Double dictators
Indignity Vol. 5, No. 20
CURRENT EVENTS DEP'T.
America's Authoritarian Era Is in Effect
THE UNITED STATES of America is currently under a dictatorship. There's an overwhelming amount of news lurching back and forth right now, and most of the media would rather not draw blunt conclusions from it, but the underlying situation is clear: Donald Trump has claimed powers that systematically violate the law and the constitution, and he has delegated much of the work of carrying out his unlawful orders to the unelected Elon Musk and a group of likewise unelected subordinates.
Trump and Musk have unilaterally shut off an array of federal spending, including funds that the government had already legally contracted to pay out. Government officials and workers who've resisted the unlawful actions are being shut out of their offices and removed from their jobs. Operating under the color of Trump's presidential authority, Musk has seized control of the government's all-purpose payment system and turned it over to his own team of junior, unvetted workers. Crucial other parts of federal operations are likewise being commandeered by Musk's representatives, many of whom are workers or interns from the companies he personally, privately owns.
Citing orders from Trump that called for access to unclassified information, Musk demanded classified information as well; when officials refused that unlawful order, he had them removed and placed on administrative leave, then helped himself to the classified material. Musk also told the civil service to resign en masse, announcing an illegal and unfunded offer that would supposedly pay federal workers for leaving their jobs, and he threatened those who refuse with workplace retaliation.
Trump, meanwhile, declared that he was removing the inspectors general from every cabinet department, defying the law that requires 30 days' notice to Congress for any such dismissals. The inspector general for the USDA responded that the removals "do not comply with the requirements set out in law and therefore are not effective at this time," but security officers reportedly escorted her out of her office.
The press, accustomed to writing about the operations of a constitutional republic, keeps describing moves like these as "firings." But if the president does not have the legal power to fire particular officials, then they are not being fired. They are being forced out. The person giving the orders to force them out is acting in some role other than the role of president.
When Elon Musk, who holds no office, declares that he is shutting down the United States Agency for International Development, his word does not change the law establishing USAID. When Trump says he's allowed to unilaterally dissolve USAID "if there's fraud," that doesn't change the law, either. Nevertheless, Trump and Musk have blocked USAID from doing its business.
That is how the federal government works in 2025. The Republican majority in Congress has ceded its authority to the White House. The courts issue orders to restore spending, and the spending keeps failing to go through. Everything happens, or doesn't happen, on the whims of two bullying, conspiracy-addled, self-dealing billionaires.
Since his first term, Trump has been complaining about being thwarted by the "Deep State" and vowing to crush it, whatever exactly it may be. Now that he's back in office, it's apparent that when Trump and his people talk about the Deep State, they simply mean the state itself: the laws, operations, and structures of the United States of America that transcend the desires of any individual president. The country employs people, pays its bills, regulates commerce and public welfare, and enforces civil and criminal laws—not because the president has chosen to do each of these things, but because they're the cumulative obligations built up through two and a half centuries of democratic self-governance, or inherited from common law before that. They are what a person is pledging faith to when they vow to "faithfully execute the Office of President of the United States."
And those are what Trump rejects, in principle and in action. The country is not a collective enterprise. It is his plaything. He does not have to defer to any rules or even to any facts. If he orders the Army Corps of Engineers to dump water from reservoirs in Central California, because he believes it will flow down the map from north to south to put out fires in Los Angeles, the water will be dumped. If he orders an array of agencies to write trans people out of employment or official documentation, against Title VII and his own Supreme Court majority, the agencies comply. When the law inconveniences him, the law has to go.
Trump ran for his second term saying he would be a dictator "for Day One," and his staff made sure to tell the press he was joking. The joke was the part about only doing it for one day. Trump took office secure in the knowledge that he'd already broken the impeachment process twice, and that the Supreme Court had wrapped him in blanket immunity. The promise that mattered was his vow to free the people convicted for the January 6 attack on the Capitol—a commitment that put his presidency outside the law, by definition, from its very first day.
He delivered on that pledge not just by using his constitutional pardon power, which a president may use as recklessly and indiscriminately as they please, but by reaching out to forbid the Department of Justice to carry out any further investigations and prosecutions in January 6 cases. He didn't settle for pardoning criminals; he nullified the entire category of their crimes. Then he set out to retroactively punish every prosecutor and FBI agent who had handled those cases. So what if they were following the law and their duty? The job now is to follow Trump.
WEATHER REVIEWS
New York City, February 2, 2025
★★★ The thin film of cloud on the blue morning sky gradually thickened into full gray-white cover; whether the daylight cast a shadow or not depended on when someone went out to check. By afternoon, it was just fully gray, with no question of any shadows at all. Out on the stoop it smelled like snow, the thought arriving fully articulated—Smells like snow—even as the stoop and sidewalks also smelled like smoke and the usual grimy city odors. Cold crept into the back of the neck where the hair had been shorn. The big spreading plane tree at the top of the slope to the Pool had lost any tones of butter or ivory in the light and stretched out as more dull gray against the gray sky. The sparse thinning blond of the willows was the most color anything could muster on the scene. Branches and sweetgum balls and other debris lay on the ice right above where it had thinned and fractured and refrozen along irregular linear seams, before it gave way in turn to running water. The shape of a hawk glided across the surface and then there it was overhead, a gap showing in its primaries on one wing, sailing past the unmoving silhouette of a squirrel high in the trees. While dinner was cooking there were flakes falling in the lights outside and leaving a scant coating on the cars, and by bedtime the roadway was white.
SIDE PIECES DEP'T.
Tom Scocca
FOR DEFECTOR, I wrote about the people who are intellectually or professionally finding ways to get along with the new political reality:
All around, in these first hectic weeks of the second Trump era, people and institutions are angling to accommodate themselves to the changing times. On Ezra Klein's New York Times podcast, he and his guests took up the topic of birthright citizenship, and the question of foreigners who travel to the United States specifically to give birth. "Doesn’t the existence of birth tourism suggest there is something indefensibly broad in the way that citizenship has been interpreted?" Klein asked. "I am as pro-immigrant as you can possibly be, and I think that’s abusive of the rules."
Klein could have called for travel restrictions to cut down on drop-in births. But instead the liberal pundit was choosing to speak the language of Trump, or of Stephen Miller: Birthright citizenship was now, suddenly, not a plain provision of the 14th Amendment but something that "has been interpreted," and interpreted in an "indefensibly broad" way. Not only was someone calling himself "pro-immigrant" refusing to defend constitutional citizenship, he was assuring the audience of the New York Times that it could not be defended.
EASY LISTENING DEP'T.
HERE IS TODAY'S Indignity Morning Podcast.
Tom Scocca
Click on this box to find the Indignity Morning Podcast archive.
TOM SCOCCA
ADVICE DEP'T.
GOT SOMETHING YOU need to justify to yourself, or to the world at large? Other columnists are here to judge you, but The Sophist is here to tell you why you’re right. Direct your questions to The Sophist, at indignity@indignity.net, and get the answers you want.
SANDWICH RECIPES DEP'T.
WE PRESENT INSTRUCTIONS in aid of the assembly of sandwiches selected from A Book of Practical Recipes for the Housewife, published by Chicago Evening American, printed in 1923 and available at archive.org for the delectation of all.
Combination Sandwich
Creamed roquefort cheese
White meat of chicken
White bread
Trim the crust from the buttered bread. Place a lettuce leaf on one slice and lay sliced white meat of chicken on it. Cream the roquefort cheese with a tablespoon butter, paprika, and a dash of Worcestershire Sauce. Spread this paste on the other slice of bread. Close together as a sandwich and toast each side. Serve while the toast is still hot.
If you decide to prepare and attempt to enjoy a sandwich inspired by this offering, be sure to send a picture to indignity@indignity.net.
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