the damage Trump’s MAGA functionaries inflicted on the executive branch over the weekend — I wished to highlight in a post (and which I set about writing).

I didn’t look at Snyder’s Substack piece until after putting up my post. Unsurprisingly, our respective commentaries have little in common, aside from the single sentence that I appropriated as a headline.

Since taking office (less than two weeks ago), Donald Trump has pardoned, commuted sentences, and stopped prosecutions of more than 1,500 Americans convicted for their activities at the Capitol on January 6, 2021. His justice department, which has fired more than a dozen prosecutors who assisted Jack Smith (who resigned before Trump’s inauguration) in the January 6 and the classified documents cases, now has hundreds of FBI agents in its sights for an expected purge. The interim U.S. attorney for D.C. has launched a “special project” to investigate prosecutors in his office who charged 250 rioters with obstructing an official proceeding (under a law that the Roberts Court ruled 6-3 was not applicable).

The president has nominated as head of the FBI, Kash Patel, a man demonstrably loyal to Trump, rather than to the Constitution, the rule of law, or our nation’s security.

In the appendix of his book, Government Gangsters, Patel lists 60 members of the “deep state,” which Patel asserts is “a dangerous threat to democracy.” He denies this represents an enemies list, but the folks on it, and a number who are not on it, are not reassured as Patel edges toward a powerful position in Trump’s federal government.

Patel has promoted QAnon and is a 2020 election denier. Appearing on a podcast hosted by Steve Bannon, Patel promised retribution against folks who stole the 2020 election from Trump — inside government and outside:

We will go out and find the conspirators, not just in government, but in the media. Yes, we’re going to come after the people in the media who lied about American citizens, who helped Joe Biden rig presidential elections. We’re going to come after you. Whether it’s criminally or civilly, we’ll figure that out.

Patel authored three children’s books (“The Plot Against the King” and two sequels) featuring Donald Trump as King and Kash, a wizard who fights to protect the king. Few of Trump’s followers have gone to such lengths to demonstrate their devotion to the man.

David French, writing in today’s New York Times, argues against Patel’s confirmation:

Patel was nominated for one reason and one reason only: He is one of Trump’s most zealous loyalists. But before they vote, Republican senators should take 10 minutes out of their day and read Alexander Hamilton’s words in Federalist No. 76.
If the Senate fulfills its responsibilities, Hamilton wrote, presidents would be both “ashamed and afraid to bring forward, for the most distinguished or lucrative stations,” people who had no other qualification than being from the president’s state “or of being in some way or other personally allied to him, or of possessing the necessary insignificance and pliancy to render them the obsequious instruments of his pleasure.”
Yet loyalty and “insignificance” are Patel’s only qualifications for the job. He would never be considered for the position in the absence of his devotion to Trump, his vindictiveness and his malice.

I concur. The Senate should not confirm this nomination. But I’m not betting against it. I have no faith that even four Republican senators will take a principled stand against Trump’s dangerous pick.