The below article is an updated version of a piece that first appeared in David Corn’s newsletter, Our Land. The newsletter comes out twice a week (most of the time) and provides behind-the-scenes stories and articles about politics, media, and culture. Subscribing costs just $5 a month—but you can sign up for a free 30-day trial.
It’s a war.
In the first two weeks of his presidency, Donald Trump and his billionaire sidekick Elon Musk have initiated an all-out battle against the US government, the rule of law, and decency. They have mounted a blitzkrieg, a coup, an assault on the Constitution. It’s a mad power grab designed to steer the nation toward autocracy and full-fledged oligarchy. What’s under way is not merely the implementation of far-right policies but an attack on the American system and a hostile takeover of the nation.
Trump and his minions have rooted out civil servants they deem insufficiently loyal to Dear Leader and taken draconian steps to depopulate federal agencies that do the people’s business, such as safeguarding our food supply, researching cures for diseases, protecting workers and the environment, overseeing our transportation systems, and keeping the financial system secure and stable. They tried through an arguably illegal executive order to freeze funding for health care, education, transportation, and other services.
It’s class warfare, top-down. Feel free to call it fascism.
Musk and his mafia took over the Office of Personnel Management, which oversees hiring across the executive branch, installing their own servers. They also invaded the highly sensitive Treasury Department to gain control of the government’s payment system, presumably to cut off funds to programs Musk and Trump want to defund—a step that risked massive privacy violations, hacks, assorted abuses, and the possible breakdown of what is essentially the government’s circulatory system. Trump’s shock troops suspended foreign aid, a move that caused the closure of soup kitchens in famine-stricken Somalia, the cessation of medical services for war refugees in Thailand, the end to heating assistance for Ukrainians on the frontline of the war with Russia, and other programs—increasing misery, death, and disease around the world. Musk, the richest man in the world, called the US Agency for International Development (USAID), which distributes foreign aid that helps millions of low-income and indigent people, “a criminal organization” and tweeted, “Time for it to die.”
This is a revolution of the elite. Trump and Musk aim to gut government. Their intent is to emasculate the one force that can counter the excesses of the powerful and the wealthy. While Trump yearns to be a strongman who commands all corners of the government and demands absolute fealty to his whims and desires, Musk seeks to weaken the one entity that can check corporate power and abuses, including his own. During a Twitter chat with two GOP senators, he urged abolishing all government regulations. He’s pursuing a right-wing libertarian fantasy of unfettered capitalism. The disrupters and technologists shall rule as they see fit, without the pesky interventions of bureaucrats committed to the public good. This is not the typical fight of the well-to-do for tax cuts and deregulation—which, of course, the Republicans and their billionaire underwriters do crave—but an ideological crusade to change the foundation of American society and crush checks and balances that might prevent Trump, Musk, and others in the oligarchy from reigning supreme. It’s class warfare, top-down. Feel free to call it fascism.
Musk isn’t hiding any of this. He sees hardworking and devoted government workers as the enemy to be conquered. On Saturday, he joyously tweeted, “Very few in the bureaucracy actually work the weekend, so it’s like the opposing team just leaves the field for 2 days! Working the weekend is a superpower.” He added a laughing emoji. And Trump is giddily flexing his muscle, hinting the use of military force to expand the American empire and imposing wide-ranging tariffs on Mexico, Canada, and China that will raise prices for Americans. (On Monday, he paused the tariffs on Mexico and Canada for a month.) For his greater glory, he tells voters, they will have to go through “some pain”—the opposite of what he promised as a candidate. As any emperor would do, he pursued his purge by firing top FBI officials and federal prosecutors who worked on January 6 cases.
With this war raging, where are the Democrats?
Trump’s administration pulled down websites across the federal government and disappeared thousands of data sets. His new head of the Federal Communications Commission ordered an investigation of NPR and PBS—part of a wider administration effort to undermine the media that Trump has long demonized and schemed to discredit. The Pentagon kicked the New York Times, Politico and NPR out of the working press space, handing over those desks to far-right outlets (and HuffPost). Trump crassly and recklessly blamed the tragic aviation accident in Washington, DC, on DEI to justify his shuttering of diversity programs throughout the federal government. The Environmental Protection Agency and the US Department of Agriculture removed references to and information about climate change from its websites. In true Soviet fashion, Trump is trying to photoshop one of the most pressing problems facing the nation and the world out of existence.
With this war raging, where are the Democrats?
They should have a war room that operates 24/7 to generate and voice loud and smart opposition to the Trump-Musk onslaught. They need to be coordinating messaging and running a nonstop firehose of social media. A never-ending string of fiery speeches on the House and Senate floor, obstructionist tactics, the exploitation of every possible forum and platform. Their best and most media-savvy members—Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Sen. Chris Murphy, say—should be denouncing and decrying on a daily basis. Instead of licking wounds, Democrats ought to be showing some fight, conveying the perilous reality of the moment, and presenting themselves as a fierce and united bulwark against this treacherous attack. It’s not about moving to the left or to the right. They need to rush to the barricades. All of them.
Yet…this is not yet happening. The recent confirmation hearings for Trump’s most extreme and dangerous appointments—Robert F. Kennedy Jr. (Department of Health and Human Services), Kash Patel (FBI), and Tulsi Gabbard (Office of the Director of National Intelligence)—suggested that the Ds may not be up to the task. There were moments when individual Democratic senators harshly grilled these nominees, but they generally were not able to collectively and effectively highlight the radical extremism of these Trump picks and the absurdity of awarding them top positions.
At the Patel hearing, the Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee tried to depict him as a Trump loyalist who would abuse power to seek revenge for Trump. Yet Patel managed to get away with smugly insisting he would abide by the rule of law. They never mentioned that he had been a QAnon supporter and lied so much about the Trump-Russia scandal to protect Trump that it would be fair to call him a useful idiot for Vladimir Putin. His irresponsible grifting—he peddled supplements that he claimed without any evidence “reversed” the Covid vaccine—received minimum attention. His promotion of a social media post encouraging violence against Trump’s political enemies came up only briefly.
The Democrats are bringing a teaspoon to a gunfight. This is not how a party battling for its survival and the survival of the nation behaves.
When Tulsi Gabbard appeared before the Senate Intelligence Committee, no Democrat dared raise the touchy subject of her life-long connection to a cult that demands complete loyalty to its megalomaniacal founder and that is tied to a Hong Kong company that has been a target of criminal and civil cases alleging fraud and racketeering in at least seven countries. This association certainly raises questions about her judgment and, perhaps, her priorities.
At the two confirmation hearings for Kennedy, Democrats pressed him on his anti-vax opposition but let him slide on the many bizarre and baseless conspiracy theories he has expounded over the years. And when the news broke that Kennedy had settled two cases in which he was accused of “misconduct or inappropriate behavior,” Democrats did not raise a fuss about this or vehemently demand details. (Kennedy claimed the charges were “unfounded” and refused to provide specifics on these cases.)
It’s far from certain that sharper questioning would lead to the defeat of any of these nominees. And the format of these sessions—generally five or so minutes per senator—prevents grilling that goes deep. But the Democrats needed to use these hearings as an opportunity to deliver a single message: Trump is stocking the government with radical and inexperienced extremists who pose tremendous risks to the nation. Some Democratic senators aimed to do this, others stuck to polite policy discussions that did not serve the simple mission of the day: Stop these people. When I asked Democratic aides if they intended to deploy video clips during these hearings to discredit the nominees, they said they did not have the capacity to pull something like that together and, if they could, the Republicans controlling the committees would not permit the display of videos.
I’m not the only one who sees a failure of fierceness among DC Democrats overall. Last week, as the New York Times reported, a gang of six Democrats called Sen. Chuck Schumer of New York, the Democratic leader in the Senate, and urged him to be more aggressive in challenging Trump, his nominees, and his agenda. Gov. Laura Kelly of Kansas, the chair of the Democratic Governors Association, told Schumer the Democrats needed a “down and dirty” online strategy. Schumer replied that Sen. Cory Booker (D-N.J.) was in charge of the Senate Democrats’ social media and praised Booker. The newspaper noted:
Last week, Mr. Booker delivered a PowerPoint presentation to fellow Democrats about how to deliver their message online. In the slides, which were obtained by The New York Times, Mr. Booker offered his colleagues guidance on how often to post on each platform. Instagram: once or twice a day. Facebook: once a day. LinkedIn: three to five times a week. X: two to five times a day. TikTok: one to four times a day.
That paragraph should make any Democrat scream. The Democrats are bringing a teaspoon to a gunfight. This is not how a party battling for its survival and the survival of the nation behaves.
There are signs the Democrats are trying to rev up opposition. On Monday, House Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries sent a letter to his party colleagues in the House outlining a 10-point plan for confronting Trump. The measures he advocated were reasonable and included proposing legislation—a largely symbolic effort, given the Dems’ minority status—to block Musk’s raid on the Treasury Department and various Trump executive orders of dubious legality.
Trump and MAGA have demanded and prepared for this holy war, and now they are prosecuting it.
That afternoon, Reps. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.), Don Beyer (D-Va.), and several other Democratic legislators assembled at USAID headquarters to blast what they called “Elon Musk’s illegal shutdown” of the agency. At this event, Murphy proclaimed, “This is a constitutional crisis that we are in today. Let’s call it what it is.” And Sen. Brian Schatz (D-Hawaii) vowed to place a hold on all of Trump’s State Department nominees—which will not block these appointments but slow down confirmations and clog up the Senate—to protest the Trump-Musk assault on USAID. But why not all Trump appointees? The Democrats only have a chance of success if the entire party can demonstrate consistent boldness.
For years, Trump and MAGA have advertised their plans. Steve Bannon, for one, has declared the ultimate goal is to annihilate what he derisively called the “administrative state.” They have demanded and prepared for this holy war, and now they are prosecuting it. Not all Democrats seem to understand what’s at hand. This is an existential crisis for the party and the nation. While the MAGAists are implementing scorched-earth tactics, some Democrats have talked about working with Trump or Musk when they agree with them. (Rep. Ro Khanna and Sen. Bernie Sanders, who’s not quite a Democrat, are in this category.) This only legitimizes Trump as a normal president who might have some good ideas.
In recent days, there have been a few heroes. Two top security officials at the USAID tried to block Musk operatives from gaining entry to its computer networks. Officials from Musk’s misnamed Department of Government Efficiency wanted access to USAID security systems, personnel files, and classified information available only to those with security clearances. The DOGErs eventually got in, and the two security officials were placed on administrative leave.
At the New York FBI field office, the top agent, James Dennehy, sent out a defiant email to his staff and vowed to “dig in” after the Trump administration fired officials involved in January 6 investigations. He wrote, “Today, we find ourselves in the middle of a battle of our own, as good people are being walked out of the F.B.I. and others are being targeted because they did their jobs in accordance with the law and F.B.I. policy.” As the Times pointed out, this email “came after the Justice Department ordered the FBI on Friday to collect the names of bureau personnel who helped investigate the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol, raising the possibility that Mr. Trump’s political appointees plan to purge career bureau officials, including rank-and-file field agents. That number could reach 6,000—or about a sixth of the bureau’s 38,000 employees, according to the FBI.”
How long can Dennehy hold the line?
This is a break-glass moment. A five-alarm fire. The Democrats must tell that story to Americans over and over, every day and in every way. They must make sure the public clearly sees the crisis at hand, understands what’s at stake, and perceives the Democrats as ferocious warriors for the common good. That is indeed a tall order. But one thing is for sure: You cannot win a war you are not fighting.
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