Finally, some fight! And: Live today with Tina Brown
Musk's coup attempt continues, the courts push back, and Democrats awaken. Plus, a live conversation with a legendary editor and writer
First, a programming note: We have another live show today at 12:30 p.m. Eastern. Anand will be speaking with the legendary editor Tina Brown about it all. More details below.
Where are the Democrats? Where is the opposition? Like many of you, we’ve been wondering since January 20, and the absence of resistance on the political front was palpable as over the weekend unelected private citizen Elon Musk and his team of junior developers sought — illegally and unconstitutionally — to take over and destroy USAID, the federal agency that oversees critical humanitarian efforts around the globe.
By yesterday afternoon, however, things had changed. A group of Congressional Democrats — among them Senators Chris Murphy and Brian Schatz and Representatives Jamie Raskin and Ilhan Omar — did turn out in protest at USAID headquarters in Washington, D.C., yesterday afternoon, speaking out forcefully against Elon Musk’s coup attempt. Senator Murphy — who, like several of those assembled, has to his credit been speaking out all along — called the situation exactly what it is, a “constitutional crisis.”
The Democrats even attempted to get an audience with whoever is running the show inside the building. They were turned away — but the point was made that they’re not going to just sit back and take it, a point that an opposition party needs to make.
Democrats may have limited power right now, but that’s not the same as having no power — and Senator Schatz, for example, has committed to using that power to push back against the White House, promising to block Cabinet confirmation hearings until Trump calls off Musk’s illegal, unconstitutional attack on USAID.
“Dismantling USAID is illegal and makes us less safe. USAID was created by federal law and is funded by Congress. Donald Trump and Elon Musk can’t just wish it away with a stroke of a pen — they need to pass a law,” Schatz said in a statement.
“Until and unless this brazenly authoritarian action is reversed and USAID is functional again, I will be placing a blanket hold on all of the Trump administration’s State Department nominees,” he continued. “This is self-inflicted chaos of epic proportions that will have dangerous consequences all around the world.”
Musk’s coup attempt was not even the year’s first — the tone for it was set by the administrative-coup-by-memorandum at the Office of Management and Budget that marked Trump’s second January coup (it’s a lot, we know).
That broad freeze on federal spending — an illegal, unconstitutional (something of a theme in this administration) attempt by the executive branch to rule by “impoundment,” or refusing to spend money already allocated by Congress — was quickly met with a stay, but fearful institutions have held off on disbursing funds as the DOJ went to court to argue that the stay somehow only applied to the specific wording of the memorandum, not the executive order itself.
That line of argument was rejected yesterday evening by federal district court Judge Loren L. AliKhan, who issued a new temporary restraining order blocking the freeze, and asserting that — for now — laws exist and are set down in words, not in the thoughts of authoritarians.
There’s far more work to be done, not just for elected officials and for judges, but for civil society — meaning all of us. And on that note, we talked yesterday with scholar of fascism Ruth Ben-Ghiat, about understanding what Musk’s coup is all about, the failure of the media to cover it with the seriousness it deserves, the absence of political pressure from the Democrats, and what we can all do to fight back.
We’ve been doing this for the last few Mondays and plan to keep doing it each Monday at 12:30 p.m. Eastern — if you haven’t already been attending, we hope you’ll join us and the thousands of readers who’ve been attending next time.
But we’ve got another great live conversation happening this afternoon, and we’d love it if you’d join us. At 12:30 p.m. Eastern, we’ll be speaking with the legendary editor and journalist Tina Brown. Brown has spent her career redefining what people expect from magazine journalism, heading Punch, Tatler, Vanity Fair, The New Yorker, and Talk magazines and co-founding The Daily Beast. She now posts weekly at Fresh Hell, her new and essential Substack newsletter.
We’ll discuss, among other things, a question Brown raised in a recent post and is on everyone’s mind:
The question of 2025 is how willing people will be to see all they have loved and respected go up in flames. — Fresh Hell
And, of course, we’ll talk about what we can start to do about controlling those flames.
To watch any of our live conversations, just download the Substack app (just click on the link below) and turn on notifications — you’ll get an alert that we’re live and you can watch from your iOS or Android mobile device. We’ll see you later today.
I really identified with the concept of feeling undefended in this moment. I live right outside of DC. I’ve got neighbors and friends who are in the trenches of the federal workforce. There were tears Friday night as I heard stories of organizations serving marginalized homeless populations being shut out of federal resources throughout the country. I’ve been writing and calling my representatives daily. I still can’t wrap my brain around Elon Musk and his Jr bros taking over the Treasury and locking civil servants out of their computers. Let alone shutting down USAID. In my America, they would be taken out in handcuffs. What is happening?! Why is this not being called a coup by MSM? Hostile takeover? Um.. that’s a coup. Today I am going into DC to visit Warner and Kaine’s offices to ask them why they freaking voted for the guy who gave over the keys of the Treasury to the unelected, richest man in the world with billions of dollars in government contracts. I will finish my day in DC by joining the rally at the Treasury. Then I will get on the metro and go home. I urge those who can to get involved. We can only save ourselves.
Finally, I was wondering why your article yesterday was behind the action. You may remember that we had an exchange at the start of the year. I actually challenged YOU to be about solutions rather than your four option typology aimed at understanding resistance. My sense is that you misunderstood and underestimated your responsibility for signaling the need for muscular response. Public intellectuals have a really important role and with your platform and large following, my sense is that you are not yet really plugged into folks that are neither surprised or unaware of what ought to be done.
We have been awake and doing direction setting.
But we have smaller megaphones.
Hope you use yours more wisely.
In solidarity!
Gillian Marcelle