A garbage bag on the insignia of the humanitarian aid agency whose budget Elon Musk illegally slashed, increasing illness, starvation and death. Photo credit to Ted Eytan, licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Generic license.
.jpg){kind=link}
There’s a lot of back-and-forth right now about whether Congressional Democrats should, effectively, negotiate with terrorists.
It goes like this: Congress has until March 14 to pass a bill funding the government to avoid a government shutdown. Republicans need some Democrats to vote in favor of the bill in order to get it past the 60-vote threshold in the Senate. Democrats don’t want to see millions of federal workers furloughed. But supporting the Republicans’ bill amounts to agreeing that business as usual can continue despite the coup; despite the illegal shutdown of agencies and unconstitutional impoundment of appropriated money and the flouting of court orders. Despite, in other words, the five-alarm-fire that is our political reality.
What hasn’t seemed to click into place is the all-important recognition that DOGE has already illegally shut down much of the government.
Congressional Democrats need to metabolize this and shout it from the rooftops. If government shutdowns are political suicide, then the fact that the government is already being shut down—and not by Congress, but by the world’s richest narcissist, who hates any spending that doesn’t benefit him personally—merits more than a megaphone. Congressional Democrats should use every tool at their disposal to make sure that people are aware of what Trump and Musk have already taken away from them.
One place to start? The fact that Trump’s freeze on government credit cards has brought cancer and Alzheimer’s research to a screeching halt. I would wager that these diseases are the enemies that would unite the most Americans. Trump and Musk don’t care about your family tragedies. They want your taxpayer money to go to them, not back to you.
If Trump and Musk are going to violate the explicit letter of existing laws, then there is no point in trying to win concessions in new laws, because there’s no guarantee that the provisions will be followed.
Almost as soon as the Trump administration issued its first spending freeze memo in late January, federal courts stepped in to block what they deemed illegal presidential action. Despite these rulings, numerous examples of shuttered programs and frozen funds have been reported in the following weeks, putting the administration in direct non-compliance with the courts. Trump’s illegal funding freeze, and failure to comply in full with court orders requiring that appropriated money be disbursed, has touched every corner of the country.
The administration has blocked states from receiving federal disaster aid allocated to them, prompting several states to sue. Farmers across the country are in financial peril as federal grants promised to them are frozen. Primary care clinics in Virginia and West Virginia had to close their doors after federal funding was frozen or terminated. Funding for the cleanup of contaminated sites in Maryland, among many other initiatives, is still frozen despite court orders. Thousands of rural farmers and businesses from Wisconsin to Colorado that received federal funding for renewable energy installations are in limbo.
The fate of over $100 million intended to be returned to student borrowers harmed by loan servicer Navient is now uncertain, with the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau ordered on February 10 to stop its work. David Dayen has the lowdown on how the administration is now attempting to do damage control on its flagrantly illegal attempt to eliminate the CFPB, which is worth a read.
USAID remains illegally shuttered, its congressionally appropriated budget impounded. The Trump administration has violated court orders and blocked an agency created by Congress from spending money appropriated by Congress to prevent mass illness, starvation, and death. The New York Times reported Sunday that the administration put on leave the USAID employee who published memos outlining the massive human suffering caused by dismantling the agency:
- “up to 18 million additional cases of malaria per year, and as many as 166,000 additional deaths;
- 200,000 children paralyzed with polio annually, and hundreds of millions of infections;
- one million children not treated for severe acute malnutrition, which is often fatal, each year;
- more than 28,000 new cases of such infectious diseases as Ebola and Marburg every year.”
The world’s richest man has already killed people by illegally preventing money from being spent on humanitarian aid. You can track how many people Elon Musk has murdered by cutting spending on HIV medication here. Since late January, the funding freeze has already caused an estimated 16,900 avoidable deaths from HIV, including over 1,800 infants. Already, a “lethal mystery illness” is spreading in Congo, and the USAID medical teams that would usually be rushing to identify and contain it are gone.
Elon Musk, the world’s richest man, is personally denying over 16 million pregnant women life-saving healthcare. Elon Musk, the world’s richest man, is personally denying 1 million infants treatment for acute malnutrition. And none of this is legal. That is congressionally appropriated money he is taking away.
As long as Republicans in Congress refuse to hold Donald Trump and Elon Musk accountable for illegally seizing the powers of Congress, then there is no point in legislating with them. Republicans are the ones refusing to obey the law and preserve the checks and balances enshrined by the Constitution. The job of Democrats is not to stubbornly preserve the tattered scraps of the status quo. Democrats need to awaken the public to the scale and stakes of the illegal destruction of the government agencies that work for us by rich criminal egomaniacs who want the government to work for them alone.
Congressional Democrats must release themselves from the straitjacket of precedent. Democrats weren’t the ones who decided that the rules no longer apply, but continuing to play the old game means failing to be the opposition party Americans need. Bargaining is a valid stage of grief, but it’s not a legitimate strategy for fighting fascism. Until Trump and Musk follow the law, Democrats need to stop participating in the development of new law. Anything less than full-throated opposition is putting lipstick on the coup.
The Trump administration is both showing and telling what they will do when a court doesn’t rule in their favor. “He who saves his Country does not violate any Law,” Trump ominously tweeted. “Judges aren’t allowed to control the executive’s legitimate power,” Vance posted on Musk’s platform. Democrats need to wake up to the reality that the courts may not save us. But if Democrats treat this crisis with the urgency it deserves, it may increase the chance that courts will ramp up measures to enforce their rulings when Trump and his appointees flout them.
A showdown in the Supreme Court is looming, but offers no guarantees. We’re in the midst of a constitutional crisis. Democrats cannot claim to be the opposition while simultaneously negotiating with Republicans who allow their president to openly defy the rule of law.
This newsletter was originally published on our Substack. Read and subscribe here.
Want more? Check out some of the pieces that we have published or contributed research or thoughts to in the last week:
In Trump 2.0, Kirsten Gillibrand trades resistance for capitulation
Trump Taps (Former) Alleged Drunk Driver To Lead Fair Housing Office
FAQ On Crypto’s Impact and Influence
Mark Paoletta’s Illegal Orders Are Before His Close Friend, Clarence Thomas
Why We’re Skeptical About The “Energy Abundance” Agenda
Week Six: A dying CFPB, Musk’s business boom, conflicts of interest, and blatant favoritism.
Tracking Threats Through the Courts: Foreign Aid Funding Freeze
The Rick Smith Show, February 28, 2025
How Can Congressional Dems Fight Back Against Trump and Musk? Oversight