The world’s richest man — Forbes places his wealth at $393.4 billion (on February 14, 2025), placing him more than $138 billion ahead of the world’s second richest man, Mark Zuckerberg at $254.8 billion — is waging a fierce campaign against USAID, the United States Agency for International Development.
USAID
Funds from the world’s richest nation once flowed from the largest global aid agency to an intricate network of small, medium and large organizations that delivered aid: H.I.V. medications for more than 20 million people; nutrition supplements for starving children; support for refugees, orphaned children and women battered by violence. — Apoorva Mandavilli, New York Times
USAID is an easy first target in the broader campaign to dismantle government. Foreign assistance is hardly popular and most Americans know little if anything about the work of USAID. They’re certainly not focused on babies starving, children dying of preventable diseases, and other calamities that will be brought by the unraveling of USAID.
A slew of actions taken by President Trump during his first month in office bear the fingerprints of Project 2025, the right-wing blueprint for overhauling the federal government. During his campaign, Mr. Trump distanced himself from the plan, saying it was largely unfamiliar to him. But The New York Times found more than 60 major moves that Mr. Trump and his administration have made in his first 23 days, including executive orders and agency memos, that align with proposals in the blueprint.
Elon Musk, who Donald Trump has empowered via DOGE, is going well beyond the Project 2025 blueprint, however, in his assault on USAID.
Project 2025’s signature document, Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise, devoted Chapter 9 to USAID, with a laundry list of complaints: “The Biden Administration has deformed the agency by treating it as a global platform to pursue overseas a divisive political and cultural agenda that promotes abortion, climate extremism, gender radicalism, and interventions against perceived systemic racism.”
That quote touches on familiar enough MAGA themes, but Project 2025 also acknowledged the value of USAID to American foreign policy and praised the first Trump administration with strategic restructuring of the agency. From Chapter 9:
USAID helps communities to lead their own development journeys by reducing the impact of conflict; preventing hunger and the spread of pandemic disease; and counteracting the drivers of violence, instability, transnational crime, and other threats. In alignment with U.S. national security interests, the agency promotes American prosperity through initiatives that expand markets for U.S. exports; encourage innovation; create a level playing field for U.S. businesses; and support more stable, resilient, and democratic societies that are less likely to act against American interests and more likely to respect family, life, and religious liberty.
The Project 2025 blueprint suggested reforms in the second Trump administration to align USAID with Trump’s foreign policy objectives; to counter China’s strength internationally; and advocated replacing Democratic strategies on climate change, DEI, gender equality, religious freedom, and global health (among other issues) with policies to achieve MAGA goals.
But that’s not what we’re getting. Elon Musk and his DOGE team are tearing the whole thing down.
“I think we do need to delete entire agencies as opposed to leave a lot of them behind,” Musk said. “If we don’t remove the roots of the weed, then it’s easy for the weed to grow back.”
Big picture
Elon Musk is waging a cruel campaign against the work USAID does, but he has set out — enabled by Donald Trump — to reach a broader goal: to strip the personnel, culture, and other institutional assets from the U.S. government’s departments and agencies. To rob the federal government of the capacity to do its job, as Americans have every right to expect. On Thursday an estimated 200,000 probationary employees in the federal government were fired. This is part of an ongoing mass purge.
Most federal employees are employed across the country, not in Washington, DC. That’s where most firings will take place. That’s where the effects will be felt. Closer to home for most Americans than the distant work of USAID.
The world’s richest man, Elon Musk, wielding a measure of power surpassing the might of run-of-the-mill oligarchs, is leading a campaign to inflict harm across the globe on human beings struggling with poverty, hunger, disease, and other calamities. The President of the United States, Donald Trump, has given him the means to do so.
First up: the destruction of USAID, which is blow to the moral leadership and prestige of the United States; it will inevitably diminish our nation’s strength and security. It represents only a sliver of the damage being done to our country’s capacity to do what Americans have every right to expect it to do. For Musk and his wrecking crew (at DOGE, the fraudulently named Department of Government Efficiency), the evisceration of USAID — chiefly through a purge of its workforce — is a template for their reckless crusade across multiple executive departments and agencies created by Congress.
Both Musk and Trump are telling tales to justify the senseless damage they are causing. They have many powerful allies, including the religious right, the Project 2025 crew, and every elected Republican in Washington.
Presidential power, the Constitution, and the rule of law
Constitutional scholar Peter M. Shane offers historical background to explain, “Presidents May Not Unilaterally Dismantle Government Agencies.” I’ll cut to the chase: The president shares power with two other co-equal branches of government. The Constitution grants Congress the power to establish (and eliminate) federal departments and agencies, as well as the power of the purse (to provide funding or to cut it off). Further, Article I, Section 8 empowers Congress: “To make all Laws which shall be necessary and proper for carrying into Execution the foregoing Powers, and all other Powers vested by this Constitution in the Government of the United States, or in any Department or Officer thereof.”
Trump has diverged from this path, trampling on well-established constitutional principles, Congressional legislation, and judicial precedent.
There is just a series of hammer blows that have been wielded against the civil service. The so-called deferred-resignation offer is their attempt to create a stampede out the door, to make it easier for them to get rid of the apolitical expert civil service. And then, on the other end, they’re creating a system that enables them to politicize the hiring and the management of the workforce. Certainly there are parts of our government—and most obvious ones, like USAID and the Department of Justice and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau—that are taking it on the chin even harder. Some of the most frightening things are happening at the FBI. Right now, we’re seeing the destruction of infrastructure, but also a culture that focuses on the public good and the commitment to the rule of law. What we are going to see next is the use of government authority that is possible because that culture has been eradicated—the use of government authority for improper purposes. And so when you think about what’s happening, for example, with prosecutors who were fired because they investigated or prosecuted January 6 rioters or the president himself, these events foretell the use of government authority to pursue a personal agenda and to go after perceived enemies. One other point: Sometimes even the media describes this as an effort to cut costs. This is not an effort to cut costs. This is going to cost the American taxpayer and the American public in huge ways.
Corruption all the way down
Musk’s DOGE has reportedly gained access to many federal agencies, including Treasury, the General Services Administration, Office of Personnel Management, Centers for Disease Control, Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, Department of Energy, Department of Health and Human Services, Veterans Affairs, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, and the Environmental Protection Agency. In addition, federal employees have been fired at eleven agencies conducting investigations of Musk’s companies: Transportation, Interior, Justice, Agriculture, National Labor Relations Board, Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, Securities and Exchange Commission, Defense, Federal Election Commission, and Office of Government Ethics. Chart from the New York Times:
Elon Musk addresses the nation from the Oval Office
I’m going to ask Elon to tell you a little bit about it. And some of the things which we found were just shocking. Millions and millions and millions of dollars of waste, fraud, and abuse. And I think it’s very important. One of the reasons I got elected. I said we’re going to do that. Nobody had any idea it was that bad and that corrupt. And it’s hard to believe that judges want to stop us from looking for corruption, especially when we found hundreds of millions of dollars – much more than that – in just a short period of time. We want to weed out the corruption. And it seems hard to believe that a judge could say, ‘We don’t want you to do that.’ So maybe we have to look at the judges. Because that’s a very serious – I think it’s a very serious violation. I’ll ask Elon Musk to say a few words and we’ll take some questions. Elon, go ahead.
Musk speaks:
So at a high level, you say what is the goal of DOGE and, I think, a significant part of the presidency is to restore democracy. And you may say, aren’t we a democracy? … So, if there’s not a good feedback loop from the people to the government, and if you have rule of the bureaucrat, if the bureaucracy is in charge, then what meaning does democracy actually have? If the people cannot vote and have their will be decided by their elected representatives in the form of the President and the Senate and the House, then we don’t live in a democracy, we live in a bureaucracy. So it’s incredibly important that we close that feedback loop, that we fix that feedback loop and that the public, the public’s representatives, the President, the House, and the Senate decide what happens as opposed to a large, unelected bureaucracy.
The first paragraph in the New York Times report on this Oval Office address aptly summarizes what Musk had to say:
The billionaire Elon Musk said in an extraordinary Oval Office appearance on Tuesday that he was providing maximum transparency in his government cost-cutting initiative, but offered no evidence for his sweeping claims that the federal bureaucracy had been corrupted by cheats and officials who had approved money for “fraudsters.”
We had to take the president’s word for the claim that Musk had found “millions and millions and millions of dollars of waste, fraud, and abuse,” and moments later that he had found corruption in the “hundreds of millions of dollars — much more than that.” Not a shred of evidence was offered.
As for Musk’s comments on political theory, his insistence that he — an unelected billionaire, acting in an extragovernmental role — is an agent of democracy… Well, let’s say that’s hard to credit.
This looks more like a corrupt autocrat delegating — contrary to the Constitution and the rule of law — presidential power to a self-serving, unaccountable billionaire with the intent of rendering the United States government incapable of doing its job. That job would be, as envisaged in the Declaration of Independence, guaranteeing Americans the right to “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.”
Trump’s authoritarian quest
On February 11, Trump issued yet another executive order, this one empowering Musk to place a “DOGE Team Lead” within government departments and agencies. A “Hiring Ratio” will facilitate the ongoing purge of qualified, professional personnel:
…the Director of the Office of Management and Budget shall submit a plan to reduce the size of the Federal Government’s workforce through efficiency improvements and attrition (Plan). The Plan shall require that each agency hire no more than one employee for every four employees that depart…
An exception is the IRS, where employees will be purged without replacement. Other exceptions where the ratio will be disregarded are agencies focused on “public safety, immigration enforcement, or law enforcement.”
This is the furthest thing from the pursuit of government efficiency. This is nothing like an effort to eliminate waste, fraud, or abuse. What we are witnessing aims to rid the government of people with professional expertise, of folks qualified to fulfill the goals of the agencies within which they serve. The actual “Plan” is to replace civil servants with partisan hacks, some of whom might be capable, but all will be selected for their loyalty to a lawless autocrat.
And the most prominent corruption in evidence is found not within the federal bureaucracy. Rather, the corruption is embedded in the Trump-Musk-DOGE-Project 2025-Republican Party drive to strip the federal government of capacity and resilience to serve the American people.
Regime change
This playbook, hardly new under the sun, has been a favorite of foreign autocrats. The DOGE crusade, as Anne Applebaum observes, echoes the mass firings directed by Hugo Chávez and the dismantling of labor protections for civil servants by Viktor Orbán. She writes:
Trump, Musk, and Russell Vought, the newly appointed director of the Office of Management and Budget and architect of the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025—the original regime-change blueprint—are now using IT operations, captured payments systems, secretive engineers, a blizzard of executive orders, and viral propaganda to achieve the same thing. This appears to be DOGE’s true purpose. Although Trump and Musk insist they are fighting fraud, they have not yet provided evidence for their sweeping claims. Although they demand transparency, Musk conceals his own conflicts of interest. Although they do say they want efficiency, Musk has made no attempt to professionally audit or even understand many of the programs being cut. Although they say they want to cut costs, the programs they are attacking represent a tiny fraction of the U.S. budget. The only thing these policies will certainly do, and are clearly designed to do, is alter the behavior and values of the civil service. Suddenly, and not accidentally, people who work for the American federal government are having the same experience as people who find themselves living under foreign occupation.
This will come at a great and lasting cost, as Applebaum observes:
The destruction of the modern civil-service ethos will take time. It dates from the late 19th century, when Theodore Roosevelt and other civil-service reformers launched a crusade to eliminate the spoils system that dominated government service. At that time, whoever won the presidency always got to fire everyone and appoint his own people, even for menial jobs. Much of the world still relies on such patronage systems, and they are both corrupt and corrupting. Politicians hand out job appointments in exchange for bribes. They appoint unqualified people—somebody’s cousin, somebody’s neighbor, or just a party hack—to jobs that require knowledge and experience. Patronage creates bad government and bad services, because it means government employees serve a patron, not a country or its constitution. When that patron demands, say, a tax break for a businessman favored by the leader or the party, they naturally comply.
That’s where we’re headed. And we’re well on our way.
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
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 Bannonhas 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Just before 9 p.m. last night, an American Airlines regional jet carrying 60 passengers and 4 crew collided with an Army Black Hawk helicopter carrying 3 military service members over the Potomac River in Washington DC while on final approach to Reagan National Airport. Both aircraft crashed instantly and were immediately submerged into the icy waters of the Potomac. Real tragedy. The massive search and rescue mission was underway throughout the night, leveraging every asset at our disposal. And I have to say the local, state, federal, military, including the United States Coast Guard in particular, they’ve done a phenomenal job. So quick, so fast, it was, it was mobilized immediately. The work is now shifted to a Recovery mission. Sadly, there are no survivors. — President Donald Trump, January 30, 2025
After the deadliest airline disaster in United States airspace since 2009, Trump’s brief description of the tragedy accurately provides clarity, as presidents are called upon to do. But what follows is illustrative of what’s glaringly differentabout this president and this presidency.
After the Challenger disaster, Ronald Reagan spoke words that served to unify a nation in our common grief. He spoke from the heart. He spoke to the country as a whole. In four and a half minutes, he offered reassurance, meaningful perspective, a celebration of personal courage and reaffirmation of national purpose.
Donald Trump is the furthest thing from Ronald Reagan (and from other recent presidents). Trump’s staff puts the right words on the page, but whenever the language is uplifting, or encompassing of the nation as a whole, or even simply expressing empathy for others, Trump cannot rise to the occasion. He reads the words in a monotone like a schoolboy grudgingly reciting a poem he doesn’t understand. He doesn’t feel it. His indifference is unmistakable.
Donald Trump craves being the center of attention.
On the other hand, Trump sounded convincing as he denied being at fault and — without shame or a shred of evidence — directed blame to others for the tragic crash. After “a box-checking moment of silence for victims” (as Phillip Bump put it) and praise for his team, which will be “working tirelessly to figure out what happened,” he added, “We will state certain opinions, however.” And then he began to cast about for someone to blame. This he cares about.
That doesn’t mean he got his facts straight. He didn’t. The policy directive he quoted — and attributed to Obama, who left office 8 years ago — was his own from 2019. Trump’s falsehoods continued: “I put safety first. Obama, Biden, and the Democrats put policy first. And they put politics at a level that nobody has ever seen, because this was the lowest level. Their policy was horrible and their politics was even worse.”
This is blather. Blather that offered up division, anger, and grievance. And that more accurately describes what we’re seeing now.
The Democratic policy he blamed is a Republican favorite: DEI — Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion — which prompted this exchange:
Reporter: Mr. President, you have today blamed a diversity element, but then told us that you weren’t sure that the controllers made any mistake. You then said perhaps the helicopter pilots were the ones who made the mistake.
Trump: It’s all under investigation.
Reporter: I understand that. That’s why I’m trying to figure out how you can come to the conclusion right now that diversity had something to do with this crash.
Trump: Because I have common sense. And, unfortunately, a lot of people don’t.
This is straight out of the MAGA campaign playbook. The president is looking for a scapegoat: a member of a racial or ethnic or religious minority, or a woman — or anyone who defies MAGA’s gender dogma. He has no evidence for this, but he is intent on making the case. Never mind the facts or the truth. Never mind that the “systematic and comprehensive investigation” he promised earlier has just begun.
The president references intellect, talent, and even “naturally talented geniuses.” And as he did throughout his first term, he insists that his focus is on hiring the best people. But it’s clear from his appointments that loyalty, not even minimal competence, is the chief qualification for Trump’s second-term crew. Everyone who followed him to the mic – Vice President JD Vance, Sean Duffy his Secretary of Transportation, and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth – is on script. They begin by lathering praise on Trump and bashing diversity requirements.
What we saw, as during his COVID press conferences, is Trump making himself the center of the story, as he makes every story about himself. In the spotlight, he shuns responsibility, blames others, and finds a way to take credit.
No matter what. No value or principle or obligation, no oath of office, no responsibility to the American people, no measure of loyalty to the country, nothingwhen push comes to shove will override the imperative for the Republican Party to back Donald Trump (as we have seen this week, even before confirmation of a thoroughly unfit Pete Hegseth as defense secretary and the corrupt Friday night purge of inspectors general). Whether crooked or reckless or cruel, whether contrary to law or to the Constitution, whether anti-democratic or damaging to the national interest: Republican leaders in Congress (and across the country) will back Trump. Dissenting voices, if any, will be too few and too faint to make a difference.
…that so few seem eager to even express disapproval of pardoning so many people who assaulted police — and some are even aligning themselves with a decision that a poll recently showed three-quarters of Americans oppose — is a watershed moment in our politics. And it has been a long time coming. One of the overriding lessons of the Trump era for GOP lawmakers is that those who criticize him not only pay the price with their base, but they often see things they once regarded as beyond the pale become the party line — typically with the help of fading memories and plenty of retconning.
Blake and I are in agreement, though in my view fading memories and retconning understates the staggering measure of deceit and cynicism involved. We can see this rite playing out in Speaker Mike Johnson’s decision to establish a new select committee to examine the events surrounding January 6, as reported by Maya C. Miller in the New York Times:
The new panel is to be led by Representative Barry Loudermilk of Georgia, who chaired a similar panel during the last Congress. As part of that panel’s work, he released a video compilation that sought to shift blame for the Jan. 6 assault away from Mr. Trump and onto former Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who was pursued that day by a violent mob of Trump supporters. Representative Lauren Boebert, Republican of Colorado, teased on Tuesday that she would be the first member of Congress to offer guided tours of the Capitol to the recently pardoned and released rioters.
Two days after the Miller’s report, Jonathan Chait observed that while a number of Republicans defended Trump’s pardons, most “turned to a familiar menu of evasive maneuvers.” Susan Collins professed to know nothing about Trump releasing criminals who had assaulted police; Chuck Grassley sneered about Biden’s “selfish” pardons of his family. Senate Majority Leader John Thune insisted, “We’re not looking backwards; we’re looking forwards” (though this is out of step with the launch of another House Republican investigation of January 6). Chait again:
The most revealing statement on the pardons came from House Speaker Mike Johnson. “The president’s made his decision,” he said. “I don’t second-guess those.” Here, Johnson was stating overtly what most of his colleagues had only revealed tacitly: that he does not believe that his job permits him to criticize, let alone oppose, Trump’s actions.
In September 2020, I wrote about Trump’s plan to steal the 2020 election, quoting this passage from Barton Gelman:
I agreed with Gelman that many Republicans would play the parts Trump assigned and I expressed surprise at how fully authoritarian the Grand Old Party had become during 2020. I noted that less than a year earlier, I would have rejected Gelman’s thesis: “…I would have regarded this contingency as a bridge too far. But here we are.”
And, as we saw in the months leading up to January 6, Gelman was right. There was a surfeit of willing players assisting with Trump’s scheme to steal the election. Still more remarkable: Trump continued to push the big lie — that he had won in 2020 and that January 6 was a peaceful protest — and Republicans continued to play along, to play the parts Trump assigned.
This pattern — no matter what the outrage — has endured, becoming an indelible feature of the MAGA GOP, not just a one-off or a handful of one-offs. In 2022 I wrote that “the recurring constant in the GOP since Trump’s rise: Republicans have been willing – perhaps not right away, but eventually – to go along for the ride. There is, after the dust settles, never a bridge too far for most GOP professionals, Republican elected officials, or the Trump base. They’re all-in when it counts.”
Every rule, perhaps, has exceptions. Perhaps, as Trump’s rampages continue, the pattern will break. And then we’ll see the rule for GOP obeisance, There is never a bridge too far, fail.
But so far, nothing doing. In 2025, Trump’s off-the-rails conduct, no matter how extreme, no matter how damaging, hasn’t diminished his dominance over the Republican Party. Republicans continue to play the parts Trump assigns.
“President Trump‘s sweeping pardons for 1,500 Jan. 6 criminals and defendants were a last-minute, rip-the-bandage-off decision to try to move past the issue quickly, White House advisers familiar with the Trump team’s discussions tell Axios.” The report continued:
Trump vacillated during an internal debate over targeted clemency vs. a blanket decision according to two insiders.
But as Trump’s team wrestled with the issue, and planned a shock-and-awe batch of executive orders Day 1, “Trump just said: ‘F -k it: Release ’em all,’” an adviser familiar with the discussions said.
Better to act — adding oomph to the promised shock and awe! on day one that would dominate the news cycle, wow his MAGA fans, and demoralize opponents — than pausing to make a considered judgment.
Axios again:
Why it matters: Trump’s move to “go big” on the pardons sheds light on his unpredictable decision-making process, and shows his determination to fulfill a campaign promise to his MAGA base — regardless of political fallout.
Uhm, yeah. And then there’s this: Overturning judgments by the courts, repudiating the rule of law, and shrugging off the safety of the community by releasing a bunch of violent criminals. Those matter too.
On Jan. 6, 2021, supporters of then-President Donald Trump stormed the U.S. Capitol, injuring approximately 140 law enforcement officers, forcing a panicked evacuation of the nation’s political leaders, and threatening the peaceful transfer of power. Five people died during or soon after the riot, and more than $2.9 million worth of damage was done to the Capitol. Rioters brought firearms, knives, hatchets, pepper spray, baseball bats and other improvised weapons to the Capitol grounds and prosecutors say many of those weapons were used to assault police.
Trump called the conspirators’ sentences “ridiculous and excessive,” saying he pardoned “people that were treated unbelievably poorly.” But counterterrorism experts say the pardons could further embolden fringe groups and hamper the Justice Department’s fight against political violence.
Trump’s pardons and commutations “could further embolden fringe groups …” Step back for a moment. Does it take an expert to figure this out? The new president, in deciding to “go big,” gave a free pass to members of a mob who both Democrats and Republicans agreed (until Trump acted, at which point Republicans caved or dissembled or hid out) should serve out their sentences. Trump has signaled to the Proud Boys, the Oath Keepers, and other paramilitary groups: I have your backs. Trump has signaled to all of us: violence on my behalf is okay.
On inauguration day, even before Trump took the oath of office for the second time, the Proud Boys were marching again in D.C. demanding that Trump issue the pardons he had promised. Trump didn’t disappoint them.
There will be more trouble ahead, that’s a certainty.
The first paragraph of Article II, Section 2 of the Constitution of the United States grants the president “Power to grant Reprieves and Pardons for Offences against the United States, except in Cases of Impeachment.” Donald Trump, keeping a campaign promise he made many times, acted within hours of retaking the White House.
President Donald Trump has pardoned, commuted the prison sentences or vowed to dismiss the cases of all of the 1,500-plus people charged with crimes in the Jan. 6, 2021, U.S. Capitol riot, including people convicted of assaulting police officers, using his clemency powers on his first day back in office to undo the massive prosecution of the unprecedented assault on the seat of American democracy. Trump’s action, just hours after his return to the White House on Monday, paves the way for the release from prison of people found guilty of violent attacks on police, as well as leaders of far-right extremist groups convicted of failed plots to keep the Republican in power after he lost the 2020 presidential election to Democrat Joe Biden.
Donald Trump had no qualms. For the president, violence on his behalf is not just okay; it is the stuff of patriots. He has celebrated and continues to celebrate such violence. In 2020, Trump advised the Proud Boys, “Stand back and stand by.” In 2025, he has rewarded them — and everyone else convicted of violence on January 6 — as only a president can. Trump’s Get Out Of Jail Free card grants them the status of MAGA folk heroes as he sends them back to our communities.
With these pardons and commutations, with the order to DOJ to stop all prosecutions, Trump has sent a signal to all that he will govern — to the furthest extent possible — as an authoritarian. This is not a surprise for anyone paying attention. This was his promise. This is a pattern we have all watched play out.
