Opinion | There Is No Going Back

In addition to wreaking vengeance on an agency he hates for still undisclosed reasons (although it may be worth noting that U.S.A.I.D. supported the efforts of Black South Africans during and after apartheid), Musk believes that cutting government spending is the only way to reduce inflation and put the U.S. economy on firm footing.

But that is the situation. A power-mad president possessed of radical theories of executive authority and convinced of his own royal prerogative has given de facto control of most of the federal government to one of the richest men on the planet, if not the richest, whose own interests are tangled up in those of rival governments and foreign autocr... See more

To describe the current situation in the executive branch as merely a constitutional crisis is to understate the significance of what we’re experiencing. “Constitutional crisis” does not even begin to capture the radicalism of what is unfolding in the federal bureaucracy and of what Congress’s decision not to act may liquidate in terms of constitut... See more

The extent to which the United States is embroiled in a major political crisis would be obvious and apparent if these events were unfolding in another country. Unfortunately, the sheer depth of American exceptionalism is such that this country’s political, media and economic elites have a difficult time believing that anything can fundamentally cha... See more

At this point in any argument like this one, the question arises of what should be done and, more critically, what can be done? The sad answer is not that much . Those with the direct institutional power to slam the brakes lack the will and those with the will lack the power.

Thune and Johnson, acting with the support of Republicans in both chambers, have, in effect, renounced their power over the purse and abnegated their powers of oversight. Their Congress is supine, submissive and subordinate, less the equal of the president than a tool of the executive branch — a subject of his will.

For as much as some of Trump’s and Musk’s moves were anticipated in Project 2025, the fact of the matter is that marginal Trump voters — the voters who gave him his victory — did not vote for any of this. They voted specifically to lower the cost of living. They did not vote, in Musk’s words, for economic “hardship.” Nor did they vote to make Musk ... See more

And thanks to the efforts of Democratic state attorneys general, there has already been an injunction against the president’s effort to freeze federal funding. But the courts are slow-moving and reactive, and as we wait for the federal judiciary to make its moves, Trump and Musk are creating facts on the ground.

If American constitutional democracy is a game, then they’ve flipped the board with the aim of using the same pieces to play a new one with their own boutique rules.