It's a Coup, Not a Crisis

Stop calling what Trump and Musk are doing a "constitutional crisis." It's nothing of the sort. It's a coup, designed to overthrow, not remake government.

A “constitutional crisis.” That’s what politicians, pundits, and many people are calling what Trump and Musk are doing to our government. But’s not a crisis, constitutional or otherwise. It’s a coup—a takeover of our government to ensure one man, and only one man, rules over America with complete and unfeathered power.

For a crisis to be constitutional, there would have to be a conflict between different branches of government. Watergate was a constitutional crisis. President Nixon behaved in the belief, as he later said, that “when the president does it, that means it’s legal.” But the Supreme Court ruled 9-0 that he acted illegally. And when leaders on both sides of the aisle in Congress moved to impeach him, Nixon resigned the presidency rather than face the an all-but certain conviction that would have removed him from office.

What is happening in Washington today is nothing like the constitutional crisis that Watergate was. It’s an effort to do away with our constitution and overthrow our government. With the exception of the order to arrest and deport illegal immigrants convicted of crimes, none of the actions so far taken by President Trump and those acting on his behalf have been authorized by law. These actions are solely authorized by “executive orders” or edicts issued by the president with little legal or constitutional basis.

Many of these “orders” are clearly illegal, some even unconstitutional. The Constitution is clear that Congress has the power of the purse, and the Executive’s responsibility is to faithfully execute the laws. Congress has authorized funding for government departments, agencies, and programs and appropriated funds in laws that have been signed by the President. Neither Trump no anyone else working for him has the power to shut agencies, purge their staffs, or fail to fund programs that have been duly authorized by law. And, yet, that is precisely what Trump’s orders are instructed be done.

The 14th amendment to the Constitution, which was passed to right one of the most grievous wrongs enshrined in the original document —the institution of slavery—explicitly states: “All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside.” And, yet, on his first day in office, Trump signed an “executive order” flatly contradicting this constitutional edict by denying citizenship to certain people born in the United States whose parents were here unlawfully or temporarily.

Trump also signed an “order” creating the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), headed by Elon Musk, who contributed more than a quarter of a billion dollars to Trump’s election campaign and whose companies have been awarded billions of dollars in government contracts. Musk has brought a bunch of Gen-Z computer whizzes into Washington who have seized data centers, personnel files, payment systems, and other information sources on which modern government is run. “Elon figured out that the personnel, information-technology backbone of the government was essentially the twenty-first-century equivalent of the nineteen-fifties television tower in the Third World,” Susan Glasser quoted an unnamed Republican grandee. “You could take over the government essentially with a handful of people if you could access all that.”

And that’s exactly what Musk and his “Muskrats,” as his cadre of young digital engineers are now colloquially known, are doing. But DOGE wasn’t established by law; only by executive fiat. It is staffed by so-called “special government employees,” who are special only in the sense of they’re outsiders who don’t belong. They have no expertise, no experience, and no knowledge of government or the programs they are supposed to serve. They have no right to cut spending or close down agencies mandated by law. They are an alien force that is taking over the government, our government, without accountability or oversight. Unless or until they are stopped. The question is how?

Congress and the Judiciary are co-equal branches and they theoretically have the power to stop Trump and Musk. Yet, Congress has stood by without saying a word. Led by the narrowest of majorities, the Republican leadership in both Houses has instead sought to justify the president’s actions with constitutional gibberish and cowardice. “Elections have consequences,” many a Republican leader has declared in recent days, suggesting that because Trump won he can do what he wants. But we don’t elect presidents (or congressional representatives, for that matter) so they can overthrow the government. We elect them to run it, perhaps reform or revitalize it, but not do away with it. Others acknowledge that some of the actions run “afoul of the Constitution in the strictest sense,” as Senator Thom Tillis acknowledged, but "nobody should bellyache about that."

The judiciary remains our last constitutional protector. In the past few weeks, federal judges have stepped in to enjoin the administration from continuing its efforts to overthrow our system of government. From birthright citizenship and freezing all federal grants to shutting down USAID and halting access to the Treasury’s payment system, the judiciary has ordered a halt to the executive’s most extreme measures. But these injunctions are cumbersome and temporary; much of the effort to dismantle the federal government is continuing unabated and out-of-sight.

Trump and his Department of Justice (yes, it’s his now, not ours) have and will undoubtedly continue to appeal every decision setting back the effort to remake the US government into a system that responds only to the dictates of one man. Many cases will no doubt land on the docket of the Supreme Court. So what remains of our constitutional government will likely be decided by nine justices, a majority of whom last year ruled that president’s are essentially immune from prosecution so long as they confine their behavior to “official acts.” Having so elevated the president that he is now, in Justice’s Sonya Sotomayor’s biting dissent in The United States v Trump, essentially “a king above the law,” it’s hard to put much faith in this Supreme Court marshaling the courage to stand up for the Constitution against this President.

But perhaps five or more justices will do just that. What then? The constitutional order might still stand, but only if Trump abides by the Court’s ruling. Before the election, JD Vance, told an interviewer that his advice to the president would be that “when the courts stop you, stand before the country like Andrew Jackson did and say the chief justice has made his ruling, now let him enforce it.” Since entering office, Vice President Vance has continued to make the case that court orders can be ignored. “Judges aren't allowed to control the executive's legitimate power,” he wrote on X. In fact, that’s exactly what judges do when the executive acts in ways contrary to law, especially the Constitution, which, as surely any Yale Law School graduate knows, is the Supreme Law of the Land.

Whenever our constitutional system has been tested in the past—even at a time of civil and world wars—in the end, presidents have abided by the law. And so it is now: The very future of our country—of our democracy and constitutional system—ultimately depends not on what Congress or the Courts do, but on whether the President, this President, will obey the laws of the land.