Weekly Update, February 17th
Focusing on Musk-Trump Efforts To Damage The Government
By Tom McMahan
CORRECTION: I added direct RSVP links to Saturday’s Weekend update for those who received it by email. Signing up via Mobilize helps us know roughly how many people are coming to meetings and events.
Below are links concerning Musk’s DOGE efforts covering the past two weeks. They’re in chronological order, with the most recent at the top, so if you want to review them as they happened, you need to start at the bottom and work up.
While “DOGE” has Executive existence due to Trump’s two executive orders, this is still just Musk and his cohort of bros largely free-lancing. It’s not a committee, it’s certainly not a “department,” its a repurposing of the previous “Digital Office” within the White House. In Congress, there’s Greene’s pretend theater in the House, but that’s largely an exercise in keeping her ego massaged while stuffing her in a box that effectively keeps her out of the way of the rest of the Republican caucus.
I think this aspect of Trump’s 2nd term is turning into the main show, at least for the first 18 months, the time limit on DOGE activities.
ANALYSIS - WHAT DEMOCRATS CAN DO
Individual citizens can contact their Representative and Senators and express their opposition to specific actions (be specific!) Speak out and blame Trump/Musk on social media frequently! There’s a cool phone app you can use to help you take social action via legislators called Unified…check it out here if you wish -
Our Congressional caucus can continue drawing media and public scrutiny to specific actions.
Democratic state governments are pushing back as they can. Republican states, including Georgia, have not, but they are being impacted so let your friends who live in them know.
The main fight right now is and will probably remain in the courts.
To be blunt, as Chief Executive, Trump has broad but not unlimited authority to reshape the Executive branch. He can’t simply make whole departments and agencies that have been authorized by Congress disappear, but he (through Musk) can sharply limit their effectiveness for the foreseeable future through hiring and firing practices that are either legal or go unchallenged. Musk’s initial rushed attempt to get government workers to quit failed, but Trump’s second executive order is the latest attempt at downsizing in a more thorough way. There are many legal challenges, and that’s kind of where we sit today.
And then there’s the “impoundment” issue - i.e. “freeze” that is ongoing. I’m going to write more about that tomorrow looking at the impact it’s having on people…especially Trump voters…and how we need to use that.
I’ll cover the ongoing trainwreck of Trump’s foreign policy next week.
LINKS (remember bottom up for chronology)
Krugman outlines how the shift toward reduction in force measures (with the other efforts being tied up in court) is not warranted or necessary
While the funding freeze initiated by Musk’s efforts continues, the push back has been getting some results:
Democratic Attorneys General have been a big part of slowing down Musk’s assault on lawful and constitutional order:
A historical aside - Trump has been doing all of this through the use of Executive Orders. Historian William Fox shares a great writeup of how President Harry Truman used EO’s more effectively and beneficially than we’re seeing now:
Then the legal pushback(s) began, as outlined here by Ron Filipkowski:
Paul Krugman echoes Snyder’s take while pointing out how little fiscal spending actually has to do with any of this:
From political analyst Simon Rosenberg:
Historian Timothy Snyder’s perspective focuses on the illegitimacy of Musk’s approach - an occupation of digital space.
Historian Heather Cox Richardson outlines the start of the “DOGE” problems in her newsletter on Feb 4th -