Come and Take It

Trump, Musk, and Republicans show their hand

For the past week I have found myself reading the news on my phone wondering how in the world [insert crazy-thing-that-seems-in-gross-violation-of-the-consitution here] is allowed to happen.

All these actions are intended to be overwhelming. This is their plan, to wear us down, burn us out, and lower our defenses. It’s a war of attrition. Flood with so many policies that even if ten are stopped, three will get by.

But get by WHOM? I kept coming back to the same question over and over again: Who is going to stand up these people?

I learned two answers to this question.

The Most Formidable Trump/Musk Opponents

At the moment, it’s federal employees.

The Office of Personnel Management sent out an email last week entitled “Fork in the Road,” in which every federal employee was offered their salary until September 30th in exchange for their resignation. It’s an offer to buy off federal employees, and the offer specified that if they took it, they could work remotely until they resigned. That was the exact same email subject that Musk sent to Twitter employees when he bought the company, the vast majority of whom were laid off.

It’d be easy to read it and think that Musk will X-ify the federal government.

My first piece of solace in all this was not only that every federal employee union encouraged their members to reject the offer, but that many federal employees view it with complete disgust.

For example: so many employees reported the email as a phishing attempt that the Office of Personnel Management had to send out a follow up email saying that it was not phishing. Which many employees also reported as phishing.

The r/fednews subreddit has become a safe place to discuss and deride the offer, as well as discuss and report disturbing Trump/Musk activity in their departments and alert the media.

Their rallying cry has been “Hold the Line! Don’t Resign!”

But in true gallows humor, their *other* rallying cry has been Come and Take It, with an Office Space twist.

I pored over r/fednews and have talked to a dozen federal employees. I heard over and over again: “I swore an oath of loyalty to the constitution.”

Their defiance crystalized for me that Trump/Musk have played their hand. For all their bluster of firing federal employees, a 7-month buy out offer is an admission that they have limited ability to do so. Trump is actively trying to reneg on federal union bargaining agreements that were enacted in the month before he took office, itself an admission that he can’t get around them. They have the power of law.

The focus on federal employees is telling too. Bureaucrats that follow the rules and put loyalty to the constitution above all else are truly formidable opponents. If you don’t believe in the constitution, if you don’t care about it, and you just want to do whatever you want to whatever part of federal government and answer to nobody—federal civil servants are in your way. Trying to buy them off is a gamble that shows just how much you can’t get around them.

Just look at this rundown of actions from the American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE), which is one of the largest labor unions among federal workers. They filed a lawsuit against the Department of Government Efficiency the day after Trump was sworn in, pointing out that it violates the Federal Advisory Committee Act. These motherFACAs!

It was the answer to my question; this is who is going to stand up. And what makes them uniquely effective is that they aren’t standing up for themselves, or their politics, or because they don’t like Trump. They stand for the constitution.

They won’t win every fight. But they are fighting.

[[SIDEBAR: A quick note on the deal. Whatever number of federal employees takes the buy out offer, Trump/Musk will call a win. Don’t believe it. People leave jobs all the time, people retire all the time, and the federal government is no exception. In an average year, about 6% of all federal employees will leave, around 120,000 people. A high year is over 7%, a low year is 5%. So, if you assume that everyone who was going to leave this year already takes the buy out, then 6% will take it. Anything less, and the buy out offer is encouraging federal workers to stay. ]]

The Most Formidable Trump/Musk Enablers

Are Republicans.

Trump and Musk are ginning up the outrage machine. They are barraging us with truly despicable actions. Wired is reporting the Musk lieutenants, who are taking over federal agencies, are possibly unpaid, definitely inexperienced, and likely not vetted and background checked. I give it a year before it’s revealed that one of them has previously undisclosed connections to Russia. And yet, there they are, rooting around in payment systems held in trust at the U.S. Treasury—a bank account holding your tax dollars as deposits—and they get to do this because Musk hand chose them.

If you’re angry, be angry, but stay focused. Musk and his crew aren’t breaking-and-entering, they didn’t get inside via a series of daring ploys in a Mission Impossible-type action sequence. And everything they are doing can be stopped in minutes.

The House and Senate have oversight authority over the federal government. Everything that is happening right now is going on with their blessing. This is the actual Mission Impossible (or Scooby Doo?) moment, when the mask comes off and the villain reveals himself. Take off Musk’s mask, and you’ll find dozens of Republican members of Congress who have enshrined an unelected private citizen to wield more power than any of them.

Specifically, the Republican members of the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs:

• Rand Paul, Kentucky, Chair

• Ron Johnson, Wisconsin

• James Lankford, Oklahoma

• Rick Scott, Florida

• Josh Hawley, Missouri

• Bernie Moreno, Ohio

• Joni Ernst, Iowa

• Ashley Moody, Florida

And the Republican members of the House Committee on Oversight and Reform:

• James Comer, Kentucky, Chair

• Jim Jordan, Ohio

• Mike Turner, Ohio

• Paul Gosar, Arizona

• Virginia Foxx, North Carolina

• Glenn Grothman, Wisconsin

• Michael Cloud, Texas

• Gary Palmer, Alabama

• Clay Higgins, Louisiana

• Pete Sessions, Texas

• Andy Biggs, Arizona

• Nancy Mace, South Carolina

• Pat Fallon, Texas

• Byron Donalds, Florida

• Scott Perry, Pennsylvania

• William Timmons, South Carolina

• Tim Burchett, Tennessee

• Marjorie Taylor Greene, Georgia

• Lauren Boebert, Colorado

• Anna Paulina Luna, Florida

• Nick Langworthy, New York

• Eric Burlison, Missouri

• Eli Crane, Arizona

• Brian Jack, Georgia

• John McGuire, Virginia

• Brandon Gill, Texas

These are the people that deserve your ire and there are a lot more paths to accountability over them than there are over Musk. Congress controls spending. Congress controls the design of the federal government. Congress sets procedures for civil service hiring. Congress has subpoena power. The overreach of executive (in the case of Trump) or private individual (in the case of Musk) power cannot happen if Congress claims its own power.

Musk, and to a certain extent Trump, are the sideshow. So let’s assess Republicans.

Elected members of the party fall into one of two camps: 1) they love Trump/Musk and support whatever they want to do, or 2) they don’t agree or approve, but are scared into silence.

Musk has more power than Trump in this case, because he uses his social media platform to target Republicans who disagree with him. For example, Indiana Senator Todd Young questioned Tulsi Gabbard, the nominee for Director of National Intelligence, about her past praise for Edward Snowden. Musk trashed him on twitter as part of the deep state. Young calls him. Voila! Musk announces that *actually* Young is great and they are aligned on DOGE.

It’s not an empty threat to target Republican senators on social media, because they are vulnerable to a far-right challenge in their primaries. The AP has a story detailing each of the senators that are most vocal against Trump/Musk and their nominees, and therefore most at risk. Disapproving Republicans have been effectively neutralized.

At least for the moment.

Unlike Musk, Republicans have constituents. Not the vitriolic mass that lives on X, but actual constituents from their district that want economic security and a better life for their families. Constituents who may be upset to learn that a 19-old college dropout who had an internship at a Musk company is rifling around their Social Security checks.

Cards on the table

With all the power they can grab, with impotent oversight in Congress, Trump/Musk have played their hand: power and retribution come first, attention and bluster come second, and the economic needs of American workers and families don’t even qualify as a distant third.

P.S. Extra Credit

Here are the Democratic members of the oversight committees. See your rep, give them a call.

Senate:

• Gary Peters, Michigan, Ranking Member

• Maggie Hassan, New Hampshire

• Richard Blumenthal, Connecticut

• John Fetterman, Pennsylvania

• Andy Kim, New Jersey

• Ruben Gallego, Arizona

• Elissa Slotkin, Michigan

House:

• Gerry Connolly, Virginia, Ranking Member

• Eleanor Holmes Norton, District of Columbia

• Stephen Lynch, Massachusetts

• Raja Krishnamoorthi, Illinois

• Ro Khanna, California

• Kweisi Mfume, Maryland

• Shontel Brown, Ohio

• Melanie Stansbury, New Mexico

• Robert Garcia, California

• Maxwell Frost, Florida

• Summer Lee, Pennsylvania

• Greg Casar, Texas

• Jasmine Crockett, Texas

• Emily Randall, Washington

• Suhas Subramanyam, Virginia

• Yassamin Ansari, Arizona

• Wesley Bell, Missouri

• Lateefah Simon, California

• Dave Min, California

• Ayanna Pressley, Massachusetts

• Rashida Tlaib, Michigan