Letters from an American - March 20, 2025

Episode Date: March 21, 2025

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March 20, 2025. It seems as if the Trump administration is rushing to tear apart as much as it can, as opponents of its wholesale destruction of the United States government organize to stop them. Today, members of the Department of Government Efficiency team showed up at the Institute of Museum and Library Services, which helps to fund libraries and museums across the country, and whose elimination Trump called for in an executive order last week. They sent employees home, swore in a new acting director in the lobby and proceeded to cancel contracts and grants. Even as this dismantling was going on, district judge Ellen Lipton

Hollander was blocking the Department of Government Efficiency from accessing data at the Social Security Administration and ordering them to destroy copies of any personal information they have already accessed. The Doge team is essentially engaged in a fishing expedition at SSA in search of a fraud epidemic based on little more than suspicion, Hollander wrote. It is launched to search for the proverbial needle in the haystack without any concrete knowledge that the needle is actually in the haystack. Also today, U.S. District Judge James Boesberg, who said the government could not use the

1798 Alien Enemies Act to justify sending migrants to a prison in El Salvador, appeared to be out of patience with the government's obfuscation of what actually happened in the process of that rendition last weekend. Boesberg's order today laid out that he had repeatedly asked the government to provide information about the flights, but that the government had evaded its obligations, providing only general information about the flights and appearing to cast about for further delays. This is woefully insufficient, Boasberg wrote. He required that the government explain by March 25th why its failure to return the flights as ordered

did not violate the court order to do so. Far from backing down, the administration appears to be considering escalating its fight with the courts. Devlin Barrett of the New York Times reported today that lawyers in the Trump administration believe the 1798 Alien Enemies Act Trump used to deport migrants also permits federal agents to enter people's homes without a warrant, an assault on the Fourth Amendment to the Constitution. The Trump White House and

its MAGA supporters appear to be trying to cement their power to control the government by undermining the rule of law and the judges who are defending it. White House Press Secretary Caroline Levitt yesterday called Judge Boasberg a Democrat activist, although he was originally appointed by President George W. Bush, and badly misrepresented Boesberg's order. She also attacked Boesberg's wife for her political donations. In Talking Points memo this morning, David Kurtz recorded how MAGA supporters Elon Musk and Laura Loomer have attacked Boesberg's daughter and in Rolling Stone, Andrew Perez and Aswin Soobsang noted that the Attorney General of

the United States, Pam Bondi, accused Boesberg of attempting to meddle in national security, adding, this one federal judge thinks he can control foreign policy for the entire country, and he cannot. Last month, Vice President J.D. Vance wrote that judges aren't allowed to control the executive's legitimate power, trying to obscure that it is the role of courts to determine whether or not the power the executive is claiming is, in fact, legitimate. On the Fox News Channel, Border Czar Tom Hman said, I don't care what the judges think. Kurtz noted that Representative Jim Jordan, a Republican of Ohio who chairs the House Judiciary

Committee, has promised hearings on the many injunctions against the Trump administration. Kurtz also noted that angry Trump supporters have called in bomb threats against judges who have stood against Trump's excesses, including Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett, and have sent anonymous pizza deliveries to the homes of judges and their relatives as a way to demonstrate that we know where you live. Perez and Soob Sang reported that the White House's strategy is to move fast before courts can stop them. In the end House's strategy is to move fast before courts can stop them. In the end, one source close to the president told them that the president's ultimate power

over judges comes from the fact that they do not command an army, while he does. Are they going to come and arrest him, the advisor asked, apparently confident that the answer is no. The attack of Trump and his MAGA supporters on the courts and the rule of law has illustrated how quickly the United States is sliding from democracy to authoritarianism. Honest to God, I've never seen anything like it, Harvard political scientist Stephen Lewicki told Amanda Taub of the New York Times. Along with his colleague Daniel Ziblatt, Lewicki told Amanda Taub of the New York Times. Along with

his colleague Daniel Zeiblatt, Lewicki wrote, How democracies die. We look at these comparative cases in the 21st century, like Hungary and Poland and Turkey, and in a lot of respects this is worse, Lewicki said. These first two months have been much more aggressively authoritarian than almost any other comparable case I know of Democratic backsliding. President Donald Trump's attempt to undermine the courts, and thus the country's legal system, appears to have kicked the alarm about the dismantling

of the US government into a new phase. Both the Washington Post and the New York Times ran op-eds today from law professors detailing the lawlessness of the Trump administration and warning that the courts will not be able to stop Trump and his administration from their authoritarian takeover of the government. In the New York Times, Georgetown University professor of law Stephen Vladeck has faith that the courts will try to rein Trump in, while in the Washington Post Harvard law professor

Ryan Dorfler and Yale University professor of law and history Samuel Moyn are less convinced that the judges Trump himself appointed will stand against him but all three of them warned that stopping Trump will require the people to demand far more aggressive oversight from members of Congress, as Vladek puts it. Dorfler and Moyn wrote that, Real resistance must take place in Congress, at government workplaces, and in the streets. That the courts are in the position of trying to stop a president who is ignoring the Constitution

reflects that Republicans in Congress appear to have taken off the table impeachment, the political remedy the Constitution's framers put into our system for such a crisis. There has been remarkably little pushback from Republicans about the changes being made to the country in their names, but the news that dropped on March 18th that the administration is considering giving up a key role in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization or NATO has sparked public objection from Republicans who care about the nation's global role. Since NATO organized, the role of NATO's supreme allied commander Europe, known as the SACUR, has been filled by an American.

Now the Trump administration is considering relinquishing that position as part of a massive restructuring plan that could save up to $270 million of the Defense Department's $850 billion annual budget, or about three-hundredths of a percent of it. The U.S. is also considering stopping its expansion and modernization of U.S. forces Japan, which would save about $1.18 billion, according to Courtney Kuby and Gordon Leubold of NBC News, but would weaken the cooperation designed to counter China. For the United States to give up the role of supreme allied commander of NATO would be seen in Europe as a significant signal of walking away from the alliance.

Retired Admiral James Stavridis, who served as secure and head of European command from 2009 to 2013, wrote to Kubi and Lubold, it would be a political mistake of epic proportion and once we give it up they are not going to give it back. We would lose an enormous amount of influence within NATO and this would be seen correctly as probably the first step toward leaving the alliance altogether. House Armed Services Committee Chair Mike Rogers, a Republican of Alabama, and Senate Armed Services Committee Chair Roger Wicker, a Republican of Mississippi, issued a joint statement saying they are very concerned about reports that claim the Department of Defense is considering unilateral changes on major

strategic issues, including significant reductions to U.S. forces stationed abroad, absent coordination with the White House and Congress. We will not accept significant changes to our warfighting structure that are made without a rigorous interagency process, coordination with combatant commanders and the joint staff, and collaboration with Congress," they wrote. Such moves risk undermining American deterrence around the globe and detracting from our negotiating

positions with America's adversaries. Their concerns about protecting their power to have a say in US foreignS. foreign policy and to make sure that policy serves the American people are unlikely to be assuaged by events tonight. Eric Schmidt, Eric Lipton, Julian E. Barnes, Ryan Mack, and Maggie Haberman of the New York Times reported that the Pentagon has scheduled a briefing tomorrow for billionaire Elon Musk on the U.S. military's top-secret plans for any potential war with China. As the reporters noted, this information includes some of the nation's most closely guarded

military secrets. Musk's largest Tesla factory is located in China. Chinese lenders contributed $2.8 billion to it. And as Joshua Keating of Vox explained two days ago, China is the only EV market where Tesla sales are continuing to increase. Keating also pointed to a Financial Times report that Chinese investors have been funneling money into Musk's other businesses. After the New York Times story broke, Chief Pentagon spokesperson Sean Parnell said, the Defense Department is excited to welcome Elon Musk to the

Pentagon on Friday. He was invited by Secretary Hegseth and is just visiting. About an hour later, the reporters note, he posted on X, this is 100% fake news, just brazenly and maliciously wrong. Elon Musk is a patriot. We are proud to have him at the Pentagon. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth chimed in. This is not a meeting about top secret China war plans. It's an informal meeting about innovation, efficiencies, and smarter production. Gonna be great. Then Trump added, the fake news is added again, this time the

failing New York Times. They said, incorrectly, that Elon Musk is going to the Pentagon tomorrow to be briefed on any potential war with China. How ridiculous? China will not even be mentioned or discussed. How disgraceful it is that the discredited media can make up such lies. Anyway, the story is completely untrue. Shortly after Trump posted, Alexander Ward and Nancy A. Youssef of the Wall Street Journal confirmed the story, adding that

their sources told them that Musk had asked for the briefing. They also reminded readers that Musk has been in regular contact with Russian President Vladimir Putin, a close partner of China, the country that has supported Moscow's invasion of Ukraine. Minnesota Governor Tim Walz told Rachel Maddow tonight he was speechless. I don't know how to convey how far out of the norm this is. These are closely guarded secrets because our national and our global defense depends upon them. I don't understand where are the Republicans?

Where are Lindsey Graham's? Where are these people who know how this works? To not be terrified of where this is at. Sharing our most guarded secrets on global conflict with a truly unstable private citizen who has no authority. This is chilling. Republican senators need to put a stop to this and pull this back. Letters from an American was written and read by Heather Cox Richardson. It was produced at Soundscape Productions, Devin, Massachusetts. recorded with music composed by Michael Moss.