A few days ago a friend told me that Chuck Schumer thinks he’s a minority leader but he’s actually an opposition leader. Or rather that’s the position into which history has placed him — and he doesn’t realize it or he doesn’t grasp the difference or he’s simply not able to be the latter thing. There are lots of ways to explain the disconnect or incapacity. But I thought this was a pretty good one.

Last night, in this vein, I suddenly realized there’s a backed-up line of incapacity, a traffic jam of it.

I watched the reaction to President Trump’s latest salvo, an executive order purporting to upend key elements of election administration in the United States. People have to prove citizenship to register to vote, it says. No states can accept votes by mail after Election Day — and much more. The country’s most prestigious news organizations rushed to report these as fait accomplis. The Times announced that, henceforth, Americans would have to provide proof of citizenship to vote. The Post was more or less the same.

News just broke that President Trump has withdrawn the nomination of Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-NY) to serve as ambassador to the UN. It’s a good reminder that though we should never take joy from the suffering of others, there are some occasions when it’s okay. Luckily for Stefanik, she has not yet resigned her House seat. But she has given up her position as House GOP conference chair. And you don’t get those back. Rep. Lisa McClain (R-MI) now has that job. And I assure you she is not going to do Elise a solid and get out of the way. So now it’s time for Stefanik to crank up the campaign machinery again and for her upstate constituents to realize they were her second choice.

This post is a second part of a post from March 11th of the same name placing Elon Musk in the tradition of the “over-mighty subjects,” a more common phenomenon a half millennium ago. The historical analogues to Musk were those magnates that were so powerful, both in wealth and the capacity to make war, that they threatened the sovereignty of the king. In America we have no king, whatever a lawless president might think, but we do have a sovereign: the American people. The analogy applies. Musk has so much power that he threatens the sovereignty of the American people, not only their right to their sovereignty but their right to be free, both collectively and individually.

Amid the chaos and cacophony of Donald Trump’s second term, we’re sucked into this new mini-debate over a potential Trump third term. NBC News got the ball rolling with a headline that read: “Trump won’t rule out seeking third term in the White House, tells NBC News ‘there are methods’ for doing so.” They were roundly criticized for that framing and other news organizations did better by putting the matter more squarely in their headline. For instance, there was The Washington Post, whose headline ran “Trump suggests ‘methods’ exist for bid for unconstitutional third term.”

That’s better, certainly. But there’s only one proper response to all these comments: “No, you’re not.”

Full stop. That’s the whole response.

So is Elon really out, as the White House is claiming to beltway news outlets? Don’t bet on it.

First of all, he’s almost certainly not leaving DOGE.

Second of all, it would hardly matter if he did. He’ll keep running DOGE even if he nominally steps aside. Remember that at least in terms of what his minions are telling federal judges he doesn’t even run it now. The entire entity is run by his deputies and powered by the fear of his money and his power. He couldn’t stop running it without dismantling it. And of course neither is going to happen.

If you’re running for Congress or considering running for Congress or know someone who is doing either, this message is for you. Presidents have no power over tariffs. Full stop. It’s not like war powers or pardons. Trump can only do this because Congress gave Presidents this power, as I explained in the a post yesterday. Congress can take it back at any moment. Given the minuscule Republican hold in the House, that means that every GOP representative is literally and personally responsible for these tariffs and their consequences. Every single one. High prices? Rep. X is responsible. He or she could end this but they’re not. A 401k that might flatline before you do? Thank Rep. X. They could end this but they’re supporting it. It’s crystal clear and has the benefit of being true.

The 2026 midterm is already underway. It really is.

That’s the whole message. It’s malpractice for anyone challenging a Republican member of Congress not to be on this today.

Everyone in the country at the moment, albeit from different vantage points, seems to have the same question: What the actual fuck is going on?

Is the plan to have permanent tariffs? Are these meant as the basis of some kind of negotiation? Are we going to have blanket tariffs as the basis of a system of corruption in which favored industries and companies gain exemptions in exchange for fealty and cash? (So, countries as universities and law firms?) Is the idea just to replace income taxes with tariff income and fundamentally shift taxes to the middle and working classes?

At a basic level, the entire MAGA movement, and Donald Trump from whom all of it stems, simply doesn’t grasp the nature of American power or its limitations. In their view, the United States is the natural and inherent dominating power in the world. We’re the most powerful and the strongest. And starting from that view they look out onto the world and think if we are in charge why don’t we act like we’re in charge?

This post isn’t quite a post in the way I normally do them, more jotting down some of my brainstorming over the weekend.

Universities are a core pillar of civil society. Law firms are not. Observers have been waiting to see what would come of an amicus-brief-organizing campaign in support of Perkins Coie, the Seattle-based firm which was the first to be targeted by the Trump administration. Perkins Coie is also, significantly, the law firm for much of the institutional Democratic Party. It finally came out, and the brief was signed by more than 500 firms across the country. But it was not signed by any of the nation’s Top 20 firms, measured by revenue. I don’t know enough about the internal finances of the nation’s top-grossing firms. But I suspect they’re mostly like Paul, Weiss, which is to say they’re largely M&A firms, at least in terms of where they make their money — M&A and the management of other corporate transactions I don’t know acronyms for. It’s basically impossible to be in that business if you’re at war with the state that regulates mergers and acquisitions.

Just after Paul, Weiss cut their deal with President Trump, I spoke to a number of people either at the firm or proximate to it. One thing they helped me understand is that for firms like that, with a big M&A practice centered on partners with books of business ranging well into the tens of millions of dollars, it’s not just the clients who disappear in a flash. The money-making partners can too. So these vast, hugely money-making entities are actually quite fragile in their own way. The equivalent of a bank run dynamic and poof, they’re gone. But law firms come and law firms go. It is what it is.

I didn’t know this until this morning. And I’m surprised it hasn’t gotten more press attention. We know that DOGE is in the process of gutting the IRS. According to internal IRS estimates reviewed by The Washington Post, this internal sabotage is already estimated to have cost the U.S. Treasury more than $500 billion in revenues that otherwise would have been raised by April 15th. But it doesn’t stop at the IRS. DOGE is also in the process of essentially closing down the Tax Division at the Department of Justice.

I did a post a few days ago about how there really is no plan to any of this. The people around Trump are people who fall into two categories. One group is people who do have plans, sorta. They’re often pretty dumb plans, but they’re plans. And they’ve congregated around Trump because he is someone who looks like a useful instrument of their plans or someone who wants sorta kinda what they want or wants to get there in the same way. Maybe kinda. Trump’s Treasury Secretary (Bessent) and Chair of the Council of Economic Advisors (Miran) seem to fall into this category. The second group is made up of sycophants, cultists, shysters and hustlers who are just along for the ride and generally working to retcon different explanations or theories of why Trump and the administration are doing what they’re doing. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick epitomizes this category.