Donald Trump and Elon Musk chose their first big target well. I consider myself pretty knowledgeable about U.S. politics, but though I’d heard of USAID, I was largely unfamiliar with its range of activities or importance to U.S. foreign policy. So, it seems, are the great majority of Americans. To Trump and his allies, though, the convergence of government bureaucracy, promotion of democracy abroad, and money flowing to foreigners hit a sweet spot that made the agency ripe for destruction under Trump II. If USAID is now gone, and no one misses it, well, where’s the possible blowback to the president?
As political writer Paul Waldman observes of Musk’s ongoing rampage through the federal bureaucracy, most of us barely bother to consider the hundreds of ways government action and intervention underly our daily existence — and it is this web of unnoticed structure that is now being ripped apart, willy-nilly, in an illegal wave of destruction that amounts to a coup against our constitutional order. The widespread invisibility of government is working to Musk’s advantage, as he helps destroy what most people simply take for granted, from food that doesn’t kill us to Meals on Wheels programs that keep elders alive. Stopping the destruction, Waldman counsels, will necessarily involve reminding people of what’s being lost.
Such an educational effort is being made massively easier by what appears to be Trump and Musk’s aim for wholesale elimination of broad swathes of government function. Simply put, it’s going to be hard for people to miss the results of the destruction — the opposition’s work will be in tying it back to Trump’s actions. Trump and his allies are almost certainly underestimating what the backlash could be to the public being denied elementary aspects of life that it currently takes for granted. As Waldman puts it, “you can’t opt out of having your government affect your life.” From a certain perspective — one we would do well to encourage — they’ve decided to fuck over most of the American population for reasons that range from malign to murderous. This is not something a smart politician does; it’s what a politician does when he thinks he’s well insulated from the consequences of his actions.
But I also want to echo critiques of the role Democrats have played in creating an atmosphere of anti-government skepticism. Those who point to Bill Clinton proclaiming the end of the era of big government remind us that a poisonous bipartisan consensus formed decades ago that disparaged public accountability and privileged private sector profit-motive as a guarantor of competence, that fantasized of superior market solutions while ignoring the anti-democratic implications of downgrading government employees and responsibilities. A central GOP lie for decades has been that the federal bureaucracy constitutes an alien, invading force that seeks to impoverish our lives. But this line of attack has also necessarily involved disparaging the democratic processes by which these bureaucracies were created in the first place — by acts of Congress and signatures of presidents, and the legitimacy they thereby possess. Even Joe Biden, who acted in decisive and substantial ways to insist on a positive role for government in growing the economy, did not do nearly enough to counter-attack the long-established narrative that government is wasteful, inefficient, and unnecessary.
Perhaps nowhere has the Democrats’ lackluster case for a government that works for the people been more galling than in connection with the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. The CFPB itself is an example of government bureaucracy at its best; the brainchild of Elizabeth Warren in the days of the Great Recession, it was created under a Democratic Congress and presidency to take on the predation of banks and other businesses that try to rip off consumers. Those regulated by the bureau gunned for it even before it was even created, and financial sector hatred has continued undimmed to the present day. Actually, that’s not entirely correct: the CFPB has actually managed to increase the wrath of its enemies by looking to regulate tech companies with financial offering to consumers, including giants like Apple and Meta. If right-wingers measure their success by how many liberal tears they provoke, then you could say that the CFPB’s success could be measured by how many banker’ and tech titans’ tears it jerked loose from their ashen faces. You could tell the bureau was doing was it was supposed to because it gained the right enemies — the rich and powerful — and protected ordinary folks who were able to take their complaints to a bureau that acted in the interests of the little guy.
But though Warren in her life as a senator has not been remiss in reminding Americans of the CFPB, too many other Democrats declined to seize the golden opportunity to elevate the bureau as a stellar example of the type of government the party wants more of. Among other things — and this might seem like a small thing, but it’s really not — they never figured out how to brand it with a catchy name. After all, CFPB doesn’t exactly roll off the tongue, or connote consumer empowerment. But the main problem is that the Democrats didn’t make it more of a household name, try to point to it as a model for government agencies that work for ordinary people, even if it means pissing off powerful interests.
I think this sort of investment would have redounded to Democrats’ benefit in recent days, as Elon Musk and Trump has moved to close down the agency — an illegal act that in itself would provoke an impeachment effort in better circumstances. Created by Congress and the survivor of lawsuits to disband it, the CFPB is a perfect example of the Trump administration acting illicitly to demolish democratic governance. And as the Washington Post reports, Elon Musk himself has financial interests that the CFPB was set to regulate, as his X/Twitter platform prepares to offer financial services to users, making its neutering not just illegal but deeply corrupt, an example of oligarchic interests cutting down ordinary people’s capacity to fight back through the government they elected.
But although the Democratic Party may have erred in not providing better political protection and public outreach for the CFPB, this is not to say that the fight is over this particular agency, or that the party has failed. Democrats created the CFPB; Democrats can still fight for it, and, more to the point in the current moment, wield its mission and its illegal closure as a weapon against a lawless regime. Not only can they employ its closure to highlight Trump’s lawlessness, they can tie Trump’s unconstitutional and anti-democratic maneuvers to a slavish devotion to some of the least popular businesses in America. After all, most Americans realize that financial sector companies like banks and payday lenders are untrustworthy and exploitative forces in American that require heavy regulation, lest they destroy our economy again like they did in 2012.
Democrats need to act as if the attack on the CFPB is a big deal; that it’s a blow not against the Democratic Party, but against the nitty-gritty enactment of democratic government that only a dictator or a corrupt business would embrace. Remember: all those businesses who’ve been howling about the CFPB being too powerful are doing so because they want the right to rip off American consumers without consequence. Its shuttering makes Trump look weak, not strong: he’s the henchman and lackey for businesses that can’t even make an honest living, but have to create profit models in which American citizens are re-cast as marks and dupes, ideally without recourse should they ever learn they’ve been exploited.
Speaking of Musk’s role in closing the agency, but addressing its larger role as well, Elizabeth Warren remarked that, “This is like a bank robber trying to fire the cops and turn off the alarms before he strolls in the lobby.” This is a strong line of defense, and of attack; Democrats can link the CFPB putsch to similar attacks on law enforcement and intelligence agencies like the FBI and CIA. It is an attack on our collective defenses, which will now be manned by. . . Donald Trump? Elon Musk? You’d have to be a die-hard MAGA voter to think that these guys should be in charge of absolutely everything, and the professional crime-fighters nothing.
Donald Trump and his Republican allies completely own their attempts to gut American government so that Trump can install loyalists and businesses can evade regulations meant to protect the public; they will be responsible for the harm and chaos that ensues. But the scale of this crisis requires the Democrats to step up, in order to mitigate the damage as much as possible. More than this, it points to the necessity of the Democratic Party re-evaluating its awkward pro- and anti-government straddle, and to fully embrace a vision of democratically accountable, highly competent government that serves the public interest. None of the Musk-led, Trump-sanctioned destruction should be accepted as acceptable or permanent; rather, acts of destruction directed at disempowering ordinary Americans and strengthening corrupt actors are vivid displays of MAGA’s dark intent, and of its real vulnerability to a concerted defense on behalf of everyday Americans.