Post #450-2: The Trump-Musk Outlaw Regime–The Scorecard So Far

(Note to the Reader: This is a third iteration of a blog originally posted after the first two weeks of the Trump administration. Sorry for the length, but the numerous additions to Trump’s outrages require it.)

In just two months, Donald Trump, Elon Musk, and their minions have managed to alienate, disrupt, disparage, and defy Americans and foreign friends alike. They have openly mocked Congress, the Constitution, the rule of law, and the virtues of diplomacy, all for self-serving ends. Their efforts come down to this: A Russian or Chinese invasion could not so systematically and quickly destroy the fabric of our society.

Here are five cases that summarize what the Trump-Musk regime has done so far, why it is so dangerous, and why resistance is necessary for our very survival as a democracy.

Lawlessness

Trump’s first administration ended in lawlessness. Now it begins that way. Though we were all alerted as to what Donald Trump would do in his first days in office, it’s still shocking when he does it. Here’s a partial list:

• He has issued a clearly illegal and (according to a federal judge) “blatantly unconstitutional” executive order that disregards the 14th Amendment to the Constitution and is racist to boot: eliminating citizenship by birth in the case of babies born to parents in the US illegally. (Three appellate courts have now blocked the order, with one judge saying “no court in the country has ever endorsed the president’s interpretation.”)
• His transition team says the US will not grant asylum to people crossing the border illegally, in plain violation of international law that calls for granting asylum to people who have a reasonable fear of persecution.
• His declaration of a national emergency at the Mexico border is a political stunt; there is no emergency. Illegal border crossings are way down—“at levels below the final months of Trump’s first term,” the New York Times reports. Nevertheless, Trump’s tariff threats have forced Mexico to agree to deploy 10,000 troops to the border to keep migrants out of the US. The ACLU is suing Trump, arguing: “No president has the authority to override the [humanitarian] protections Congress has granted to people seeking safety at the border.” But Trump is using the emergency designation to deport tens of thousands of migrant workers and, where deportation or detention at Guantanamo is not feasible, house migrants in a network of military bases around the country—as many as 10,000 people at each base.
• He said in his inaugural address that he wants to “expand our territory,” which translates to a new imperialism directed at Greenland and perhaps Panama. Never mind that the government and people there don’t want to be absorbed by the US. There are reports that Trump has ordered the military to prepare to take over the Canal Zone, though BlackRock’s purchase of port facilities from a Hong Kong firm may avert military action. (I have more to say about Greenland below.) Trump has talked about taking “ownership” of the Gaza Strip, converting waterfront areas into another Riviera—with Jared Kushner, mind you, in charge.
• He has issued blanket pardons for over 1,500 January 6 insurrectionists, including many who committed violence that day and some who are dedicated to violence, such as the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers leaders. Overturning their convictions is meant to justify Trump’s incitement of them.

• Trump promised to fire any civil servant who fails to report on a colleague who is acting in furtherance of diversity-equity-inclusion. He is mimicking the communist system, under which party secretaries spy on workers in all government agencies.
• Trump fired seventeen inspectors general in federal agencies. But his email termination notices may have violated federal law, the 1974 Impoundment Control Act, which requires Congress to receive 30 days’ notice of any intent to fire a Senate-confirmed inspector general. Trump intends to replace these watchdog appointees with loyalists, essentially ending the independence that is at the heart of the inspector general position. His press secretary says: “He is the executive of the executive branch, and therefore he has the power to fire anyone within the executive branch that he wishes to.” That claim in essence is the unitary executive theory favored by many Republicans. The firings are on hold as a court considers the case.
• The administration has violated the impoundment act with several other executive orders that impose freezes on Congressional allocations, including his transportation department’s suspension of the Biden administration’s $5-billion allocation for new EV charging stations, grants to charities, and foreign aid. A federal judge on Marh 5, 2025 ruled that such freezes “fundamentally undermines the distinct constitutional roles of each branch of our government.” He directed the administration to cease impeding appropriated funds, but noted that his order had not been carried out.
• In furtherance of that presumed executive power, Trump ordered that independent regulatory agencies such as the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Federal Trade Commission are now accountable to the White House for their budgets and policy priorities. The order challenges Congress’s role in establishing those agencies.
• A federal judge ruled on March 1 that Trump cannot remove the head of an independent watchdog agency without cause—in this case, the head of the Office of Special Counsel, which investigates whistleblower reports and protects federal workers from retaliation. The ruling came after a lawsuit by that official.
• The Trump regime is carrying out a purge of anyone in government service who had anything to do with prosecution of Trump’s many crimes. A purge—something we used to associate only with authoritarian systems—extends to the FBI, federal prosecutors, and the justice department’s several offices.. In the FBI, an apparently unwilling temporary director issued notifications to career field office leaders that they had been terminated. These orders are patently illegal; the officers are protected by civil service laws, and by law can only be fired if they commit crimes or engage in unethical conduct. (Nine FBI agents have filed suit to prevent the Trump administration from collecting information on the agents in investigations of Trump. A judge has ordered that the names of the FBI officials involved in the January 6 committee investigations be kept secret.) The purge also includes the firing of over a dozen federal prosecutors in the US attorney’s office in Washington, as well as in other districts. Firings and transfers of career officials in the Department of Justice’s national security, civil rights, immigration, pardons, and public integrity divisions have gutted their leaderships and continuity.
• Musk has said he intends to “recklessly freeze streams of federal funding without warning.” He and his DOGE assistants—kids barely out of their teens, and without security clearances—followed through, seizing control of a little known but highly important treasury department office that distributes all federal payments—that’s as much as $5 trillion at any given time. They gained access to huge personal data bases with the consent of Trump’s newly appointed treasury secretary, Scott Bessent. It’s being called the biggest security breach in US history. A draft report by a subcontractor for Booz Allen Hamilton said that DOGE’s access to the Treasury’s payment system posed an “unprecedented insider threat risk” and should be suspended. Instead, Booz Allen suspended the subcontractor and said his report was unauthorized and would be revised. Timothy Snyder sounds the alarm: “In gaining the ability to stop payments by the Department of the Treasury, Musk would also make democracy meaningless. We vote for representatives in Congress, who pass laws that determine how our tax money is spent. If Musk has the power to halt this process at the level of payment, he can make laws meaningless. Which means, in turn, that Congress is meaningless, and our votes are meaningless, as is our citizenship.”

• Which begs the question: What exactly is Elon Musk’s status in the government? A White House staffer finally answered in mid-February, saying Musk is a senior adviser to the President, not an employee of the DOGE. He has no decision-making authority; he’s merely “overseeing” DOGE. So why is he attending cabinet meetings? Designating Musk an adviser is probably intended to put him out of harm’s way in lawsuits against the administration. (Amy Gleason, who used to work at the US Digital Service—now DOGE, and where some twenty IT specialists resigned in protest of the takeover—has been named acting administrator.) Thus does the assault on the Constitution continue.
• On March 14, a federal judge, in response to a lawsuit by fourteen Democratic state attorneys general, ordered DOGE to provide documentary evidence concerning its role in mass firings and the dismantling of government agencies. It’s the first time DOGE has been directed to reveal the authority under which it is acting.
• Elon Musk’s search for ways to save the government money doesn’t include his two biggest federal benefactors: the defense department and NASA. Together, those agencies account for over $26 billion in contracts for SpaceX and Tesla. Overall, this supposedly self-made man has received at least $38 billion in government support for his companies (New York Times editorial board, March 8, 2025) The conflicts of interest are glaring, but Trump’s justice department has terminated all pending investigations of Musk and Tesla.
• Washington Post and New York Times investigations of Musk’s claims of billions of dollars in savings for the government have found the claims to be largely spurious. Many canceled government contracts had already been carried out, yet were counted as though ongoing. The Times reports that the DOGE’s math “is marred with accounting errors, incorrect assumptions, outdated data and other mistakes . . . While the DOGE team has surely cut some number of billions of dollars, its slapdash accounting adds to a pattern of recklessness by the group.” Bottom line: Don’t expect a “DOGE dividend” check such as Trump mused about sending to all Americans.
• In response to a lawsuit by nineteen state attorneys general, a federal judge ordered a halt to the DOGE operation in Treasury on February 7 and the destruction of “any and all copies of material downloaded from the Treasury Department’s records and systems” since January 20. A temporary restraining order was placed on DOGE to block it from accessing taxpayer records. Trump and Bessent were ordered to appear in court to defend their actions. But Trump’s lawyers have challenged the judge’s decision, saying he has no right to interfere with a president’s power to order DOGE’s activities. The same federal judge agreed, at least temporarily.
• DOGE members have accessed data at the Department of Commerce’s NOAA section, the Department of Transportation’s Federal Aviation Administration, and the Department of Education’s federal student loan data, according to an ABC News report of February 8. Most ominously, DOGE personnel were given access to the highly restricted Integrated Data Retrieval System of the IRS—data (such as taxpayer IDs and bank information) for every taxpayer and business in the US. The new IRS commissioner had yet to be confirmed by the Senate when DOGE received permission to access the files.
• DOGE has also bullied its way into the Social Security offices, seizing data on taxpayers without explanation in what the Washington Post says “amounted to a de facto coup.” The agency’s former chief of staff, who was forced to resign, has filed a federal lawsuit. She says that the DOGE invasion “could result in benefits not being paid out or delays in payments. … The stakes are high.”

• The Trump administration has taken aim at sanctuary cities—those that refuse to cooperate with ICE efforts to nab illegal immigrants—by threatening to cut off federal aid and prosecute city officials. Several cities, including San Francisco and Portland, have filed suit to block the administration. The San Francisco city attorney argues: “This is the federal government illegally asserting a right it does not have, telling cities how to use their resources, and commandeering local law enforcement. This is the federal government coercing local officials to bend to their will or face defunding or prosecution. That is illegal and authoritarian.”
• Trump has issued an executive order to deny gender-affirming treatment for trans children, part of a war for “biological truth.” Sounds like neo-Nazism to me. The order is on hold pending judicial review. (In late February, the Republican-dominated Iowa legislature made the state the first to remove civil rights protections for transgender people. A previous governor had signed such protection into law.)
• On the public health front, all kinds of bad news: administration of the key public health agencies is in the hands of medical quacks (Dr. Oz, nominated to head the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services; Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, to head the National Institutes of Health) and unfit pretenders (RFK, Jr.). Food security at the FDA is now under a hunting buddy of Don, Jr.; the previous administrator, a scientist, resigned in protest. Measles is back at an alarming pace in Texas, but RFK, Jr. says it’s a normal outbreak and that cod liver oil will work wonders. Many children will die from his failure to press parents to vaccinate them. Research programs in several areas of public health have been cut and their staffs forced to resign. The USAID’s provision of Ebola vaccines in Uganda was blocked, then restored, but not in time (contrary to Musk’s claim) to make the life-saving program workable.
• Freedom of the press is being eroded daily. In the Pentagon, the main news outlets, such as the New York Times and NPR, have been removed from their usual office and replaced with Breitbart, One America News, and other right-wing supporters of Trump’s policies. His chair of the Federal Communications Commission has announced an investigation of financial sponsors of NPR and PBS, with the evident aim to scare them off and remove government support. Trump and Musk have initiated a campaign of harassment of news organizations, suing (under the guise of consumer protection) to rein in their independent reporting. CBS (Paramount) and ABC have paid off Trump rather than contest his ridiculous charges of programming bias. Lara Trump will have her own Fox News show, further ensuring Fox conformity with the party line. (If anyone doubts Fox’s support of the MAGA line, she says, “I certainly hope they can take me being on the team at Fox as a very clear indication as to where Fox stands.”) The Associated Press was blocked from access to Trump’s news conferences and other venues until it accepted that the Gulf of Mexico is now the Gulf of America. (AP is suing on First Amendment grounds, but a judge has upheld Trump’s decision. So far, not one news service has stepped up in solidarity with the AP.) And in a break with longstanding tradition, Trump’s press secretary has announced that the President, and not the press pool, will choose which reporters may attend ask questions at his press conferences, on flights, and on other occasions. The White House Correspondents Club has issued a withering criticism of this decision. (But will they boycott?) The Voice of America has been dismantled by executive order, putting Trump loyalist Kari Lake out of a job. VOA journalists had been reported by the Times (February 28) to be under investigation “for reporting on criticism of Mr. Trump or for making comments that were perceived as critical of him.” Now, over 3,000 of them and other VOA workers have been forced out, ending access to over 400 million people in 63 languages and over 100 countries.
• Bowing to Trump, Washington Post owner and billionaire Jeff Bezos has taken over the editorial page, saying that from now on, only one view will prevail when it comes to personal liberties and free markets. The editorial page editor resigned in protest, understanding full well that “one view” means the Trump administration’s view. Dana Milbank was not fooled either. In an opinion piece, he courageously wrote: “this much is clear: If we as a newspaper, and we as a country, are to defend his twin pillars, then we must redouble our fight against the single greatest threat to ‘personal liberties and free markets’ in the United States today: President Donald Trump.” Ruth Marcus, a fixture on the opinion pages, has also resigned after an article critical of Trump was rejected for publication.
• Trump’s executive order to the Dept. of Homeland Security for an indefinite “pause” on refugee admissions to the United States has been blocked by a federal judge, who said the order appeared to amount to a “nullification” of federal law and “has crossed the line from permissible discretionary action to effective nullification of congressional will.” Meanwhile, the State Department, in response to Trump’s order, has drafted a list of 43 countries whose citizens would be barred or restricted from entering the US.
• Trump has ordered the US Department of Agriculture to remove references to the climate crisis from its website; put the Environmental Protection Agency on the chopping block (more than 50 percent of its staff and budget are expected to be eliminated); blocked the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention from publishing scientific information on the threat of bird flu to humans; fired senior leaders at the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) and cut about 1,000 jobs, just as the hurricane season is approaching; fired around 800 people at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, putting critical weather forecasting in a bind; and issued an executive order to abolish the Department of Education (DOE). Trump and his Republican allies in Congress are seeking to repeal Biden’s 2022 Inflation Reduction Act, which provides significant money for investment in low-carbon technologies, despite the fact that those funds go overwhelmingly to Republican districts (https://www.nytimes.com/2025/02/10/climate/trump-clean-energy-republican-states.html). Any program or project related to climate change is likely to be removed. One important example: The 2009 “endangerment finding,” which provides the basis for regulating greenhouse gases under the Clean Air Act, has been repealed.

• Closure of the DOE requires Congressional approval, but gutting it does not. In March, the administration fired half the DOE staff—1,300 people. Another 572 people accepted separation packages. The head of the National Education Association said when eliminating the DOE was first proposed: “If it became a reality, Trump’s power grab would steal resources for our most vulnerable students, explode class sizes, cut job training programs, make higher education more expensive and out of reach for middle class families, take away special education services for students with disabilities, and gut student civil rights protections.” The new DOE leadership indeed took aim at affirmative action. A letter in mid-February to all schools from the department’s Office for Civil Rights said that any consideration of race in any school decision (admissions, hiring, scholarships, etc.) would be considered unlawful and grounds for elimination of federal assistance. This demand goes far beyond the Supreme Court’s decision against considering race in admissions policies.
• DOGE officials have gained access to payment and contracting systems across the Department of Health and Human Services. The department controls hundreds of billions of dollars in annual payments to health-care providers, and they appear to have gained access to at least some of those systems, the people said. Musk posted on X Wednesday afternoon that Medicare was “where the big money fraud is happening.” The National Institutes of Health was ordered to cut $12 billion for biomedical and other research, but on February 10 a federal judge temporarily blocked the cuts in response to a lawsuit by attorneys general in twenty-two states. The same day, another federal judge cited the administration for ignoring his order to release trillions of dollars in grants and loans at the NIH.
• DOGE personnel gained access to computer systems of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, which Trump has tried to abolish. But the CFPB has managed to stay live, thanks to judicial order. Pending is a judge’s decision on whether or not the administration has the right to dismantle the agency altogether.
• Trump has appointed himself the “amazing” new chairman of the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts and dismissed several board members “who do not share our Vision for a Golden Age in Arts and Culture”—this from a man who never visited the Center and hasn’t the slightest interest in arts and culture. Further making that point, Trump appointed two Fox anchors, Laura Ingraham and Maria Bartiromo, to the Kennedy board and named Richard Grenell, Trump’s envoy for overseas hot spots, to be executive director. In response to this takeover, performances have been cancelled by the artists.
• People at the FBI, Homeland Security, and other agencies who worked on foreign influence operations, such as election interference by Russia, China, and others, have been fired. As the New York Times reports (February 21, 2025), “Experts are alarmed that the cuts could leave the United States defenseless . . . and embolden foreign adversaries seeking to disrupt democratic governments.”
• DOGE representatives fired specialists at the National Nuclear Security Administration, the agency within the Department of Energy that is responsible for the country’s nuclear weapons stockpile. Then, upon realizing the stupidity of what they had done, and insisting they had only fired clerical staff, DOGE began looking for the fired personnel to invite them back to work. They’re still looking.
• Probably as prelude to privatizing the US Postal Service, Trump has taken away its independence and put it under Howard Lutnick’s commerce department.
• A federal judge on Feb.27 decided that the order for the mass firings of probationary government workers at several agencies be rescinded, as the American Federation of Government Employees had argued in court. “The office of Personnel Management does not have any authority whatsoever under any statute in the history of the universe to hire and fire employees at another agency,” said the judge. Only Congress has such authority. On March 12 and 13, two other federal judges rescinded the firings of probationary workers by the Office of Personnel Management at virtually all agencies, and ordered that their jobs be immediately restored.
• One of the more outrageous things about all the firings and forced resignations of federal workers is the justification on grounds of poor performance. People who had excellent performance records, probably the vast majority, had no opportunity to prove it. Musk took to extreme and childish steps to make his point, demanding (Feb. 22) that federal workers summarize their accomplishments for the week in five bullets or leave. That’s how he cleaned house at Tesla. Trump trumpeted Musk’s “GREAT JOB,” saying he should “GET MORE AGGRESSIVE.” But the backlash among employees and even some Trump agency appointees was severe. On Feb. 24 the Office of Personnel Management told agency leaders they could ignore Musk’s decree.
• Seeking to cement the Jewish vote and confirm his racist credentials, Trump ordered a reduction of $400 million in federal grants to Columbia University because of its “antisemitic” policies. The order was followed up by two outrageous actions: a raid on Columbia’s student housing in search of two Palestinians who were leaders in student protests of Israeli policies in Gaza; and a demand that Columbia make wholesale changes in its disciplinary and admissions policies. One of the arrested students, Mahmoud Khalil, is a permanent resident with a green card, not a student visa; yet he was removed by ICE officers from New York and placed in a prison in Louisiana. He will be deported unless lawyers can make the case that Khalil was denied free speech, should not have had his green card revoked, and did not engage in occupation of buildings during the protests. The demand for policy changes holds Columbia hostage to the Trump administration, which can reverse or add to the federal grants already rescinded should it not be satisfied with Columbia’s response on “antisemitism.” The administration has already determined that certain regional studies programs, such as on Africa and South Asia, should be placed under “academic receivership.”

The Emerging Crypto Currency Scandal

Trump will create a working group in support of cryptocurrency (“digital assets”), in a blatant example of conflict of interest. Trump and family have a substantial personal investment in the crypto industry, having started a crypto company called World Liberty Financial last year. Trump and Melania are shlocking their own coins along with the shoes, perfume, Bibles, and hundreds of other goods bearing the Trump logo. The $Trump memecoin has shocked the crypto industry, one of whose members and Trump supporter said Trump’s marketing makes cryptocurrency “look corrupt and self-interested.” Oh, really?
Howard Lutnick, chairman and CEO of the Wall Street investment bank Cantor Fitzgerald and Donald Trump’s nominee to become the next secretary of commerce, has his hands deep into the cryptocurrency netherworld. Cantor Fitzgerald is a banker for Tether, a stablecoin that is the most-traded cryptocurrency in the world. What most concerns some senators who will question him is the use of stablecoin in secondary markets to finance terrorism, facilitate cybercrime, money laundering and the sale of precursor chemicals for illicit drug manufacturing. As commerce secretary, Lutnick would be responsible for regulating stablecoin business. Notably, Tether announced plans to move its headquarters to El Salvador on Monday. El Salvador under an authoritarian leader, Nayir Bukele, has embraced cryptocurrency as a competitive advantage, moving its own economy and currency into crypto. And Bukele was the second leader, after Saudi Arabia’s Mohamed bin Salman, to be called by Trump after Trump’s inauguration. Marco Rubio just visited Bukele, and they reached an agreement—get this!—whereby El Salvador would receive not only Salvadoran deportees, but any criminals in the US. Oh, there’s a fee, supposedly to be used to finance their stay in the country’s mega-prison. El Salvador has one of the world’s highest rates of incarceration.
(https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/jan/22/howard-lutnick-secretary-commerce-nominee)
Now Argentina’s pro-Trump president, Javier Milei, has gotten into the act. On Valentine’s Day, he touted a new cryptocurrency, $Libra, and people gobbled it up. The Times describes what happened next: “$Libra’s value skyrocketed. Then it swiftly collapsed. The largest stakeholders had sold their coins, leaving almost everyone else with a collective $250 million in losses.” This is exactly what happened when Trump’s memecoin was announced. He and his family pocketed at least $100 million from the initial purchases. 800,000 other investors lost an estimated $2 billion when the insiders pulled out. Trump responded as he usually does when he’s caught in scandal: “I don’t know if it benefited” me, he said. “I don’t know much about it.” That’s exactly what Argentina’s president said: He knew nothing about it, the $Libra idea came from a Singapore outfit, he didn’t benefit at all. Unlike Trump, Milei may have to pay a political price for his stupidity. (The full, almost comical story, is at https://www.nytimes.com/2025/02/28/world/americas/argentina-crypto-scandal-president.html).

Budget Cuts and Human Rights

In a move consistent with his early “shock and awe” strategy, Trump and Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced that virtually all foreign aid—the $60-billion budget for humanitarian, development, and military—would be suspended pending a review. the only exceptions to the suspension were military aid to Israel and Egypt, and emergency humanitarian assistance. On March 10, Rubio announced that the review has been completed. USAID will be administered by the state department and 83 percent of its programs will be terminated. It remains to be seen whether any life-saving programs will survive. Will US aid to protect against AIDS end, a program started under George W. Bush that is credited with saving more than 25 million lives worldwide?
Elon Musk had been the leading advocate for eliminating USAID, and Rubio thanked him for achieving “this overdue and historic reform.” Such reform means many more preventable deaths and disease when put beside budget cuts to national ministries of health under the World Health Organization now that Trump has ordered the US to end its membership. Vaccine programs abroad may also be affected, especially with RFK Jr. in charge at HEW. Also affected will be US aid to Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos to find and clear unexploded ordnance (bombs, mines, ammunition) the US used during the Vietnam War—a program that has spent around $750 million so far. Responding to the budget cuts, two Democrats in Congress said: “As leaders of the House and Senate Committees on Appropriations, we write with extreme alarm about the administration’s efforts to undermine Congress’s power of the purse, threaten our national security and deny resources for states, localities, American families and businesses” (https://www.cnn.com/2025/01/24/politics/us-freezes-foreign-aid/index.html;
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/01/23/us/politics/trump-military.html).
As for USAID employees, a federal judge ruled on February 21 that the administration was entitled to place thousands of them on leave. The judge relied on official assurances that AID program changes were being reviewed, and that the government had made a strong case that its actions “are essential to its policy goals.” But less than a week later, another judge ordered that the administration comply with an unfreezing of $2 billion in USAID funds that were under contract. The order had been issued twelve days earlier but ignored by the administration. The exasperated judge reiterated that the government “shall take no actions to impede the prompt payment of foreign assistance funds.” The Supreme Court has upheld that decision but has not provided a timeline for payments.
Ukraine has suffered significantly from the decision on USAID. The State Department has cut off its support of Ukraine’s energy facilities, which have been subject to constant attack by Russia. USAID’s mission in Ukraine has been reduced from sixty-four to eight. When winter comes, the country’s energy supplies will be even more vulnerable than they already are.

The Assault on the Professional Military

On the military front, Trump (in the words of the New York Times) “fired the first woman to ever lead a military service branch [Admiral Linda Fagan], signed an order to send [1500] active-duty U.S. troops to the border [in what one officer called a photo op] and said he was reinstating, with back pay, former service members who had refused to take Covid vaccinations, a breach of military health rules. General Mark Milley, Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman under both Trump and Biden, is now accused of disloyalty. Portraits of him at the Pentagon have been taken down, his security detail has been removed, and Pete Hegseth, the new Trump toady at the DoD, promises to investigate Milley despite his having been pardoned by Biden. Milley, you’ll recall, refused to support Trump’s hope to use the military against Black protesters in 2020, and has explicitly called Trump a fascist and national security threat more than once.
Hegseth, who squeaked by in the confirmation vote, added to the military’s unease with comments about its current leaders. He called Admiral Lisa Franchetti, the chief of Naval Operations and the first woman to serve on the Joint Chiefs, “another inexperienced first.” Hegseth has fired her. Actually, she has an exceptional combat record, as does the JCS chairman, Gen. Charles Q. Brown Jr., whom Trump has fired for being too “woke.” (A lower-ranking Air Force lieutenant general, an avowed MAGA-ite, will replace Brown.) Judge advocates general for three services were also fired. (“If you’re going to break the law, the first thing you do is you get rid of the lawyers,” said Sen. Jack Reed of Rhode Island).
Trump and Hegseth are also going after an array of service personnel who are (according to Trump’s executive order) “afflicted with radical gender ideology to appease activists” and have “many mental and physical health conditions [that] are incompatible with active duty.” That means soldiers with diagnoses “that require substantial medication or medical treatment to bipolar and related disorders, eating disorders, suicidality, and prior psychiatric hospitalization.” But the harshest targeting is directed at transgender soldiers, who are said to be living in conflict “with a soldier’s commitment to an honorable, truthful, and disciplined lifestyle, even in one’s personal life.” For the moment, transgender soldiers are still on duty, but their dismissal from service seems certain.
The Department of Defense isn’t being spared some budget cutting. Pentagon officials have been ordered to plan for 8-percent annual cuts over the next five years, though seventeen categories of spending are exempted—including Trump’s border patrols and nuclear weapon modernization. Two items not exempted: support for the European Command and Central (Middle East and Africa) Command. (I guess those commands will now be subject to Russian and Israeli strategists.) Around 5,000 Pentagon employees are scheduled to be let go.
Finally, in its zeal to show that it has accessed data at all federal agencies except those having to do with intelligence, the DOGE published information on the National Reconnaissance Office, which controls US intelligence satellites and has a $1.8 billion contract with Musk’s SpaceX. NRO information is classified; it explicitly warns “NOFORN,” meaning no distribution to foreign nationals.

Buying Greenland: Really?

Make no mistake, Donald Trump really means to pressure Denmark into selling Greenland to the US. The Financial Times reports that Trump held a “fiery call” with Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen in January. Citing senior European officials, the FT said Trump was “aggressive and confrontational” in blustering about his plans to take control of the Danish territory. Trump has said publicly that he covets the mineral-rich territory for national security reasons. Frederiksen reiterated Denmark’s position that Greenland is not for sale. Meantime, Mute Egede, leader of Greenland, is intent on moving forward with independence: “It is now time to take the next step for our country,” Egede said in a New Year’s address. “Like other countries in the world, we must work to remove the obstacles to cooperation — which we can describe as the shackles of the colonial era — and move on.” He has said an independent Greenland would have close relations with the US as well as with Europe. That’s not enough for Trump. He wants to be the next McKinley, hailed in US history textbooks as the president who expanded America’s boundary to the Arctic Circle.
Elections on March 13 sent a clear message to Trump that Greenland is not for sale, Demokraatit party leader Jens-Friederik Nielsen said as his party won first place with 30% of the vote. “We don’t want to be Americans. No, we don’t want to be Danes. We want to be Greenlanders. And we want our own independence in the future. And we want to build our own country by ourselves, not with his hope,” he said. Three of the other four parties also want independence; they differ only on the timing of declaring independence.

Tyranny

We are in a constitutional crisis. Donald Trump has apparently convinced himself and everyone around him that he has a popular mandate to do what other dictators do, namely, rule by executive decree and expect no dissent. Doubt that? “He who saves his Country does not violate any Law,” Mr. Trump wrote, first on his social media platform Truth Social, and then on the website X. The sentence then appeared on the White House website. And the Supreme Court has already given him immunity for all his official acts. So we’re dealing with a wannabe dictator, pure and simple. A Chinese saying popular in Mao’s time was that a fortress can most easily be captured from within. That is what is taking place now in Washington.
The Washington Post points out that not a single one of Trump’s nominees was willing to say that s/he would refuse an illegal order from the President. Indeed, Trump is acting as though Congress and the judicial system are of little significance—that he can override or bypass any rules or norms he finds inconvenient. That includes the most fundamental power given to Congress by the Constitution: the ability to appropriate tax money and determine how it is spent.
A torrent of legal challenges to Trump’s authoritarian rule is in process. (Stay abreast at https://www.justsecurity.org/107087/tracker-legal-challenges-trump-administration-actions/). The more irrational and broadly harmful his orders, the greater the resistance. Here at home, those who voted for him will begin to understand that they have been duped as it becomes clear that their most important concerns have been trampled upon—the police, veterans, the military, the crypto industry, the civil servants, the people on Medicaid, the teachers and school administrators, the middle class. Abroad, governments in the Americas, Europe, and Asia will seek new partners as they realize how untrustworthy and unpredictable this administration is. Trump will find that his reach exceeds his grasp. But it will take resistance, not merely protest.
We knew this was coming: the Trump team would seek to defy judicial rulings against them. The particular ruling that halted Musk’s invasion of the treasury department’s data base prompted dangerous pushback from Vance, Musk, and Stephen Miller, the deputy White House chief of staff.
Vance: “Judges aren’t allowed to control the executive’s legitimate power.”
Musk: “A corrupt judge protecting corruption. He needs to be impeached NOW.”
Miller: “An assault on the very idea of democracy itself.”
Trump: “We’re very disappointed with the judges that would make such a ruling, but we have a long way to go. No judge should frankly be allowed to make that kind of a decision.”
Sen. Chris Murphy of Connecticut responded: “This is a red alert moment when this entire country has to understand that our democracy is at risk.” (AP, Feb. 9) Trump has every right to challenge the judge’s decision in court. But if he refuses to comply with it, we are indeed—as Timothy Snyder writes—in a coup.
Other tests of the administration’s willingness to comply with court decisions are before us. A federal judge ordered the administration not to send Venezuelan and Salvadoran prisoners to El Salvador without a hearing–and to turn the planes carrying them around if need be. But they were sent, and processed in a notorious prison. (“We believe this is a baseless legal ruling no matter when the flights took off,” an unnamed White House official said.) A judge’s order for the release of USAID funds remains to be followed. And will a judge’s order prevent the deportation of the Columbia University student, Mahmoud Khalil, who was detained on spurious national security grounds?