Politics
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January 28, 2025
When will the Democrats muster a genuine opposition to Donald Trump?
US President Donald Trump addresses the 2025 Republican Issues Conference at the Trump National Doral Miami on January 27, 2025, in Doral, Florida.
(Joe Raedle / Getty Images)
Former President Richard Nixon’s career-ending Watergate scandal was bracketed by two bold claims: “I am not a crook,” the Republican declared in a November 1973 speech, as investigations into his nefarious deeds spread. Years later, when interviewer David Frost asked him whether a president could do something “illegal,” perhaps to rein in anti-war groups, he calmly replied: “Well, when the president does it…that means that it is not illegal.”
Of course, threatened with impeachment, including by Republicans, Nixon caved and resigned.
Nixon’s claim that “when a president does it, that means that it is not illegal” was laughable—until the right-wing Supreme Court majority ruled 6–3 last year that crook and serial lawbreaker Donald Trump in fact had broad immunity from prosecution for moves he’d been indicted for, including inciting the violent January 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol.
Now, Trump is flouting another legal brake on Nixon: the 1974 Impoundment Control Act, which spelled out what was already law—that Congress has the power of the purse—after Nixon tried to redirect funds appropriated to states and local governments. The Supreme Court ruled 9-0 that impoundment was unconstitutional.
But empowered by his 6–3 Supreme Court majority, Trump continues to prove himself more lawless than Nixon. Last night, the Office of Management and Budget announced that it was pausing a stunning $3 trillion in federal agency spending, to scrutinize all of it, politically, and make sure it is in line with “presidential priorities.”
“The use of Federal resources to advance Marxist equity, transgenderism, and green new deal social engineering policies is a waste of taxpayer dollars that does not improve the day-to-day lives of those we serve,” the statement read.
Politico’s Playbook noted, “Last night’s memo is just one part of a much broader White House power play, unprecedented in its breadth, to remold the entire U.S. government apparatus…. What we are witnessing is nothing short of a revolution inside the U.S. government.” When Politico, normally the purveyor of Beltway both-siderism, sounds more alarmed than many Democrats, we have a problem.
At a time when Democrats should be uniting in opposition to the lawless Trump, many are trying to cozy up to him. Six Senate Democrats voted to confirm the completely unqualified, puppy-killing wing nut South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem as Homeland Security secretary. Among them was the increasingly erratic Pennsylvania Senator John Fetterman, who visited Trump at Mar-a-Lago before the inauguration—the senator called him “kind” and “cordial—had a friendly huddle with Trumpist UN Ambassador Elise Stefanik, and suggested he’s open to confirming crackpot Robert F. Kennedy Jr. as Health and Human Services Secretary.
“I’ve met with him and that’s part of an ongoing dialogue,” Fetterman said to CNN.
Fetterman also joined 11 other Senate Democrats to pass the so-called “Laken Riley” act, authorizing immigration officials to deport undocumented people who’ve been arrested for, but not convicted of, nonviolent crimes.
Normally feisty Rhode Island Senator Sheldon Whitehouse also said he was undecided about Kennedy—the two are law school buddies and old friends. On Monday, Whitehouse told critics to “chill” with such speculation.
Even progressives like Senator Elizabeth Warren and Representative Ro Khanna have talked about working with Elon Musk’s dumb DOGE project to cut federal spending, hoping they can prevail on him to target defense spending and closing tax loopholes for the wealthy. “I am happy to work with them to cut government waste,” Warren said in a statement.
To be fair, Warren’s 30-point plan for DOGE has a lot of great ideas, but it’s premised on the notion that Musk and Trump are serious about cutting “fraud, waste and abuse,” especially in defense spending and tax breaks for rich guys like them. Trump’s firing 17 inspector generals, whose mandate is to look out for fraud, waste, and abuse in government agencies, would seem to put the lie to that.
On Tuesday, NBC’s Sahil Kapur reported that House Democrats have decided that, while Trump is going to “flood the zone” with hateful and illegal maneuvers, they’re going to focus on “pocketbook issues as they lay the groundwork for the 2026 midterm elections and beyond.” He added: “And they plan to focus less on his cultural taunts and issues that don’t reach the kitchen table.”
Trump is leading a revolution. The Democrats are still acting like he won the election because of the price of eggs. This is just depressing.
For his part, Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer switched the topic of a press conference, planned to focus on the January 6 pardons—a week late—to the illegal OMB edict. So far, I don’t hear much of a plan to fight back.
Illegal impoundment of federal funds wasn’t Trump’s only outrageous move on Monday. He fired more than a dozen prosecutors who worked with special counsel Jack Smith on the January 6 and classified documents cases, some of them protected civil servants who can’t be fired. (That’s after illegally firing 17 federal agency inspectors general Friday night.) His US Attorney choice, Ed Martin, announced an investigation into Smith’s January 6 investigation (Martin was a “Stop the Steal” proponent who attended the rally that day).At the Agency for International Development, 60 senior staffers were put on leave, because they were suspected of trying to circumvent Trump’s draconian halt on international aid and health spending imposed on Friday. New leaders of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation rescinded 200 job offers, though the crucial bank regulator is already understaffed.
The international aid freeze is already being felt keenly across the world. It abruptly cut funding for the best thing former President George W. Bush ever did: the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, which provides funding for HIV and AIDS prevention and treatment across Africa, and is credited with saving millions of lives. Contractors said they couldn’t even distribute medicines that had already been delivered to their clinics. Not a peep so far from Bush, who, unlike other Republicans, including his vice president, Dick Cheney, refused to endorse Kamala Harris last year.
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Advocates working to reduce incidents of infant and child mortality expect their funding to dry up, mere days after Trump told anti-abortion activists he stands “proudly for families and for life.” The freeze on health agency funding is also curtailing cancer research, including experimental drug trials, putting cancer patients at risk.
Meanwhile, in the last two days, ICE has rounded up more than 1,000 undocumented immigrants, almost half of them charged with no criminal activity (though the guise of the raids is apprehending criminals). In the first day of raids, American citizens were apprehended in Newark; presumably more have been swept up. Trump is said to be unhappy even with these numbers, so expect the raids to ramp up.
Some legal experts say that even the John Roberts Supreme Court will be hard-pressed to back Trump’s impoundment. While Trumpists argue that it’s only a pause, the ICA “covers ‘withholding or delaying’ the obligation or expenditure of budget authority (whether by establishing reserves or otherwise) provided for projects or activities,” writes Sam Bagenstos, former general counsel of the OMB, on Bluesky.
Of course, Politico reverted to its normal programming later in its Playbook. “Those accusing Trump of being anti-democratic might note that this is largely democracy in action.” No, it is not.
American democracy features a series of checks and balances and separate roles for the executive and legislative branches of government, which Trump is ignoring. Besides, our democracy has been weakened by years of voter suppression and disillusionment. Trump got 77 million votes, Kamala Harris 75 million, but an estimated 89 million registered voters didn’t turn out. That means roughly 165 million American voters did not vote for Trump.
Outpolling Trump and Harris, the 89 million “did not vote” voters are running the country now. Democrats who stayed home are almost as responsible for this wreckage as MAGA Republicans.
