A Full-Blown Constitutional Crisis With No End In Sight

A lot of things happened. Here are some of the things. This is TPM’s Morning Memo. Sign up for the email version.

Judges Can Only Do So Much

President Trump’s extraordinary assault on the constitutional order is inflicting unimaginable damage on democracy at home, on U.S. national interests abroad, on individual rights, and on the health, safety and welfare of all Americans. It is a full frontal assault on the people and on the government they elected him to run.

What now?

With congressional Republicans in abject subservience to Trump, the only potential constraint on his lawlessness are the federal courts. Emphasis on “potential.” But even if a judiciary stacked with Trump appointees stands tall, it’s critical to understand that the courts alone cannot save us from the constitutional disorder of a sidelined legislative branch over which the executive runs roughshod or of an immunized president who is not only failing to take care that the laws be faithfully executed but is violating the laws on a near-daily basis.

As I’ve emphasized this week, one important measure of how bad things will get is whether Trump begins to ignore court orders. That wouldn’t spell a constitutional crisis only because this already is a constitutional crisis. But it would mean that we’ve well and truly crossed the Rubicon into something that is no longer a democracy, with Trump as an American strongman, even if he continues to prop up some of the trappings of the former republic, like Congress. We may already be there.

Whether the judicial branch serves as a bulwark against Trump’s worst excesses or is merely the next domino to fall will play out over the coming weeks. But even if the judiciary holds the line, it cannot undo all the colossal damage already wreaked by Trump and his billionaire wingman. It can’t fully stop ongoing damage from what has already been done or fully corral future yet-to-be-done damage from a renegade Trump.

While the focus is now shifting to the courts and the dozens of important lawsuits that have been filed in recent days to try to rein in all manner of blatant presidential lawlessness, judges can only do so much. While fighting Trump in the courts is critical and could shape much of the next four years and beyond, it an extremely limited response to the breakdown in the constitutional order that is underway. 

The Legal Counteroffensive

A sampling of just some of important lawsuits filed in recent days:

• FBI agents suing to stop the release of the names of employees involved in the Trump and Jan. 6 prosecutions;
• federal employee unions suing over Trump’s bogus deferred retirement offer;
• a doctors group suing over the removal of public health data from government websites;
• two anonymous federal workers suing to stop Elon Musk’s team from continuing to use an unauthorized server at OPM to send blast emails to everyone in government;
• a coalition of labor unions suing to block the Musk team from continuing to access sensitive payment systems at Treasury.

This is only a partial list and excludes a whole different category of lawsuits by targets of Trump seeking to vindicate their individual rights, like trans prisoners.

Keeping A Close Eye On The FBI Purge

Among the developments:

• The FBI turned over to the Trump Justice Department the names of some 5,000 employees who worked on the Jan. 6 cases, the Trump cases, and, less noticed, an investigation into the Oct. 7 Hamas attack.
• Marcy Wheeler has a insightful analysis on the two FBI lawsuits, one a class action, that were filed in DC yesterday over the purge and why filing in DC matters.
• I still can’t get over the fact that the acting FBI director is only in that position because the White House made an error on its website and refused to fix it. Despite that ignominious route to the position, Brian Driscoll has not been a pushover.
• Benjamin Wittes: “A lot of people at the bureau—leadership and street agents, analysts and staff alike—are flirting with heroism right now.”

Treasury Downplays Musk Intrusion

As grim as I was entering Trump II, I didn’t have protests outside the Treasury Department on my February 2025 bingo card. But Elon Musk having any kind of access to government systems that contain sensitive information about all Americans has a way of agitating people.

Treasury continues to downplay the access Musk has. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent made private assurances Monday to GOP lawmakers, and the department sent a letter yesterday to Sen. Ron Wyden (D-OR) making similar assurances that the Musk team had “read-only” access.

That flies in the face of reporting otherwise, including from TPM’s Josh Marshall.

As the WSJ observed, “The letter didn’t specifically say whether the employees were being given access to the underlying software that runs the payment systems or whether DOGE-affiliated workers could potentially edit computer code.”

The Tragedy Of Trump’s Lawlessness

Trump’s lawlessness and the very real human costs it is imposing converge most dramatically at USAID. The president is proceeding to wipe a congressionally created independent agency off the map without approval from Congress, and the consequences for American interests abroad, foreign aid recipients, and USAID employees and contractors are dire:

• All USAID workers abroad are being ordered to return home. This is on top closing USAID headquarters in DC this week and putting most U.S.-based workers on leave.
• The USAID website contains only this notice.
• Anecdote of the day: “The cuts came so fast that one dismissed employee had to be rehired to process other employees’ time sheets.”

Headline Of The Day

NYT: Foreign Strongmen Cheer as Musk Dismantles U.S. Aid Agency

Who’s Next?

• CIA: The CIA offered dubious deferred retirements to its entire workforce.
• GSA: Trump and Musk have demanded the termination of the approximately 7,500 government office leases around the country.
• NOAA: Doge staffers enter Noaa headquarters and incite reports of cuts and threats
• NSF: The National Science Foundation is planning to layoff from one-quarter to one-half of its staff.

Trump II Clown Show

• The Senate confirmed Pam Bondi as attorney general, with only Sen. John Fetterman (D-PA) crossing the aisle.
• The nomination of Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., was saved by Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-LA), a longtime vaccine advocate, passing the Senate Finance Committee with a 14-13 vote.
• Tulsi Gabbard’s nomination for director of national intelligence was approved 9-8 by the Senate Intelligence Committee, with an assist from former Sen. Krysten Sinema (I-AZ).

Kennedy and Gabbard are now likely to be confirmed by the full Senate.

Quote Of The Day

“If upon reflection, you feel like now would be a good time to take a vacation and resign from your position, please ‘reply all’ to this email and put ‘I’d Like to Occupy Mars!’ in the subject line.”–a defiant administrative law judge at the EEOC, in an email to acting Chair Andrea Lucas that copied most of the commission’s staff

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