It’s hard to know where to start when describing Washington these days. President Trump is taking a wrecking ball named Elon Musk to the federal government. It seems that money does talk, and big money talks loudest. Musk contributed at least $288 million to get Trump elected.
Hyperbole is impossible when discussing the seriousness of what’s happening in Washington. When I speak of a wrecking ball to government, I mean federal agencies usurping the legislative branch’s powers, with a strong possibility of ignoring decisions of the judicial branch.
“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 I think that’s a very serious violation.”— President Donald Trump
The threat of disregarding the courts brings to mind the phrase “constitutional crisis.” And, it’s not just Trump who thinks the judicial decisions are optional – or worse, un-American. As reported in the Guardian: “On Capitol Hill, the House speaker, Mike Johnson, said that courts should take a ‘step back’ from the challenges. The Arizona congressman Eli Crane (R) declared that he was drafting articles of impeachment against the Manhattan-based US district judge Paul Engelmayer, who issued the injunction against Musk’s ‘department of government efficiency.'”
It gets worse. Senator Thom Tillis (R-NC) has called what Musk is doing unconstitutional. However, he feels “nobody should bellyache about that.” Then there’s the syllogism of Vice President Vance: According to the VP: “’If a judge tried to tell a general how to conduct a military operation, that would be illegal. If a judge tried to command the attorney general … how to use her discretion as a prosecutor, that’s also illegal. Judges aren’t allowed to control the executive’s legitimate power.’”
I don’t know what constitution these people are reading, but it’s unlikely to be the one that has been the foundation of US democracy for nearly 250 years. Checks and balance means the branches are co-equal. You can’t impeach a judge for making a decision you don’t like. There are rules and ways to change and direct government – within the framework of the Constitution.
Beyond the outrage of the havoc Trump and his cabal are wreaking not just upon the federal government but upon the health and welfare of Americans and tens of millions of others around the world, is what he’s able to do – potentially do – to democracy.
It’s easy to forget how fragile democracy is and that without the consent of the governed, it all goes away rapidly. It takes fewer people than you may imagine to simply say “no.” When the person saying it is the president of the US and no one checks him – that’s a constitutional crisis.
I make no secret of my opposition to what Trump stands for, but I recognize that he was duly elected.
There are ways to change government without raping it.
I was around Washington in the Reagan years and saw what was then the most vigorous anti-government administration which I’d ever seen. The climate community went from Carter’s welcoming to Reagan’s belittling of clean energy technologies – a pattern of on-and-off administrations that has continued to this day. [Each time, a bit more extreme, I must say.]
Reagan’s anti-big government policies were nothing compared to what’s happening now. It’s always been that the three branches – no matter how grudgingly – have worked pretty much as the nation’s drafters of the US Constitution planned it.
It’s a remarkable document – not for what it says about the law but the faith it has in people. In an interview, Vance was asked to comment on a statement he made in a conservative podcast when he “suggested that if Trump were re-elected he should ‘fire every single midlevel bureaucrat, [and] every civil servant in the administrative state … and when the courts stop you, stand before the country like Andrew Jackson did and say: ‘The chief justice has made his ruling. Now let him enforce it.’”
That’s just it; the executive branch is the one that enforces judicial decisions. Nine justices have never gotten off the bench to enforce their judgments. How would they?
It’s worked because people have consented to follow the law, including judicial decsions they may not agree with.
Vance believes the constitutional crisis occurs when “the elected president says, ‘I get to control the staff of my own government,’ and the Supreme Court steps in and says, ‘You’re not allowed to do that’ — like, that is the constitutional crisis.’” Whose constitution is he reading from, do you suppose?
Musk and the “so-called” Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) are closing down duly legislated agencies, attempting to fire large percentages of agency personnel, e.g., 80+ percent of the US Agency for International Development (USAID), and buying out the contracts of existing civil servants. In many cases, they intend to replace them with political appointees.
Trump has issued an Executive Order directing federal agencies to “coordinate and consult [with DOGE] to cut jobs and limit hiring.” Also, according to the Order, each agency is to “undertake plans for large-scale reductions in force” and limits hiring to “essential positions” only. It should be noted that DOGE is often referred to as “so-called” because it’s wholly a figment of the president’s – it hasn’t been established by legislation, nor is it clear the president has the power to create it. The courts are likely to decide that issue in the coming months.
Why are Republicans in Congress letting all this happen? Cowardice and convenience are my top two guesses. Rumblings by Republicans in the hallways suggest they’re letting Musk do it so they’ll avoid blame for any inconvenience his slashing and burning might cause while at the same time taking credit for ultimately reining him in.
How far they’ll rein him in is another matter. It’s not as if constituents – Democrats and Republicans – aren’t contacting their members of Congress. Senator Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) said the Senate phone lines were getting 1600 calls a minute, mainly because of what Musk was doing. However, E&E News reports that most – not all, e.g., Representative Don Bacon (R-NE) – Republicans on Capitol Hill “seem content to let Musk run free” and are “yawning” at constituent calls.
The cowardice comes into the equation as most in Congress are worried about falling out of favor with the president and being primaried. Musk responded to claims that he would fund challengers to GOP House members who didn’t fall in line by saying, “How else? There is no other way.”
Even if all the stop funding orders are lifted and major pieces of programs maintained, whether by Congress or the courts, the chaos has already caused a lot of damage. USAID’s lifesaving and lifegiving programs and its considerable energy portfolio are all in limbo, if not on the chopping block. What of the people dependent on those programs who have been suddenly cut off?
USAID energy programs include the “Scaling Up Renewable Energy (SURE)” initiative that helps partner countries transition to clean energy; the “Clean Power Asia” program aimed at promoting low-emission power systems in the region; and the “Vocational Training and Education for Clean Energy (VOCTEC)” program that builds capacity for installing and maintaining off-grid solar systems in Pacific Island nations.
Red states could be hit worse than blue states when it comes to the billions of dollars of investments – public and private – being leveraged by the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) and the bipartisan infrastructure bill. It’s something that hasn’t escaped notice by GOP members that it’s their states and districts whose programs are being threatened – particularly rural programs.
Farm advocates believe that the president’s position on the IRA disproportionately harms farmers and rural economies by affecting funds for conservation initiatives, research grants, and assistance for small agricultural businesses.
Funding from the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act amounts to $19.5 billion for agricultural sustainability initiatives. Farmers have spent millions of their own funds expecting they’d be reimbursed as they were promised.
A group of House Republicans is so concerned about USAID funding that they’ve “introduced legislation this week that aims to salvage a foreign aid program targeted for extinction by Mr. Trump as part of his effort to wipe out the USAID. The bill would transfer oversight of the Food for Peace program, which purchases crops at market price from American farmers and distributes them to hungry people abroad, from USAID to the Agriculture Department.”
There is no action by the Biden administration that is to go unscathed. At the signing ceremony for the DOGE order, the commander-in-chief added plastic straws to his list of lefty crimes. “I’ve had them [paper straws] many times, and on occasion, they break, they explode.” Somebody needs to tell the president he sucks – too hard on paper straws. If he sipped rather than sucked, they wouldn’t explode. They might also tell him that incandescent light bulbs he’s so fond of are no longer manufactured in the US. Will a 25 percent tariff be levied on them?
On Capitol Hill, the House and Senate Republican majorities remain at odds with each other over how to proceed using the reconciliation process to pass Trump’s America First Agenda. The Senate has gotten frustrated enough with the House not being able to come up with a budget resolution acceptable to both chambers. They’ve yet to agree on one or two bills.
House Speaker Johnson continues to support a “one big beautiful bill,” while the Senate believes in two bills. In the Senate’s version, the first would include the easy stuff like border security, immigration, and energy. The second bill would contain an extension of the president’s 2017 tax credits and other tax issues.
It’s not at all clear that Republicans can rule. Neither is it clear that the Democrats can become an effective minority party. What’s a nation to do? It’s a topic for another day.
