Brian Beutler has some useful thoughts on how to focus as we confront this complicated crisis. He writes:
To my mind we have four main kinds of provocation raining down on us: headfakes, attacks on liberal pluralism, policy sabotage, and genuine constitutional crises.
In the headfakes category he has Greenland, The Panama Canal and other grandiose ideas that may or may not happen or could just as easily be like the 25% tariffs which make a big splash but end up just being PR moves for Trump to declare victory.
The attacks on liberal pluralism are all the heinous assaults on DEI, transgender kids, immigrants etc which makes us want to scream but which he says, and I think he’s right, still fit into the category of normal politics even though they are grotesque, cruel and disgusting which is not unprecedented. He says, and he’s right about this too, that a lot of this is bait to make us focus on that while they destroy the very firmament of our government and democracy. And these are all wedge issues designed to create division among Democrats.
The policy sabotage is something he thinks that elected Democrats are well-equipped to focus on and it’s what they’re good at (if they want to be.) I could see the House Democrats just calling a complete halt to any negotiations over the budget and debt ceiling. He writes:
- Policy sabotage refer to things Trump is doing, or intends to do, to upset the applecart domestically and internationally, in ways that are much stickier. Here in the U.S., that’s punishing blue states after natural disasters, angling to kick millions of people off Medicaid, pitting his supporters against the rest of America, further curtailing reproductive freedom etc. Internationally it’s threatening or imposing tariffs on certain allies, rattling his saber at others, undermining NATO. Much of this is improper, irregular, corrupt. But most of it is legal.
- To illustrate the point about overlap, culture-war provocations can veer into policy sabotage easily. When smearing immigrants becomes the Laken Riley Act, it transforms into a rooted policy booby trap; if the government really does build a concentration camp in Guantanamo, and begins to fill it with people, that’s no longer simply psychological warfare against liberals.
- Generally, though, this is where Democrats in Congress feel most comfortable. It’s where Trump’s antics show up in grocery prices and service outages and health care access. It’s where Republicans in Congress feel wedged themselves. It’s already the source of real misgivings among marginal Trump voters.
That’s the electoral side of this which is extremely important since we have to hope that the system holds up enough for Democrats to take back at least one house of Congress in 2026.
And then there’s the Constitutional crisis:
- To the extent Trump is trying to sap our attention with assaults on pluralism, it’s so that he can get away with dictatorial abuses of power. Trump, and his main benefactor Elon Musk have been on a constitutional crime spree. They have violated civil-service laws and laws governing the expenditure of congressionally appropriated funds. Trump has already effectively ended politically-independent federal law enforcement and has expressed a desire to do something similar with respect to the military officer corps. His apparent goal is to be able to sic federal cops on his elite enemies, and sic federal troops on larger populations of nameless immigrants and protesters.
- Ed Martin, the insurrectionist defense lawyer Trump appointed to be the acting U.S. Attorney in Washington, DC, has threatened to prosecute people for publicly identifying the young, far-right Musk acolytes (now government employees)currently rifling through government payments and sensitive records and rewriting the code base for critical government IT systems. A real assault on the first amendment, not the fake kind MAGA posters are always whining about.
- This is where Democrats are least surefooted, for reasons I explained here and in other articles, but where resistance is most urgent. It’s where we have to expect Democrats to set aside proximate concerns about the next election to honor their oaths to protect the Constitution. It’s why I’ve written that Democrats should withhold votes for all must-pass budget legislation until rule of law is restored, and ideally until the Justice Department appoints a real special counsel to investigate the crimes committed in this blizzard of corruption.
He says this is why it’s important to exhort Democrats to take this up. It’s worth calling, faxing, marching, rallying all of that.
He acknowledges that the Democrats are finally responding. Brian Schatz’s leadership on stopping the USAID atrocity and Hakeem Jeffries’ plan to obstruct the budget deal are steps in the right direction. Today elected Democrats held a big rally at the Treasury Department around the slogan “Who Elected Musk?!” which I think is very useful. It serves two purposes: reminding people that we didn’t elect this billionaire Bond villain and reminding Trump that he’s being upstaged by this freak.
Musk could be the future of MAGA if he wants it. He could be the successor to Trump. It would be a huge mistake to let him destroy the constitution and remake the country in his image.
I think we have to do everything. But Beutler is right that the one thing that may not be reversible is the assault on the Constitution. Keeping a special focus on that is job one.