Are Trump and Musk Dismantling American Democracy?

We the people are left in the wind, waiting on the whims of an unengaged president and an oligarch with a nearly bottomless wallet, observes Sree Sreenivasan.

I've spent most of 2025 overseas and have been constantly answering questions about the various crises caused by Donald Trump, Elon Musk and J D Vance (including America abandoning its European allies [external link]). Here are two things that most non-Americans don't realise about the US system:

1. The power of 6-3: Lower courts can be a check on some of the unlawful actions, but Trump has the US supreme court in his pocket, with 6 justices out of 9, so he just has to wait for the cases to reach his rubber stamp court.

2. The threat of being primaried: Republicans have been told to get in line or Trump's billionaires will put up more pliable candidates at the next primary election. This means anyone who stands up to Trump will almost certainly be out of work within two, four or six years (depending on when their term is up).

An episode of The Daily in early February titled, Where are the Democrats? (external link), poured over the myriad ways in which the party is flailing after its second loss in the last decade to Trump.

It's a good question, but given the shape of the first month of the new administration, it's the wrong question.

The 'Dems in Disarray' narrative is almost a rite of passage in American politics. Although often correct in some ways, it seems like it's always posed as an issue only when the GOP is behaving in ways that are borderline treasonous. It's no different today.

The episode of The Daily was published as Trump signed executive order after executive order, and the Democrats were, in fact, absent.

The lack of urgency -- combined with the failure to learn lessons from Mitch McConnell's multi-decade masterclass in legislative maneuvering -- has Democrats in a bad place as a party. But to expect a single party coming off a major election loss and rife with internal divisions to save the core functions of the state is to live in a world of delusion.

It's not possible in any scenario, let alone the one we find ourselves in now.

As Musk, unelected Chairman and CEO of the United States, Inc, rips through core federal agencies, the most important question of the moment is, 'Where is the GOP?' The Democratic Party has struggled -- to put it charitably -- under the weight of the Musk-Trump onslaught. But the way Republicans -- especially those who serve in Congress (external link) -- have rolled over to accommodate all of this is much more important.

Large portions of GOP voters should be livid. They've been preached to for decades about the hallowed nature of the Constitution, only to see it essentially torn to shreds in a few weeks.

If Congress creates an agency and funds that agency, that agency can only be eliminated by Congress. Not by 20-somethings with no government experience.

These matters of the republic do not matter to Trump or Musk, and we now have confirmation that the Republican party as a whole has turned.

Surely, much of that is out of fear, as we keep getting these Privately, GOP Lawmakers Fret Trump and Musk (external link) pieces.

If you're a duly elected Senator voting for RFK Jr to lead the country's health infrastructure, but you privately tell a Politico reporter that you don't trust a man who's made millions of dollars peddling the worst of the worst conspiracy theories about modern medicine, you need to grow a spine. Vote against him if you're so nervous -- that's why you're a Senator.

It seems like rank-and-file GOP voters are already stirring.

Here are a few reasons why:

• Trump's freeze on federal farming and rural small business subsidies is hurting people who tend to support him

• The 'accidental' firing of dozens of people directly working on the country's nuclear weapons.

• Musk's DOGE employees accessed the Treasury Department's most sensitive data systems.

• DOGE people are trying to get access to very sensitive IRS data

• New tax cuts will add more than $4.5 trillion to the US deficit

• Musk, who is unable to pass security checks to handle sensitive government information, is targeting the agencies overseeing (and in some cases investigating) his business empire.

• Trump's pick to run the FBI has millions of dollars' worth of stock in Chinese e-commerce giant Shein.

The fednews subreddit has been an invaluable resource over the last month. This megathread is packed with stories (external link) of those being forced out of work.

These are your neighbors, cousins, and classmates. These are your park rangers, Forest Service firefighters (external link), and water quality experts.

These are aviation experts who keep the skies safe. These are people working to protect consumers (external link) from abusive practices by big banks.

Republicans in Congress are getting calls -- lots of calls (external link), but's hard to see a path forward beyond real-world pain from the random and severe cuts to government services that Musk is implementing right now, legal or otherwise.

Much of the pain in cuts to federal programmes will harm voters (external link) in some of the deepest-red states in the country:

I know a lot of liberals would say, in no uncertain terms, that the idea of Democrats working with Republicans on anything should be ruled out completely. I agree.

Democrats should hold up everything they can, concede nothing, and get in front of any camera they can right after.

Then they should cajole Republicans. At some point, it cannot be the responsibility of one party to save the republic -- our system simply is not built for that sort of pressure -- but that's where we are and it's a disaster playing out in real-time.

Ezra Klein has an excellent piece on this, The Republican Party's NPC Problem -- and Ours, (external link) and I highly recommend it. This passage is especially important:

Klein goes on to provide very useful context from the framers' own language from The Federalist Papers. It's worth your time:

Trump has slim majorities in Congress, but they are majorities, and he came into office with a minority Democratic party that was willing to deal. But, with Trump it was always about power -- for Musk, it's that sentiment multiplied exponentially.

We the people -- ALL of us -- are left in the wind, waiting on the whims of an unengaged president and an oligarch with a nearly bottomless wallet.

The intention is clear as day and Trump's team is not hiding it:

This is, of course, exactly what the judiciary is supposed to do. It says as much in the Constitution (external link):

It can't get much clearer than that. If, for example, 22 states and the District of Columbia sue the federal government over the freezing of federal funds (external link), the court's decision is the decision of record.

As I wrote here two weeks ago (external link), the House and Senate are where voters can have the most direct voice in how we are governed as a country.

We have no say in what the Tesla board votes to pay Musk. We cannot control Apple's new product line. We don't have a vote on Facebook's content moderation policies.

We do, however, have the power to vote people into office who can represent our collective interests legislatively.

We've been keen to give that power away, and we have a Congress that is, right this minute, failing its core, explicit Constitutional functions.

Democrats need to do much better than they are doing, but, unfortunately, we need Republicans to save us. It's a chilling thought, given the last three decades, let alone the last three weeks.

Sree Sreenivasan is a leading tech expert based in New York City. He is the co-founder of SAJA, the South Asian Journalists Association. You can find him on Twitter at x.com/sree

Feature Presentation: Rajesh Alva/Rediff.com