Letters from an American - February 7, 2025

Episode Date: February 8, 2025

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February 7th, 2025. Maya Miller of the New York Times reported today that the congressional phone system has been jammed with tens of millions of calls from outraged constituents contacting their representatives to demand that they stand against President Donald Trump and his sidekick, Elon Musk, as they unilaterally dismantle the United States government and gain access to Americans' private information. The Senate phone system usually gets about 40 calls a minute. Now it is up to 1,600.

On Wednesday, Nicole LaFond of Talking Points Memo reported that Senate Republicans were not especially concerned about Musk and his Department of Government Efficiency team rampaging through the federal government, figuring that Musk won't last long and that the courts will eventually stop him. Today, Musk posted on X, CFPBRIP, with a tombstone emoji. The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau has recovered more than $17 billion for consumers from fraudulent or predatory practices since it began in 2011. Trump seems willing to let Musk continue to run amok through the government while he becomes a figurehead.

Today he posted on his social media site that he aspired the chair and members of the board of trustees of the Kennedy Center saying they do not share our vision for a golden age in arts and culture. He promised to announce a new board with an amazing chairman Donald J. Trump. For the Kennedy Center, the best is yet to come, he wrote. U.S. District Judge Carl J. Nichols, who was appointed by Trump in 2019, is less impressed with the direction of the Trump administration. Today, he blocked it from placing more than 2,000 employees of the United States Agency for International Development, or USAID, on paid leave. Trump and his allies have claimed, without evidence, that USAID is corrupt.

But Stephen Lee Myers and Stuart A. Thompson of the New York Times reported today that the disinformation making those claims on social media posts, for example, comes from Russia. Senator Angus King, an independent of Maine, took his Republican colleagues to task yesterday for their willingness to overlook the Trump administration's attack on the U.S. Constitution. King took the floor as the Senate was considering the confirmation of Christian nationalist Russell Vogt as director of the Office of Management and Budget. Vogt, a key author of Project 2025, believes the powers of the President should be virtually unchecked. King reminded his colleagues that they had taken an oath to support and defend the Constitution

of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic, and noted that the framers recognized that there could be domestic enemies to the Constitution. Our oath was not to the Republican Party, not to the Democratic Party, not to Joe Biden, not to Donald Trump, King said, but to defend the Constitution. And right now, literally at this moment, that Constitution is under the most direct and consequential assault in our nation's history, King said. An assault not on a particular provision, but on the essential structure of the document

itself. Why do we have a constitution? King asked. He read the preamble and said, there it is, there's the list. Ensure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, ensure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity. But, he pointed out, there's a paradox. The essence of a government is to give it power, but that power can be abused to hurt the very citizens who granted it.

Who will guard the guardians? King asked. The Framers were deep students of history and human nature, and they had just won a lengthy and brutal war against the abuses inherent in concentrated governmental power," King said. The universal principle of human nature they understood was this, power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely. How did the Framers answer the question of who will guard the Guardians? King explained that they built into our system regular elections to return the control of the government to the people on a regular basis. They also deliberately divided power between the different branches and levels of government. branches and levels of government. This is important, King said.

The cumbersomeness, the slowness, the clumsiness is built into our system. The framers were so fearful of concentrated power that they designed a system that would be hard to operate. And the heart of it was the separation of power between various parts of the government. The whole idea, the whole idea was that no part of the government, no one person, no one institution had or could ever have a monopoly on power. Why? Because it's dangerous. History and human nature tells us that. This division of power, as annoying and inefficient as it can be, is an essential feature of the system, not a bug. It's an

essential, basic feature of the system, designed to protect our freedoms. The system of government contrasts with the normal structure of a private business where authority is purposefully concentrated, allowing swift and sometimes arbitrary action. But a private business does not have the army and the President of the United States is not the CEO of America. In the government, power is shared, principally between the president and this body, this Congress, both houses. This herky-jerkiness, this unwieldy structure, is the whole idea, designed to protect us from the inevitable abuse of an authoritarian

state. Vote, King said, is one of the ringleaders of the assault on our Constitution. He believes in a presidency of virtually unlimited powers. He espouses the discredited and illegal theory that the President has the power to selectively impound funds appropriated by Congress, thereby rendering the famous power of the purse a nullity. King said he was really worried about the structural implications for our freedom and government of what's happening here. Project 2025 is nothing less than a blueprint for the shredding of the Constitution and

the transition of our country to authoritarian rule. He's the last person who should be put in the job at the heart of the operation of our government. This isn't about politics. This isn't about policy. This isn't about Republican versus Democrat. This is about tampering with the structure of our government, which will ultimately undermine its ability to protect the freedom of our government, which will ultimately undermine its ability to protect

the freedom of our citizens. If our defense of the Constitution is gone, there's nothing left to us." King asked his Republican colleagues to say no to the undermining and destruction of our constitutional system. "'Are there no red lines? He asked them. Are there no limits? King looked at USAID and said, The Constitution does not give to the President or his designee the power to extinguish a statutorily established agency.

I can think of no greater violation of the strictures of the Constitution or usurpation of the power of this body. None. I can think of none. Shouldn't this be a red line? Trump's executive order freezing funding selectively for programs the administration doesn't like or understand is, King said, a fundamental violation of the whole idea of the Constitution, the separation of powers. King said his office is hearing calls

every day. We can hardly handle the volume. This, again, to underline, is a frontal assault of our power, your power, the power to decide where public funds should be spent. Isn't this an obvious red line? Isn't this an obvious limit? King turned to the power seemingly assumed by Doge to burrow into the Treasury's payment system as well as the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, with zero oversight. Do these people have clearance? King, who sits on the Senate Intelligence Committee, asked. Are the doors closed?

Are they going to leave open doors into these? What are the opportunities for our adversaries to hack into the systems? Remember, there's no transparency or oversight. Access to Social Security numbers seem to be in the mix. All the government's personnel files, personal financial data, potentially everyone's tax returns and medical records. That can't be good. That's data that should be protected with the highest level of security and consideration

of Americans' privacy. And we don't know who these people are. We don't know what they're taking out with them. We don't know whether they're walking out with laptops or thumb drives. We don't know whether they're leaving back doors into the system. There is literally no oversight. The government of the United States is not a private company. It is fundamentally at odds with how this system is supposed to work.

Shouldn't this be an easy red line? He asked. We're experiencing in real time exactly what the framers most feared. When you clear away the smoke, clear away the doge, the executive orders, foreign policy pronouncements, more fundamentally, what's happening is the shredding of the constitutional structure itself. And we have a profound responsibility to stop it. King's appeal to principle and the U.S. Constitution did not convince his Republican colleagues, who confirmed vote. But today, Illinois Governor J.B. Pritzker took a different approach, trolling Trump's claim that the Gulf of Mexico would now be called

the Gulf of America. Standing behind a lectern and flanked by flags of the United States and Illinois, Pritzker solemnly declared he was about to make an important announcement. The world's finest geographers, experts who study the Earth's natural environment, have concluded a decades-long council and determined that a great lake deserves to be named after a great state. So today, I'm issuing a proclamation declaring that hereinafter Lake Michigan shall be known as Lake Illinois. The proclamation has been forwarded to Google to ensure the world's maps reflect this momentous

change. In addition, the recent announcement that to protect the homeland the United States will be purchasing Greenland, Illinois will now be annexing Green Bay to protect itself against enemies, foreign and domestic. I've also instructed my team to work diligently to prepare for an important announcement next week regarding the Mississippi River. God bless America and bear down,

a reference to the Chicago Bears football team. ["The New York Times"] Letters from an American was produced at Soundscape Productions, Dedham, Massachusetts. Recorded with music composed by Michael Moss.