The Briefing, Vol. XIII, Issue 6
Jan. 10, 2025
This week:
- Trump’s approval hits all time high as he hammers the deep state
- Democrats threaten to shut down the government over Musk, DOGE
- Political battle in Florida presages the 2026 governor primary
Outlook
Perhaps you have noticed something peculiar about the nascent Trump administration: We are barely talking about all the deportations of mostly criminal illegal immigratnts that are suddenly occurring. We are barely talking about transgender victims of passports that list biological sex as originally intended.
This is because the Left suddenly has much bigger problems than these and lacks the bandwidth to deal with them.
For this, we can thank DOGE.
Trump vs. the state: Shortly after Trump’s first round of executive orders, billionaire and newly-hired Treasury employee Elon Musk noticed that a particular agency was going out of its way to circumvent and defy Trump’s orders. This is what reportedly put the U.S. Agency for International Development or USAID his radar.
And so Musk turned his talented team of young savants toward its entrenched bureaucracy. Musk rapidly cut off funding to the left’s network of contractors and non-profits that have been funded for decades through USAID and put most of its staff on paid leave. This has sent the Left into a crisis unlike anything any living American has seen.
In short, Musk has sent an existential wave of terror through the Democratic Party and its allies, since their movement’s lifeblood runs through these organizations and depends on these government dollars.
The sudden halt to funding for activist organizations worldwide represents the beginning of the end for an era in which the U.S. was supporting left-wing cultural projects and faux-”independent” journalists and activists worldwide to promote interests that this American deep-state class supports — which, it should be noted, are not necessarily genuine U.S. national interests. USAID funding to foreign non-profits was used to attack Republicans and conservatives stateside. It probably also helped lead to Trump’s first impeachment.
An amused Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele pointed out Sunday that, immediately after the cutoff of USAID funding, protests against proposed mining in his Central American country suddenly fizzled. This, he suggested, is what we can now call, to paraphrase the old Reaga-era anti-drug commercials, “a world not on USAID.” That is, a world not only with far fewer taxpayer-funded gender clinics and puppet shows, but also far fewer fewer leftist rent-a-mobs ready to deploy for the cause du jour.
Will it all stick? Musk and his DOGE team have been pretty viciously attacked by those losing their meal-ticket and their allies. But it has not significantly disrupted their operations. And their focus on government has moved on to the Education Department and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.
The Pentagon, with a budget approaching $900 billion, could become Musk’s magnum opus for sorting out fraud and waste. This goes without even mentioning Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, which are all known to be infested with fraud that deserves much closer investigation.
When liberal commentators claim there is “chaos” in the Trump administration, it is only because they themselves or allies are suffering upheaval in their own lives — it is not because the Trump administration is somehow chaotic. Indeed, the administration is extraordinarily and uncharacteristically disciplined by Trump standards.
But what is the endgame here? Musk has been blithely tweeting about DOGE’s work resulting in a balanced budget — something literally no one believes possible. Still, can he bring about the massive reduction in the size and scope of government for which conservatives have long prayed?
President Ronald Reagan noted long ago how difficult it is to abolish government agencies and programs. So how is this possible? Was it always this easy? In the words of Sean Connery, was it just a matter of getting it done at the risk of crossing Al Capone?
Maybe. For example, what happens if a single-minded Republican Congress returns to regular order and passes its required authorization and appropriations bills, simply choosing not to reauthorize or fund certain functions and programs?
Sure, Democrats could use their filibuster power and shut down the entire government or large swaths of it — something Sens. Andy Kim (D-N.J.) and Cory Booker (D-N.J.) both threatened to do so in interviews over the weekend. If they feel really inspired, they could even threaten to let the U.S. to default on its national debt by refusing to raise the debt ceiling.
But they may not be ready for this. It would have sweeping and dramatic consequences for much larger numbers of people above and beyond the typical government shutdown. It is unclear how many Democrats would consent to such extreme and politically risky action. After all, isn’t it usually Republicans who shut the government down, and Democrats call them terrorists for even contemplating it? Isn’t it an own-goal when Democrats shut government down?
Another strategy for reducing the scope of government can be seen in the simple folding of USAID (which does have worthy items, including George W. Bush’s PEPFAR anti-AIDS program in Africa) under the authority of Secretary of State Marco Rubio. Even as USAID is being downsized, this instantly cuts out senior agency officials who had gone rogue, engaging in a mutiny against the president’s early executive orders.
Constitutional crisis? Democrats, still gasping for breath in the early days of Trump’s onslaught — his “no-huddle offense,” as Brett Baier put it in his Super Bowl interview — are slowly trying to regain a foothold in the political landscape. They have launched a portal for whistleblowers inside the administration, evidently unhappy with the relative lack of leaks.
They have also brought some litigation against Trump’s administration, which will probably achieve mixed success.
Politically, their latest attempt to gain traction involves attacking Musk, which polls show is at least partly working. However, it is not working against Trump himself, whose ratings are at a record high in new polls. CBS finds that 53 percent approve of Trump and 70 percent believe he is keeping his promises.
Part of their rhetorical strategy is to assert that there is some kind of constitutional crisis in what Musk is doing to cut off such fraudulent or frivolous expenditures. They refer to Musk and his team as a “fourth branch of government.”
In fact, however, there is no “crisis” or “coup.” These are executive branch employees, not “Fourth Branch.” Musk, “Big Balls” and his other aides are actually all employees of the Treasury Department (is another Elliot Ness reference needed?) under the U.S. Digital Service (renamed “U.S. DOGE Services”), an office originally created by President Barack Obama to fix the Obamacare website.
The only thing going wrong here is that a president is running the executive branch and doing it in a way these Democrats and bureaucrats do not particularly like.
There is no crisis in Musk, with Trump’s authority, canceling contracts or blocking grants from going out unless they are specifically prescribed by statute, which none of these contracts or grants are.
The Constitution is very clear about who controls the executive branch. Article II begins with this sentence, after which there is nothing more said about the matter: “The executive Power shall be vested in a President of the United States of America.” If all executive authority resides in the president, then there is no such thing as an “independent” bureaucracy that derives its authority from anyone except the president himself in his role of enforcing laws passed by Congress. Such a thing — a “resistance” movement inside the bureaucracy — would indeed be an illegal fourth branch of government. And If such a resistance movement were ever to succeed, it would be an actual coup d’etat.
The president’s word is not law, but it is executive branch policy. In areas where Congress has given the president broad authority (for example, immigration and tariffs), he is free to enforce the laws on the books in ways that a lot of people do not like.
Presidents can’t just do anything. They cannot break the laws, and courts can be counted on to intervene if they do. There may also be certain complications about putting certain classes of government employees on leave due to agreements with their unions, and those will have to be adjudicated. This is one area where the litigation is already underway with regard to a minority of the USAID workers placed on leave.
But in general, the president makes all decisions about how the executive branch is run. He has authority as long as he does not run afoul of the duly passed and signed laws regarding government operations, commit what Congress perceives as an impeachable crime, or become incapacitated so as to trigger the Twenty-Fifth Amendment.
State races 2025
Wisconsin: There is at least one poll out so far, conducted by Rasmussen, for the crucial state Supreme Court election that will determine the court’s ideological lean for the next few years, potentially flipping it from liberal to conservative. The conservative candidate, Brad Schimel, leads the Democrat, Susan Crawford, 40 to 35 percent. The outcome will either rescue or imperil the Badger State’s landmark Act 10 legislation of 2011. Election Day is April 1.
Governor 2026
Florida: A brutal ideological battle is being fought within the Republican Party of Florida, between Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) and the Republican state legislature, over state laws to assist in the Trump administration’s mass deportation efforts.
In short, DeSantis wants a bill with teeth that gives him a lot of authority to assist in Trump’s plans for immigration enforcement. The legislature is offering a watered-down bill that is preferable to the state’s major agricultural interests — the sugar and citrus industries.
However this is resolved, the drama has raised questions about just how powerful DeSantis is within his own state GOP. It has also raised the curtain on the 2026 gubernatorial primary.
Two more conservative candidates — First Lady Casey DeSantis (R) and Rep. Byron Donalds (R) — are now mulling bids for governor. Agriculture Commissioner Wilton Simpson (R), a statewide elected official who can be identified with the legislators’ position, is likely to run. There is a real danger that the conservative candidates might split the vote, although one must also consult the modern track record of agricultural commissioners running for governor in Florida.
Mrs. DeSantis, a former broadcaster, may turn out to be a great candidate, but she still faces a major obstacle: Voters tend to hate dynastic or (to put it negatively) nepotistic political successions.
Senate 2026
Michigan: If former Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg (D) really wants it, the Democratic nomination for Senate is probably his. A new poll by a Democratic organization shows him towering above the field — including Attorney General Dana Nessel — with 40 percent support. Nessel, unfettered, is reportedly considering a bid anyway, National Journal’s hotline reported over the weekend.New Hampshire: Seventy-eight year-old Sen. Jean Shaheen’s (D-N.H.) relative lack of fundraising has raised questions about whether she won’t announce her retirement this year. That would leave yet another empty Senate seat for Democrats to defend in a year where the map really does not favor them.
