Unchecked and Unbalanced
It took Donald Trump and Elon Musk less than a month to lead the country into chaos and crisis. “Move fast and break things,” the heedless and solipsistic tech ethos that Musk embodies, is disastrous when applied to governing, as the opening weeks of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) rampage have made clear. It might also amount to constitutional overreach on the part of the Trump administration. Musk and his minions are unvetted political appointees operating with minimal transparency and accountability. They have shut down one agency and removed the leaders of others without consulting Congress. They have accessed systems housing confidential data at the IRS and the Treasury Department. They have summarily dismissed tens of thousands of government employees subject to civil-service protections, while freezing federal loans and grants for which Congress had already allocated funds. In mid-February, employees at the National Nuclear Security Administration received notice of immediate termination. When the DOGE experts belatedly realized they’d fired critical personnel who oversee the country’s nuclear stockpile, they tried urgently to call them back to work but had no way of getting in touch. So much for government efficiency.
But then, these measures have very little to do with the stated purpose of reining in spending and rooting out fraud. And if the budget deficit were the Trump administration’s real concern, it wouldn’t be firing thousands of IRS workers who handle tax enforcement—taxes being a sizable source of revenue, even as the rich continue to dodge their fair share—or seeking still more tax cuts for corporations and the wealthy. Nor would it have abandoned enforcement of foreign lobbying and bribery laws, opening the door to corruption. Rather, the administration is carrying out the cruel initiatives of Project 2025 while following through on long-telegraphed plans to pursue retribution against political opponents and cement Trump’s autocratic authority. Further, the “savings” that Musk promises have no basis in fact; he is pulling numbers out of thin air. But economists warn that DOGE’s actions pose concrete and potentially grave risks for, among other things, veterans’ assistance, healthcare for 9/11 responders, Social Security benefits, and the already fragile farm economy. Red-state Trump voters who were promised populist policies could be especially vulnerable. No worries for the world’s richest man, however: Musk stands to gain enormously from the special treatment he and his businesses are getting from the administration.
Trump and Musk’s wrecking-ball approach has thrilled the MAGA elite and raised no objections from supine Republican lawmakers. It has completely overwhelmed Democrats in Congress, whose relative powerlessness as the minority party is compounded by clueless leadership and feeble, confused messaging. With the executive branch out of control and GOP legislators abdicating their congressional authority, there are growing concerns about the integrity of our constitutional order. Increasingly, the judiciary seems to be the only branch capable of checking the Trump administration’s excesses and preserving the rule of law. Federal judges have placed holds on a number of the administration’s actions, while state attorneys general and other parties are filing lawsuits challenging their legality and seeking relief for the people affected.
The success of the courts in slowing Trump and Musk offers momentary reassurance that our system of checks and balances remains at least partially intact. Historians and legal scholars point out that other presidents have pushed the limits of executive power and run up against legal obstacles. In such cases, they have ultimately honored court orders (even Richard Nixon gave into the Supreme Court’s demand that he turn over secret White House recordings) or turned to Congress to draft and enact laws that would help them achieve their aims. As Supreme Court justice Sonia Sotomayor noted in public remarks last month, “We’ve had moments where it’s been tested, but, by and large, we have been a country that has understood that the rule of law has helped us maintain our democracy.” Without naming names, Sotomayor also reminded anyone listening that presidents are not monarchs and that they must comply with court rulings.
That the president would defy the decision of a court remains, for now, a hypothetical proposition. But the Trump administration has signaled that it may be willing to take that step. Vice President J. D. Vance wrote on X that “judges aren’t allowed to control the executive’s legitimate power.” Russell Vought, director of the Office of Management and Budget, has argued that conservatives need to “throw off the precedents and legal paradigms that have wrongly developed over the last two hundred years and to study carefully the words of the Constitution and how the founders would have responded in modern situations to the encroachments of other branches.” Trump weighed in on Truth Social with a post quoting Napoleon’s assertion that “he who saves his country does not violate any law.”
How seriously should we take these claims? When Trump says he is above the law, we must assume he means it. He has never shown regard for judicial independence or constitutional order. And now he is more emboldened than in his first term, having surrounded himself with legal advisers who embrace a radical theory of unconstrained executive-branch power. Last year, when the Supreme Court ruled that presidents are entitled to substantial immunity for actions undertaken while in office, Chief Justice John Roberts said the presidency requires an “energetic executive.” Energetic maybe, but not unaccountable. It may soon fall to the Supreme Court to enforce that critical distinction. If it can’t, or won’t, Trump won’t just test the Constitutional limits on his power but try to eliminate them altogether.
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