Now That Musk's DOGE Has Committed Itself To Criminality, Why Would Any Democrat Give It Cover?

Jamie Raskin Understands What Musk Is All About & Isn't Afraid To Say So

There are two DOGE-oriented groups in Congress, the Marjorie Traitor Greene-chaired subcommittee and a non-legislative DOGE caucus that has about 40 random Republicans— from extremist loons like Diana Harshbarger (TN), Ralph Norman (SC), Barry Loudermilk (GA), Josh Brecheen (OK) and Anna Paulina Luna (FL) to less fascist-oriented conservatives looking for some MAGA cover back home, like Carlos Gimenez (FL), Derrick Van Orden (WI), Nick Langworthy (NY), Dan Newhouse (WA) and Maria Salazar (FL). And there are 3 Democrats who signed up, also hoping for some cover back home: Steven Horsford (NV), Val Hoyle and, first to join, plucky conservative Jared Moskowitz (FL).

There are also cautious caucus-adjacent Democrats who have talked about joining but may not have done so yet. Now that Musk has shown he’s interested in dismantling the government rather than reforming it, they’re having second thoughts. Yesterday Melanie Zanona and John Bresnahan dubbed them DOGE-curious Dems… and, after Musk’s illegal behavior this week, most of them are starting to back away from being associated with something they had taken as a serious opportunity “to crack down on government waste and spending… Following Musk’s aggressive and legally questionable blitz on government agencies, Democrats have soured” on the project.

“Initially,” wrote Zanona and Bresnahan, “centrist and even some progressive Democrats were hopeful DOGE would provide their party with an opportunity to show they’re willing to work across the aisle. Plus, the idea of streamlining the federal government is always popular with the American public. But now those same Democrats are deeply skeptical of Musk’s motivations and whether there’s any room to seriously work with Trump on the issue. And while they’re still supportive of the general concept of rooting out government waste, fraud and abuse, Democrats now see the Musk-led DOGE initiative as tainted.”

Ohio conservative Greg Landsman told them that “Sadly, this has become a way for the wealthiest person alive, who gets billions in federal money, to hack the federal government data and payment system at the expense of the American people.” Progressive Democrat Ro Khanna (CA), who’s exploring a presidential run and “who previously said there are certain aspects of DOGE he could get behind, told [them] he’s ‘appalled by the unconstitutional efforts to block funding appropriated and authorized by Congress.’ Khanna said he’s made those concerns known to Musk. ‘I will work on strategic cuts to a bloated defense budget— but Congress has that authority, not bureaucratic coders who get to press a button to stop payments,’ he added.”

South Florida conservative Jared Moskowitz, was the first Democrat to jump on-board and he actually did officially join the caucus. Even he’s now “questioning the merits of having a congressional DOGE counterpart after Trump and Musk steamrolled Congress during the first two weeks of the new administration. The Florida Democrat hinted he may not stay in the group… ‘I need to see one of my Republican colleagues in the caucus explain the point of the caucus, because it seems that Elon doesn’t need them, because it seems what Elon is doing is destroying the separation of powers. And I don’t think the DOGE caucus at this moment really has a purpose. … Whether I stay in the caucus, I think is questionable. I don’t need to stay in a caucus that’s irrelevant.’”

Even Henry Cuellar (Blue Dog-TX), arguably the most right-wing Democrat in the House— and a corrupt bribe-taking slime-bucket who will soon be begging Trump for a pardon— “has been weighing whether to formally join the DOGE caucus. But now Cuellar says: ‘I think I’m going to take my time.’ The one outlier here is Long Island New Dem, Tom Suozzi, always looking for ways to brandish his bipartisan cred in a district Trump won by 4 points. He told Zanona and Bresnahan that “he isn’t quite ready to shut the door on joining the caucus. ‘I’m very interested in the idea of finding inefficiencies and making things better, but I want it to be done the right way, and I want it to be done legally.’”

As for Traitor Greene’s absurd subcommittee, the Democratic members are basically watchdogs who we can expect to blow the whistle on her excesses and publicity-mongering. The 6 Democratic members are Texas ass-kickers Jasmine Crockett and Greg Casar, California progressive Robert Garcia, ranking member Melanie Stansbury (NM), Eleanor Holmes Norton (D.C.) and one conservative, Stephen Lynch (MA).

As far as Suozzi’s warning that “I want it to be done legally,” that isn’t the way Trump and Musk do things. Before dawn yesterday, Charlie Savage reported that in his first term, Señor T “seemed to relish ripping through the norms and standards of self-restraint that his predecessors had respected. Three weeks into his second term, hand-wringing about norms seems quaint… Trump has opened the throttle on defying legal limits. ‘We are well past euphemism about pushing the limits, stretching the envelope and the like,” said Peter Shane, who is a legal scholar in residence at New York University and the author of a casebook on separation-of-powers law. The array of legal constraints Trump has violated, Shane added, amounts to ‘programmatic sabotage and rampant lawlessness.’”

Musk is even worse— because unlike Trump, who operates through brute force and bluster, Musk works through technological dominance, leveraging his control over critical infrastructure to impose his will. Where Trump flouts legal constraints through executive overreach and personal impunity, Musk operates in the shadows of regulatory gray areas, using his vast wealth and control over essential services— from SpaceX’s satellite networks to Tesla’s AI and payment platforms— to sidestep government oversight. His approach isn’t just lawless; it’s systematic. He doesn’t rage against the state; he’s been seeking to replace it, by embedding himself so deeply into government functions that he becomes indispensable. And he does it with the reckless bravado of Silicon Valley’s “move fast and break things” ethos, which in his hands becomes an excuse for lawlessness on a grand scale. What began as a tech-world mantra for disrupting outdated business models has metastasized into an ideology of dismantling regulatory safeguards, democratic norms, and even the separation of powers. Musk isn’t just ignoring the rules— he’s testing how far he can push before the system collapses under the weight of his ambition. The DOGE initiative, initially framed as a tool to curb waste, has instead become Musk’s instrument for undermining democratic accountability, proving once again that his vision isn’t about reform— it’s about rule.

Trump and Musk working together is a nightmare for anyone who sees the constitution as something work preserving. Savage noted that among the many examples of Trump’s current tidal wave of lawlessness, the dismantling of USAID that he and Musk have engineered is one of the most blatant. “Since the first Congress, it has been the legislative branch— not the president— that decides how to structure the executive branch, creating departments and agencies, giving them functions and providing them with funds to carry out those missions. And Congress has enacted laws that say USAID is to exist as an ‘independent establishment,’ not as part of any executive department. No matter. On Monday, Trump was asked whether he needed an act of Congress to do away with the agency. He dismissed that suggestion and insulted the officials who work there. ‘I don’t think so, not when it comes to fraud,’ Trump said. ‘If there’s fraud— these people are lunatics— and if— if it comes to fraud, you wouldn’t have an act of Congress. And I’m not sure that you would anyway.’”

Next stop: slashing the Department of Veterans' Affairs and dismantling the Department of Education. “Trump and his appointees,” noted Savage, “have also been firing people in naked defiance of statutes Congress enacted to protect against the arbitrary removal of certain officials, like civil servants or board members at independent agencies. For example, Trump shut down three agencies by ousting Democratic members before their terms had ended. That effectively hobbled the agencies, the National Labor Relations Board, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission and the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board, because they were left with too few officials to have a quorum to act. Congress created those agencies to be independent of the White House, and all three have been understoodto have forms of protections  limiting the president’s ability to remove their leaders without a good cause, like misconduct, although only the labor board statute says that. Regardless, Trump flouted the limit. In so doing, the Trump administration appears to be setting up test cases should those officials sue, that would give the Republican-appointed supermajority on the Supreme Court an opportunity to expand on the so-called unitary executive theory. That doctrine, developed by the Reagan administration legal team, holds that the Constitution should be interpreted to prohibit Congress from enacting laws that limit a president’s absolute control of the executive branch.”

Public Citizen, for example filed several lawsuits against the Trump regime. “We are demanding an immediate halt,” they wrote, “to the massive and patently illegal invasion of privacy being carried out by Elon Musk’s ‘DOGE’ at the U.S. Treasury Department.’ The basics on that suit:

• The Treasury Department possesses sensitive personal and financial information for millions and millions of Americans who send money to or receive money from the federal government.

• Federal laws protect such information from improper disclosure and misuse— including by barring disclosure to individuals who lack a lawful and legitimate need for it.

• But instead of protecting Americans’ private information as required by law, Scott Bessent— Trump’s jillionaire Treasury Secretary— allowed DOGE full access to the data.

• And he punished the Treasury employee who— in accordance with his job duties and the law— tried to protect that information from improper access.

• Public Citizen is representing the Alliance for Retired Americans, the American Federation of Government Employees, and the Service Employees International Union in this case, with co-counsel at State Democracy Defenders Fund.

Their lawsuit spells out the massive and unprecedented scale of this intrusion into individuals’ privacy and demands an “immediate end to the systematic, continuous and ongoing violation of federal laws that protect the privacy of personal information contained in federal records.”

The Justice Department has fired most of the prosecutors who worked on the cases that led to two indictments of Trump, along with those who worked on cases against ordinary rioters from the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol assault. Top career leaders across the F.B.I. have been fired as well, and on Tuesday the bureau turned over a list of the thousands of agents who participated in those investigations, raising fears that they, too, will be purged.

None of those firings have complied with laws aimed at protecting the civil service and its senior career officials from losing their posts without a good cause, a process that includes hearings before the Merit Systems Protection Board.

...Peter Strauss, a professor emeritus of law at Columbia University who is a critics of the strong version of the unitary executive theory, said the Trump administration had embraced lawlessness.

“President Trump and his friends are ignoring both federal law and the, to me, clear limitation of presidential power in Article II of the Constitution,” he said. “The Constitution did not imagine what we are seeing. All one has to do is to read the whole of Article II to understand that.”

…Musk and employees from his various companies have also been rampaging through the federal bureaucracy, including by seizing access to a Treasury Department system that handles federal payments and has sensitive information, like Social Security numbers, whose disclosure is limited by the Privacy Act. Musk’s team also got into a standoff with employees at USAID over its demand for access to classified information. 

Federal employees at both the Treasury and USAID who resisted him were placed on administrative leave. Musk’s team also shut down USAID’s headquarters overnight, emailing employees not to come in, and its website went dark.

The Trump team has been opaque about exactly what legal status allows Musk to be exercising executive power, even at Trump’s behest, but the New York Times reported this week that Musk has been deemed a “special government employee.”

The administration has not said when he acquired that status, nor whether or to what extent Trump has waived a criminal conflict-of-interest law that binds even special employees from touching government matters that could affect their personal interests. For Musk, that category is vast given how heavily his companies rely on federal contracts.

Yesterday, Jamie Raskin, one of the more courageous congressional Democrats, noted that “On Monday, Democrats paid a visit to the USAID headquarters to defend federal workers against Elon Musk’s illegal, unconstitutional and dangerous attempt to shut down our nation’s top humanitarian aid agency, which is fighting malaria, HIV/AIDS, and malnutrition all over the world. Yesterday, Elon Musk— who is busy seizing control over America’s financial payment systems, data infrastructure and communications networks— tweeted out a video from the rally and actually called it an insurrection and likened it to January 6:

I know a lot of regimes, like Elon’s native apartheid South Africa, can’t distinguish between peaceful assembly and violent insurrections because authoritarians support violent insurrections for fascism but are terrified of nonviolent popular protests for freedom. But in America we can tell the difference even if the billionaire government contractor and aspiring techno-fascist Elon Musk cannot. On January 6, 2021, we saw bloody criminal violence to steal an election. At the great protests I attended this week against Musk and Trump, I saw no violence and no crimes take place other than an unelected billionaire tyrant trying to thwart Congressional appropriations and shut down humanitarian aid to the poorest people on earth. A real insurrection is when a President, who was defeated by more than 7 million votes in an election, tries to capsize the constitutional order, overthrow the presidential election and seize the presidency by summoning a violent mob to storm the Capitol— ultimately injuring, wounding and hospitalizing over 140 sworn police officers. Yesterday’s rally was not an insurrection— it was a resurrection of our democratic resolve. America was built by strong democrats and the lovers of freedom, and we’re not going anywhere.”