Fighting the Putsch

Democrats need to throw every possible wrench into the plans of Trump, Musk, and their GOP cultists in Congress

Elon Musk has no position in government. His “organization,” the fancily-named Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), has no official responsibility, and its “employees” have no governmental standing. It is a Potemkin Village of a federal agency. None of those involved have taken an oath to protect and defend the Constitution. But they are leading a fast-moving illegal putsch, the detonation of our government and democracy. Spearheaded by Musk and his henchmen and stretching across the federal government, they are discarding key career officials in agencies from Treasury to the FBI to AID, with unelected, unofficial private Musk minions—including some recent high school graduates without any experience or expertise, or security clearances—tapping into the most sensitive information affecting millions, potentially exposing our secrets and secret agents to our adversaries, and possessing data that can affect or destroy peoples’ lives in private investors’ hands.

Even as Donald Trump works to erase all evidence of the violent insurrection attempt on January 6, we are seeing another seizure of power, without the Proud Boys, Oath Keepers, or thugs who assaulted the Capitol and maimed and killed members of our law enforcement. January 6 was treated by both parties and by our media as a five-alarm fire. This sedition is being treated by those forces as if it were a backyard bonfire.

Other than a few muted criticisms, not a single Republican in Congress has spoken up or promised any counter-reaction to Musk and Trump taking away Congress’s prime power of the purse while blowing up programs and laws they have embraced and passed. And while some Democrats have objected furiously, including speeches and press conferences outside buildings seized by DOGE, they have not united to use the power and resources at hand to reflect the gravity of the moment.

What about the press? Yes, reporters from The Washington Post and New York Times have uncovered and written about some of the worst depredations and scandals. But this story has been subsumed by reports of airplane crashes and tariff wars, relegated to third place at best. As powerfully observed by Margaret Sullivan in her latest Substack entry, good reporters can write good stories. But if they are not backed up by editors and producers over and over, in front pages with large type above the fold, in lead stories and in-depth, emphasizing how dangerous and unprecedented this is and explaining the consequences, they will not penetrate broader public consciousness.

This phenomenon is one clearly grasped and exploited by Trump and his brain trust, as Steve Bannon told PBS’s Frontline in 2019:

The opposition party is the media. And the media can only, because they’re dumb and they’re lazy, they can only focus on one thing at a time.…

All we have to do is flood the zone. Every day we hit them with three things. They’ll bite on one, and we’ll get all of our stuff done. Bang, bang, bang. These guys will never—will never be able to recover. But we’ve got to start with muzzle velocity.

Ezra Klein of the New York Times wrote in response, “Muzzle velocity. Bannon’s insight here is real. Focus is the fundamental substance of democracy. It is particularly the substance of opposition. People largely learn of what the government is doing through the media—be it mainstream media or social media. If you overwhelm the media—if you give it too many places it needs to look, all at once, if you keep it moving from one thing to the next—no coherent opposition can emerge. It is hard to even think coherently.”

It is clear that our larger mainstream media have not learned this lesson, or will alter their frame on their own, no matter how much responsible and thoughtful critics like Sullivan, James Fallows, or Jay Rosen point out the failures and the danger (including to those Donald Trump regularly calls “the enemy of the people”). So we need to change the narrative to create a frame that compels all our media to cover this story with the breadth, depth, and urgency it demands. And we need to make these lawless moves inflict pain on those making them and enabling them.

That starts with Congress. Senate Democrats need to use every tool at their disposal to throw wrenches into the works of the plans of Trump, Musk, and their GOP cultists in Congress. Doing so will also underscore how serious the threat is to our system, thereby forcing media to cover it. Here are some of the ways to use the rules to delay and discomfit the GOP majority; no easy action or votes.

1. Insist that the Journal of the Senate be read at the onset of every day’s business, soaking up time otherwise spent on legislating.

2. Deny unanimous consent to every action. The Senate operates by unanimous consent, and getting around it is time-consuming and uncomfortable.

3. Refuse to allow committees to meet when the Senate is doing business on the floor.

4. This is the relevant portion of Senate Rule 26: A committee may not meet (or continue a meeting in progress) on any day (1) after the Senate has been in session for two hours, or (2) after 2:00 p.m. when the Senate is in session. The Senate routinely waives this rule via unanimous consent. Deny it.

5. In Rule 14, there is a requirement that every bill is to be read in full three times before passage. That is routinely waived to include only reading a summary. Require the full reading, especially with omnibus bills.

6. Use the filibuster on every bill and confirmation. Draw a page from the Mitch McConnell playbook; raise the bar to 60 on legislation and use all the delays that can come with filibusters on confirmations. It is a regular misconception that filibusters have been taken away from confirmations. In fact, the cloture barrier has been moved from 60 to a simple majority. But even if these confirmations can pass ultimately, they can be delayed significantly by exploiting the rules.

7. Use the hold to block many if not most confirmations. A hold is simply a senator indicating he or she will deny unanimous consent to move forward on a confirmation, but it has been respected for many decades as a norm blocking action. Holds are no longer anonymous, but that is not a barrier. This something applied more than once by Senate Republicans during the Biden presidency; it was not just Tommy Tuberville and military promotions. Rand Paul, Tom Cotton, Josh Hawley, among others, used blanket holds to protest Biden policies or just to gum up the works. Kudos to Hawaii’s Brian Schatz for showing how it is done, with today’s blanket hold on State Department nominees over the hostile takeover of AID. It should be done by others for Treasury, Justice, Defense, Education, and other departments.

To this point, Senate Democrats as a whole have not united behind this strategy; too many still see the body as an old boys’ network where they can all work together on common problems. This is not the time for business as usual. Chuck Schumer and his colleagues have to put on their grown-up pants and do what is necessary to fight back against tyranny.

There is also a role for the Democratic minority in the House. While they have no formal power, they can both exploit the razor-thin majority Republicans have, and find tools to highlight the damage Trump and Musk are doing to all Americans except the billionaires, and to our role in the world. If House Democrats cannot hold formal hearings in the House, they can hold informal hearings, including especially field hearings.

Those field hearings should target not their own districts but those of Republicans, especially the twenty or so most vulnerable in the coming midterms. Use their constituents as witnesses, who are harmed by the Trump/Musk actions. On AID, that includes hundreds of contractors, including our most respected NGOs, shuttered from helping vulnerable people around the world and giving a clear opening for China to move in in our stead.

Ultimately, it will also include those harmed by tariffs, pandemics made worse by the conspiracy theorists put into the Centers for Disease Control, businesses damaged by their workers being detained and deported, health disasters caused by the end to federal food inspections, or flights endangered by Trump urging air traffic controllers to retire. If those moves do not get national media attention, they will get local coverage, which will put pressure on those Republicans to resist some of the most radical moves pushed by Speaker Mike Johnson on behalf of Trump and Musk.

House Democrats can also exploit their own rules to put more pressure on the most vulnerable GOP members. One tool is the discharge petition, which requires a bill to be put on the floor for a vote if a majority of the House, meaning 218 members, sign it. It is an unwieldy tool to be sure, and still will require some Republican support. But imagine if Democrats filed a slew of discharge petitions for bills protecting Americans from Trumpian efforts to eliminate or eviscerate popular programs, with their 215 signatures, and do a full press effort to shine the spotlight on the Rs from districts that are closely divided or were won by Biden and Harris, demanding that they step up or face the consequences from their voters.

Of course, these are not huge cudgels to block the move to autocracy. They have to be accompanied by lawsuits, nationwide injunctions by federal judges appalled by illegal actions, and moves by blue and purple state attorneys general to intervene, including via criminal charges if appropriate, for illegal actions that have a deleterious impact on their residents and citizens. And Democrats also desperately need a new and parallel communications network that can counter the powerful right wing one led by Fox, OANN, talk radio, Meta and X, among others, that will try to obfuscate and legitimize the illegitimate, and blame everything on George Soros, Joe Biden and Kamala Harris.

This is an all hands on deck moment. It is no time for either business as usual, sanewashing of radical and illegal moves to take over our democracy, or timidity.

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Norman Ornstein is a political scientist, co-host of the podcast “Words Matter,” and author of books including It’s Even Worse Than It Looks: How the American Constitutional System Collided With the New Politics of Extremism