Trump’s Article I Management
There have been a few stories in the wake of last week’s effective town halls about Trump’s efforts to reach out to increasingly uncomfortable Republicans.
First, HuffPo got a number of Republicans to express concern about Trump’s latest trade war with its closest trading partners. While “Most Republicans in Congress, however, either said Trump’s tariffs were a good idea or offered only muted criticism,” Chuck Grassley and House Ag Committee Chair Glenn Thompson expressed confidence farmers would be protected somehow.
Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) suggested he would be seeking an exemption for his state, which is a leading producer of corn, soybeans and pork in the United States. Farmers in Iowa and other states rely heavily on Canadian potash, a key fertilizer ingredient, for their crops.
“Potash coming from Canada would be 25% higher,” Grassley said. “I assume I’m going to hear from farmers to contact the secretary of commerce to try to get a waiver.”
[snip]
Rep. Glenn Thompson (R-Pa.), chair of the House Agriculture Committee, said he believed Canada and Mexico had already stepped up border security. Canada had announced a $1 billion border security plan that included new helicopters, while Mexico said it would deploy 10,000 national guardsmen.
“I’m not sure what additional, like — the 25% tariffs of Canada — they’ve really stepped up. So has Mexico, actually, on the border. But I’m not a part of those negotiations, so I don’t know exactly what the president is trying to extract additionally,” Thompson told HuffPost.
The farm sector exports a lot of produce and is uniquely vulnerable in a trade war. When Trump imposed tariffs on Chinese imports during his first term, and the Chinese government retaliated with tariffs on U.S. exports in kind, the Trump administration bailed out agriculture producers with nearly $30 billion worth of direct payments.
Thompson said if there’s another protracted trade war, the government would once again help out farmers.
“I’m hoping that we won’t find ourselves in a situation of sustained retaliatory tariffs on our farmers. If we are, we’ll be prepared to deal with that.” he said.
Aside from one lawsuit seeking to force the government to restore access to climate information, I know of no lawsuits representing the many farmers whom Trump’s freeze on Inflation Reduction Act spending has harmed, though many risk bankruptcy because approved spending has not been reimbursed. These comments suggest that farmers imagine they’ll be made whole via other means, political favors.
There’ve already been signs that Trump has placated Republicans whose own constituents were targeted by his rash cuts. For example, it didn’t take long for elimination of Indian Heath Services that would have disproportionately hit Alaska, Oklahoma, and South Dakota to be reversed. By offering cuts and waivers, Trump uses preferential treatment for Republicans to sustain support for actions that harm the entire country.
Yesterday, Trump took a similar approach with DOGE, sending Elon Musk to meet with Republican Senators and House members (but not Democrats) to placate them on DOGE cuts. The reports from the Senate meeting reveal how meek key, purportedly powerful, Senators were in the meeting with Musk, begging that he adopt a more considered approach.
“Every day’s another surprise,” Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) said of the daily bombshells from Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE).
“It would be better to allow Cabinet secretaries to carefully review their departments and then make surgical, strategic decisions on what programs and people should be cut and then come back to Congress for approval,” she said.
Collins argued a methodical approach to reforming government would be better than what she called Musk’s “sledgehammer approach.”
A second GOP senator said colleagues raised concerns about Musk’s leadership of DOGE and shared stories about how funding freezes and firings have impacted constituents.
“They were presenting some of the compelling stories and some of them shared about terminations at VA hospitals and how it impacted constituents and how there was no answer” from Musk’s team, the senator said.
“Another question was, ‘Who do we bring it to when we have these issues?’” the source added.
One of the Republican senators digging for answers is Senate Veterans’ Affairs Committee Chair Jerry Moran (R-Kan.), who told The Hill he’s trying to find out whether the firing of 2,400 probationary VA employees would impact services for veterans.
“We’re asking that question,” he said. “We want to know [what] positions [are affected]. We’ve been reassured that it doesn’t affect direct care, but we’re looking for more information.
[snip]
“If I get confirmed as the head of an agency, a Cabinet-level position, [and] I’ve got somebody else that is pretending — or that is acting as my boss, that’s a real problem,” [Thom Tillis] added. “At the end of the day, you’ve got to have all those employees thinking that you’re looking out for the agencies and their best interests.”
Tillis said that if Trump’s Cabinet officials “want to be viewed as the heads of these agencies,” they need to balance Musk’s recommendations to cut staff with their missions to provide services and advance U.S. interests.
“They need to say, ‘This is all good stuff, but now it has to go into the context of everything else I’m doing to run this agency, not just efficiencies.’ Because you’ve still got to keep the lights on, you’ve still got to provide acceptable service levels for the people that you’re tasked with serving,” he said.
Other reports describe suggestions, started by Rand Paul, to codify all DOGE’s cuts in a recission package.
“I love what Elon is doing. I love the cutting of the waste. I love finding all the crazy crap that we’re spending overseas. But to make it real, to make it go beyond the moment of the day, it needs to come back,” the Kentucky Republican said.
Musk huddled behind closed doors with House Republicans on Wednesday evening and spelled out DOGE’s efforts to uncover wasteful spending, an initiative that many Republicans applauded.
But others emerged with a more skeptical view.
“When you have a very small group with a broad set of powers, able to inflict dramatic change on institutions without a lot of knowledge, that means the process of cleaning up afterwards is going to be extensive,” said Representative Frank Lucas of Oklahoma.
Senate Republicans said Musk, a top adviser to Trump, was “elated” by Paul’s suggestion that the White House request congressional approval to rescind spending through a legislative process that would circumvent the Senate’s 60-vote filibuster.
“He was, like, so happy,” said Senator Lindsey Graham, who chairs the Senate Budget Committee.
“What we’ve got to do as Republicans is capture their work product, put it in a bill and vote on it. So, the White House, I’m urging them to come up with a rescission package,” the South Carolina Republican added.
None of this is surprising: That Trump is placating Republicans with doubts about his destructive attack on the US with direct outreach. Indeed, we’ve seen hints that it has been going on this entire time.
For now, it’s simply confirmation that even the most powerful Republicans, like Appropriations Chair Susan Collins, are asking for no more than this, meekly suggesting that maybe Cabinet Members should be allowed to act like Cabinet Members. And also confirmation that more members of Congress are willing to share, under their own name.
Thus far, Trump is making a sustained attack on the United States and Republican Members of Congress are still easily bought off with tailored exemptions rather than policies that serve the common good. That may change, but thus far, Article I remains solidly and easily co-opted.
Update: I should have included this story, which focuses more in House members, including this wisdom from House Appropriations Chair Tom Cole:
“With all due respect to Mr. Musk, he doesn’t have a vote up here. … [Give] courtesy to the members. They’re the ones that have to go home and defend these decisions, not you. So why don’t you give them a heads-up,” Rep. Tom Cole (Oklahoma) said Tuesday before the meeting. “You are certainly complicating the lives of individual members, and you might be making some mistakes and hurting some innocent individuals in the process.”
[snip]
Cole, who as chair of the House Appropriations Committee is responsible for funding the government, said that while he believes DOGE has “uncovered some amazing things,” he has observed that some staffers “clearly don’t know what [they’re] talking about” based on some fiscal decisions he has seen them make.
Chuck Grassley has suffered from loonyism for quite some time. He believes the sparkle pony will save his farmers. Rather, he believes belief in the sparkle pony will excuse him from doing his job and criticizing the convicted felon sitting in the Oval Office.
Sure, but that’s based on past experience.
Are you saying 92-yr-old Chuck Grassley has survived this long as a Senator because moves like this work? Who could have known?
Chuck Grassley is a living fossil who hasn’t done anything meaningful in decades except provide Senatorial cover for bad Republican presidents like Trump and Dubya. Asking for exemptions from Trump’s ill-advised tariffs is one more example of this old fool thinking he and his ilk shouldn’t be held accountable for bad Republican governance. What a shameful man.
Early in this administration someone of some known in liberal circles (I apologize, cannot find the quote nor remember his name) said that he would be more afraid if there was a slow and methodical approach to this wrecking ball. An approach the ever concerned Ms. Collins favors. It seems to me Trump is breaking things too quickly and w Doge, too carelessly.
There is a diary up on DailyKos about this titled “96 Lawsuits against Trump and the DOJ has run out of lawyers”. Diarist provides link to Litigation tracker. https://www.justsecurity.org/107087/tracker-litigation-legal-challenges-trump-administration/
My tendency is to be always hopeful. That said, I have secured Austrian citizenship (child of a persecuted person) just in case.
About Mr. Musk I replied on bluesky to someone commenting about him:
One more thing
Real genius there. I hope we aren’t trapped in a burning Tesla.
In the comment sections I’ve seen there are plenty of MAGAs who are willing to pay higher prices if daddy says it’s good for the country. They could no longer afford groceries and Bidenflation but suddenly they’ve found patience and fortitude…and extra money to pay daddy’s temper tantrum taxes aka tariffs.
Daddy is taking off his belt. “This is gonna hurt me more than it hurts you.”
Curious as to how long lutnick can get away with bad inflation and gdp as “Biden numbers”. When inflation has been at or near baseline for months and is now heading up. While gdp estimates for 25 have been revised DOWN to negative 2.5%
From the AP:
It’s MAGA math!
Daddy is dismantling the Dept. of Education. Time for Trump University 2.0.
Religion 101: Intensive study of Trump bible made in CHYNAH! Why “Thou shalt not commit adultery” is a fake commandment.
Economics 101: Why $60 bible is actually a fantastic bargain.
Advanced Math 151: Why 74 million votes is greater than 81 million votes.
Philosophy 101: Why it’s not rape if you use your finger.
“I love the poorly educated.”
“…gdp estimates for 25 have been revised DOWN to negative 2.5%,:”
which indicates a net reversal of approx. 4.8% since 2024 fourth-quarter report. Worse than running your cotton shorts through the dryer.
So of course Lutnick wants to jigger the accounting and separate government expenditures from other GDP components — besides, it’s no doubt the only way to combat the what was probably baked into the pie by outgoing Biden apparatchiks…
Meanwhile, following Stephanie Kelton & Nathan Tankus re: the Fort Knox gambit — they believe Trusk are thinking to revalue gold, currently @$44.22 troy ounce, to current market value of $2,800/troy ounce which could boost Treasury General Account by $800+ billion by means of a repurchase agreement, a value approaching that of the famous trillion-dollar platinum tiddlywink. Rather like what FDR did to find an extra $3.8+ billion in 1933 when the country went off the gold standard.
(both findable via Crises report . com)
“… Trump imposed tariffs on Chinese imports during his first term, and the Chinese government retaliated with tariffs on U.S. exports in kind, the Trump administration bailed out agriculture producers with nearly $30 billion worth of direct payments.”
It’s been a few years, but I still struggle to contain my anger at how this bail out is couched as support of farmers. That bail out really supported the ‘globalist’ that trump and the republicans were railing against. These weren’t farmers suppling the domestic market with products for Americans. These farmers (ADM, Cargill, etc.) supplied commodities for China and the global market. We gave globalists a $30 billion gift and the tab was foisted on the American taxpayer. I have no issue with the global marketplace, it’s the obvious hypocrisy that I can’t stomach.
American corporations took production to China so they could increase profits by exploiting the workforce and to rid themselves of meddlesome regulations. They were willing to expose their IP so they could have access to the market. Under this administration, it’s the American people who are subject to the repercussion of those actions in the form of an additional tax – tariffs, or the tab for bail outs. Meanwhile, those same corporations are rewarded with tax breaks. It’s maddening.
It’s not only tax breaks those corporations are rewarded with, it’s also cheap labor of illegal employees.
DOJ punishes the illegal employees and not employers.
Yet if those same corporations stopped employing the illegal employees, there would be no reason for them to cross the border as they know they’d starve if they didn’t find jobs.
But it’s more of a benefit of administrations to blame the little guy/gal who’s trying to earn a crumb and scare their base.
As you said, it’s maddening.
To be a fly on the wall when Trump, Musk or one of their minions meets with Republican lawmakers to discuss the tariffs and the impact those tariffs have on the politicians constituents. Given trump’s transactional negotiation style; one can imagine these meetings are used to extract further commitments of support for Trump and his policies of wholesale government dismantling in exchange for relief for the Republican’s constituents harmed by these actions.
Elmo and his chainsaw exemplify
Trump’s use of gimmicks to create perceptions, which then become believed reality in the echo chamber we still term “news” for some reason. In essence it’s pro wrestling, WEGE (World Wide Government Entertainment). And no Republican senator cares about anything but keeping his or her cushy job.
“If I get confirmed as the head of an agency, a Cabinet-level position, [and] I’ve got somebody else that is pretending — or that is acting as my boss, that’s a real problem,”
When are we ever going to solve the Schrödinger’s DOGE dilemma of who is in charge? Congress has all but given up Article 1 but has the senate also given up advice and consent?
And surely this is what makes tariffs appealing to Trump. Like pardons, they are under his control, and he can use them to drive supplicants to his door and make them beg.
begging supplicants = potential sources of bribes
driving supplicants to beg = extortion
Both are key features of dictatorship. It’s so obvious to say so, but cannot be said enough, IMO. One of the reasons that the standard of living in democracies is higher than in dictatorships. The bribery and extortion mechanisms start at the top but are replicated throughout the system by whoever has even a little power. Sucking wealth from less well-connected citizens.
As with Impoundments, Agency Creation, Officer Confirmations, etc. – Congress could fix Trump’s tariff disaster if they wanted to …
Congressional and Presidential Authority to Impose Import Tariffs:
https://crsreports.congress.gov/product/pdf/R/R48435#:~:text=The%20Constitution%20grants%20Congress%20the,on%20goods%20in%20certain%20circumstances.
To sit in on informal briefings of Senate committees (particularly Finance) from the mid-90s through the 00s was to witness a gradual but inescapable erosion from what was once always a setting for deliberate flaunting of muscular institutional prerogatives (never cast merely in terms of constituent matters) to later years of ragtag gatherings only interested in putting across, individually, that each sought trappings that meant treatment as if each were a President. And not much of anything beyond that.
There are many reasons for this descent, requiring too many words for here.
But this situation – and the vulnerability it presents – is clearly understood by the handful of billionaires that are behind the executive branch unleashing such chaos against legislative prerogatives during these past few weeks.
There is not a flicker that would indicate the Senate is anything but finished as institution.
And as such, so will be the constitutional governance that has worked for so long.
The Trump-Musk blitzkrieg of impoundment, mass firings and presumptive snuffing of agencies is a malignant inversion of traditional patronage. This model requires no effort on the part of the administration to promise new money or programs to prospective recipients. The rewards were already given out by previous congresses and presidents. Trump-Musk simply withhold what was already allocated and counted on by recipients and then selectively release and restore in exchange for acts of submission and pledges of loyalty. No new legislation is needed. Leverage is created by utilizing the executive’s inherent advantage of being able to take direct action that can inflict immediate pain. The prospect of eventual reversal is of no importance because the initial actions will have long since had their desired effects on the real targets of this ploy.
This patronage scheme privileges the stick over the carrot; it is the organized crime model overlaid on the structure of democratic governance. Seizing control of all power and establishing the absolute primacy of Trump-Musk is job one in this administration. All other considerations of what is going on right now are secondary and subsidiary. The agencies, programs and aid that are left standing, along with the toadies who take credit for their survival, will map the org chart of the criminal organization that has emerged from the process.
I’m old enough to remember a few decades back when Bush Sr. had a public spat with Congress over line-item veto. He wanted to strike individual spending items from the budget proposal without killing the whole bill. Congress said “Hell no”.
How is what is going on today any different from what Bush wanted? Presidents Trump and Musk are deleting specific spending they don’t want while leaving the rest of the budget alone. Is de facto line-item veto allowed under the Constitution? I’d love to see that one work its way up the courts.
Republican constituents appear to think that cuts to programs are going to target a certain type of people – young, urban, non-white – when, whether done by Trump or by Congress they are going to take out as much of red America as they go into effect. Medicaid – the enrollment numbers are for kids, but the dollars spent are for the elderly and disabled (and insurers & providers are the ones who get paid). Food supports are as much about a market for U.S. farm products as they are about feeding the hungry, even here in the U.S. And the actual _business_ of agriculture supports jobs in rural areas (including well-paid ones, like electricians) in a way that paying farmers does not.
This is a small, but timely post.
Yesterday, I looked in depth at two emerging signals: Spurred by George Pearkes & Carl Quintanilla on Bluesky, I looked at ADP’s private employment data over time (and I think there is a belief out there that this month’s overall jobs report might be near 0, because there were only 77K private sector jobs added while there have been a yet-undeclared number of public sector jobs lost.)
Looking at it over time really showed how the job market was faltering in the first Trump administration, even before COVID hit, and how it then fell off a cliff, of course. But the data also showed what an amazing comeback we had from the first months after Biden took over. We have been consistently meeting the 100K jobs needed per month to match our population growth, for example.
I also listened to crazy talk posted online in December ’23 featuring Kingsley Cortes Wilson, outreach to conservative immigrant groups that laid out “America First” policies that the current administration appears to be hewing to. This is what they have been planning to do, and I don’t think there is any reason to believe that members of Congress didn’t know.
There are so many possible explanations for the attack on the US Government: ego-tripping, the “Manchurian Candidate” theory, bribery-extortion, etc. etc. But perhaps the most obvious – and least talked about (so far) is the key one. Privatization. It’s been the favorite of the neo-con movement from the beginning.
Today I read this in Heather Cox’s “Letters from an American” over on Substack.
https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/march-5-2025
Deep inside her post is this:
Privatizing Social Security has been on their screens for a long time.
There it is. The neo-con trifecta: lower taxes for the wealthy, less regulation, privitazation. Since the old parliamentary method of achieving their goal failed, this is the new approach. Directly to dictatorship.