Over the course of the last two weeks, we have been witnessing a very quiet coup in front of our very eyes. President Elon Musk has effectively seized executive power from Donald Trump, giving himself the authority to go after any and all federal agencies that he deems wasteful or woke. 

This sword of unchecked power has claimed the life of the United States Agency for International Development, the agency tasked with providing humanitarian aid to developing nations. 

The lifesaving work that this agency carries out came to a grinding halt after Republicans, such as Secretary of State Marco Rubio who put himself in charge of the agency, deemed the $40 billion budget allocated by Congress to be wasteful. 

Note the key words, “allocated by Congress.” 

The executive branch nor unelected “special government employees” have the authority to allocate funds. Per the Appropriations Clause of the U.S. Constitution (Article 1, Section 9, Clause 7), the power of the purse is allocated to Congress. That said, Donald Trump has far overstepped his presidential authorities by freezing all federal funds through an executive order, and by halting the funding of the National Institutes of Health. 

The question that arises from these spending cuts that has been looming over American taxpayers, is where is our money going now that these federal agencies aren’t working? If federal employees are given a buyout option at a large scale, what does that mean for federal work? 

There is but one simple explanation: this is a coup. 

After quite possibly one of the most tragic weeks in aviation history, blame is going to be thrown around by both parties because of the sheer nature of our political landscape today. However, it is important to consider the context in which these events occurred. 

Shortly before the tragic crash over the Potomac river in Washington, D.C., an executive order was signed by the president offering a buyout to all federal employees, including air traffic controllers. 

Following this memo, more than 20,000 federal employees accepted the deal, leaving the door wide open for chaos to ensue, and that it did. At the time of the collision between American Airlines Flight 5342 and a U.S. Army Blackhawk helicopter, the air traffic controller on duty was doing the work of two employees, a job that is already widely recognized as one of the most stressful on the planet. 

Now, I am not going to claim that I know exactly what caused this devastating accident, but this is an important angle to look at the situation from. This perspective is simply a logical deduction that air travel is less safe when federal employees are overworked and given the offer to walk away from their position. 

If Donald Trump or his boss Elon Musk are honest in their quest to “Make America Safe Again,” some serious reconsideration is required. 

DOGE 

The newest addition to the federal government by the party of small government is the Department of Government Efficiency. This department is spearheaded by “special government employee” Elon Musk.

In the name of making the government more efficient in its spending and ideologies, DOGE has hired interns ranging from 19 to 24 years of age to infiltrate federal agencies, both digitally and physically. 

Of these wholly unqualified children that Musk is using to better his political agenda, one in particular stands out, Edward Coristine. 

Coristine was terminated during an internship with Path Network, a DDoS protection firm, for leaking sensitive information to a competitor via Discord. In these Discord messages recovered from a server that focuses on the competitor, Coristine bragged about having access to “every single machine” at the company, claiming that at any point he could have wiped the company’s entire system of servers, but stated that that “just wasn’t [him].” 

Currently, Coristine is one of the tech bros that Elon Musk has hired to access sensitive information about everyday Americans. Information including but not limited to tax information, social security numbers and government secrets, including classified information about the United States’ nuclear arsenal. 

Not only have these boys been accessing digital information, they have physically blocked entrances to federal agencies such as U.S.A.I.D. and the Department of Education, not allowing Democratic lawmakers to enter without explanation as to why or who hired them. To put it simply, these are private citizens who have no right to prohibit members of Congress from entering any building, let alone federal agencies. 

That being said, why in the world are Democrats still allowing this to happen? They are entirely complacent with the fascist takeover of the American government, and have shown no signs of willingness to stand up to Donald Trump’s tyranny. 

This is exactly what Republicans planned for. 

After the 2024 presidential election, it became more clear than ever that the Democrats do not have enough unity within the party to make any real change. This clears the path for Republicans to swoop in and make whatever changes they want. 

Despite calling themselves an opposition party, Democrats have failed to make any meaningful effort to stop the Trump administration’s dangerous policies.  

The only focus for the Democratic Party has appeared to be being as nice as possible to everyone, including the fascist in question. This has been utterly disastrous for the party and for the country as a whole. 

Spinelessness is the very thing that ushered fascism into the U.S. and it continues to be the reason that Donald Trump and his cronies are getting away with so much. In place of congressional Democrats standing up to these sweeping and unauthorized changes, federal judges have had to step up, many of whom being Trump- or Reagan-appointed judges. 

While this is a glimmer of hope for the possibility of American democracy surviving President Trump’s second term, it is even more disappointing that congressional Democrats are unable to do the job that we hired them to do. 

Condemning the actions taken by the president is not nearly enough. This symbolic action makes no real difference because contrary to the Democrats, Republicans do not care about their reputation in the media or within the general public. This disregard for “feelings” has allowed Republicans to make sweeping and historic changes that we simply could never conceive of Democrats making. 

All because Republicans set their sights on whatever piece of policy they wish to push through or roll back, and do not let anything stand in their way. 

Now a crucial interjection I must stress is that by no means am I defending Republicans’ actions or strategies. It is simply apparent that they are more successful than Democrats at pushing their ideologies through. The moral high ground is not enough, real action must be taken against fascists and wannabe dictators to prevent the slip into authoritarianism. 

A common misconception about our democracy and our freedom is that it is guaranteed to us and that it is not going anywhere, because that would be unbelievable, right? In reality, our democracy is so very fragile and can disappear without you even realizing. 

Our freedom, while a momentous victory for mankind, happened by chance, when regular people like you and me became fed up with the overreach of the tyrannical monarchy. Very seldom do we see uprisings that result in such victorious outcomes, and even more rare is the resulting government lasting as long as ours has. 

There is a very fine line between democracy and tyranny, and when a president starts to test how far they can tow that line, alarms must go off, and action must be taken. 

Jackson Small is a columnist. Contact him at [email protected].