Donald Trump and Elon Musk are not tiptoeing toward autocracy

Democrats need to do more than put up speed bumps.

Photo by Joshua Sukoff on Unsplash

We cannot afford to wait any longer. The immediate clear and present danger to the fabric of our democracy, the headlong rush to a police state, cannot be ignored. And unprecedented times demand unprecedented approaches by Democrats in Congress, minority status or not. Last week, I advocated for Senate Democrats to use every rule and weapon at their disposal to bring the Senate to a halt, or at least put big-time speed bumps in the way for them to act, hold hearings, and confirm Trump’s executive nominees. But given just what we have seen since I wrote that piece, we need more.

Donald Trump and Elon Musk are not tiptoeing the United States toward autocracy, one step at a time. They are racing there, using Steve Bannon’s approach of muzzle velocity to flood Washington with radical and illegal acts, including unilaterally freezing congressionally mandated spending, seizing control of top-secret information and shutting employees out of their buildings , claiming the demise of agencies protected by law, illegally firing federal employees protected under civil service laws, trying to undermine the FBI and CIA, firing agency and regulatory commission chairs and members despite that they have fixed terms set by Congress, taking security from individuals Trump dislikes, even those facing death threats from actions they took at Trump’s command during his first term, and threatening retaliation against those Trump and Musk don’t like.

Musk, for his part, is ignoring the ethics requirements of his temporary governmental status, saying he will decide his own conflicts of interest and allowing an army of young, inexperienced and highly questionable techies access to our most sensitive secrets and personal information, and to alter the source codes of key programs.

Trump and Musk are counting on the overwhelmed, intimidated and captured press to be incapable of blowing the whistle enough to raise larger public outrage, as Bannon accurately predicted. While an army of lawyers is challenging the illegal acts, Trump, Musk and their allies think the courts either will turn a blind eye to the illegality, operate slowly to enable the actions to be effective even if they ultimately are overturned, and, with a pliant Supreme Court, to expand presidential authority way beyond immunity through the so-called “unitary executive” theory. If all else fails, Trump will just ignore court edicts and orders, as he appears to be doing after an injunction blocking his sweeping freeze of spending on federal programs.

Then there is Congress. Violate the most precious congressional power, the power of the purse, by blowing up mandated spending, wreaking havoc and damaging countless lives? Republican Sen. Thom Tillis of North Carolina, a member of the Finance and Banking Committees, responded by saying that this was unconstitutional, but, “It's not uncommon for presidents to flex a little bit on where they can spend and where they can stop spending.” House Speaker Mike Johnson of Louisiana has endorsed every step Trump has taken. Block unqualified or dangerous nominees? Few Senate powers are more precious than that of confirmation. Senate Republicans have given up on that for Trump.

Tillis, for his part, after indicating concerns about Tulsi Gabbard’s fitness to run U.S. intelligence, caved and supported her. So did Maine’s Susan Collins. A nominee clearly both unqualified and dangerous is now on a path to confirmation. Louisiana Republican Bill Cassidy, a physician who proudly proclaimed his role making sure kids were vaccinated and saving lives, pivoted from deep skepticism about anti-vaxxer and conspiracy theorist Robert F. Kennedy Jr. as secretary of Health and Human Services to supporting him enthusiastically. It is now likely that every deplorable Trump cabinet and top agency nominee will make it through.

In response to my call for Senate Democrats to use their power within the rules to do as much obstruction as possible, I have gotten two kinds of pushback. The first is that Minority Leader Chuck Schumer of New York wants to protect his vulnerable members who are up for reelection in 2026. My response to that has been that if you do not go to the mat to highlight the Trump/Musk depredations, there might not be elections in 2026. The second is that I have misread the rules, that they cannot actually stop Republicans from what they want to do. It might be true that Senate Democrats can mostly just disrupt, putting up big speed bumps instead of actual roadblocks. But in fact the filibuster can work for most legislation, and if Republicans eliminate it, so be it. And it is true that confirmations can be done, in the end, by simple majority votes.

But using the rules means that each one, of the hundreds, would take up a lot of Senate time and energy. If Senate Democrats suddenly had discipline, backbone and a willingness to stay on weekends and often at night, to deny unanimous consent for all or nearly all executive nominations, and to put on blanket holds, it could keep a large number of the second- and third- tier nominees from being confirmed, at least adding to their difficulty hijacking the agencies and departments, and limiting their ability to use the Vacancies Act to fill top posts. Of course, Senate Republicans might well change all the rules, radically reducing the power of the minority. But if we do somehow manage to get through this and maintain our democracy, we will not have to worry about a couple of recalcitrant senators, like Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema, to alter the rules; they will already be in place. And Democrats can decide which ones to use to implement their own agenda.

So what to do? It is time for House Democrats, especially, to use their biggest power, their votes in a body that is closely divided and with a Republican majority incapable of uniting on its own to pass budgets and spending bills and to raise the debt ceiling.

I admit this is different from what I wrote two weeks ago here at The Contrarian. My 40-year history of decrying the anomaly of the United States, unique among significant economies, requiring periodic increases in our debt ceiling via votes in Congress, has included regular efforts to eliminate, bypass or neutralize the requirement. It is deeply dangerous to play with the nation’s standing and its credit. I wrote that Democrats should use their power, when Johnson, unable to get the votes from his Freedom Caucus radicals, begs for House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries’s help, to demand a debt ceiling fix.

Two things have changed my view. First, the past 14 days I have seen the march to autocracy accelerate at warp speed. Second, the emerging threat to the full faith and credit of the United States is in the reckless policies of Trump, Musk and their billionaire buddies. Stiffing groups and contractors from the money they are legally owed by the federal government is already damaging the credibility of the U.S. Threatening big tariffs can trigger a trade war- driven combination of recession and inflation, further risking our solvency. And if Trump buys in at all to the cockamamie idea from tech billionaires to buy tons of bitcoin or its brethren with dollars and Fort Knox gold, it could devastate our reserves and damage the dollar as the world’s reserve currency.

So House Democrats should say right now that Republicans have the majority in the House, Senate and White House, and are in charge—and they will get no votes from Democrats to bail them out on budgets, spending bills, continuing resolutions to avert government shutdowns, or extensions in the debt ceiling. They have the majority, let Johnson find a path forward with his own majority. I am not alone in this view; the Washington Post’s Dana Milbank wrote a compelling analysis for this approach.

I wish it were not needed, that we could go back to the messy process of give-and-take, where Democrats could use their leverage in this closely divided House to bargain with Johnson and Trump for concessions in return for their votes to save them, and the country, from disruption. But we are in desperate times, and they need dramatic and unusual actions. This is not in the normal wheelhouse of congressional Democrats who have compromise in their political DNA. It is way past time for that to prevail.

Norman Ornstein is a political scientist, co-host of the podcast “Words Matter,” and author of books, including “It’s Even Worse Than It Looks: How the American Constitutional System Collided With the New Politics of Extremism.”