More Dangerous than Watergate
It’s like every past constitutional crisis rolled into one.
In case you missed it—or if you don’t subscribe to The Triad—JVL has a guide for how to interpret this morning’s stock market performance in light of the utter chaos in Washington, D.C. Read the whole thing.
Happy Monday.
Are We Up to the Task?
by William Kristol
In disregard of the rule of law, he knowingly misused the executive power by interfering with agencies of the executive branch, including the Federal Bureau of Investigation . . . in violation of his duty to take care that the laws be faithfully executed.
In all of this, Richard M. Nixon has acted in a manner contrary to his trust as President and subversive of constitutional government, to the great prejudice of the cause of law and justice and to the manifest injury of the people of the United States.
Article II, section 5, of the Articles of Impeachment Adopted by the House of Representatives Committee on the Judiciary, July 27, 1974
Half a century ago Congress, the courts, other key institutions within and outside of the government, and the American public, faced an assault launched by President Richard Nixon and his henchmen to the constitutional order and the rule of law.
They defeated it.
Today, we face a crisis greater than Watergate.
Are we up to dealing with it?
We’re going to find out.
The crisis is multifaceted and fast-moving. President Donald Trump and his sidekick Elon Musk—nominated for no federal office, employed by no federal agency, accountable to no one—are racing on several fronts to undermine laws, procedures, and norms that would constrain their arbitrary exercise of power. But the assault on the rule of law seems centered on the Federal Bureau of Investigation.
It began with the nomination of Trump apparatchik and defender of the January 6th rioters Kash Patel to be FBI director. Patel tried to reassure senators during his confirmation hearing last Thursday that “all FBI employees will be protected from political retribution.”
But the next day, Emil Bove, Trump’s former defense lawyer, who is now acting deputy attorney general and in charge of the Justice Department, ordered the removal of at least six top FBI career executives. Bove also requested the names of all FBI agents who worked on January 6th cases.
All seemed on track for Trump’s efforts to purge the agency and remake it in his own image.
But FBI officials may not permit their agency to go gentle into the dictatorial night.
Over the weekend, in a blizzard of activity (helpful reporting can be found here, and here, and here), FBI officials moved to resist the attempted coup.
Though he had carried out the order to decapitate the bureau’s top executives the day before, on Friday acting FBI Director Brian Driscoll reportedly refused to agree to fire certain agents involved with January 6th cases, and was trying to block a mass purge of such agents. In a message to staff Saturday, Driscoll reminded FBI agents of their rights to “due process and review in accordance with existing policy and law,” and emphasized “That process and our intent to follow it have not changed.”
The FBI Agents Association sent a memo to employees over the weekend to remind them of their civil service protections. The memo urged them not to resign or to offer to resign, and recommended that agents respond to one question in the survey they’ve been instructed to answer: “I have been told I am ‘required to respond’ to this survey, without being afforded appropriate time to research my answers, speak with others, speak with counsel or other representation.”
And in a remarkable letter, obtained by The Bulwark, the president of the Society of Former Special Agents of the FBI—a group that seeks to stay out of politics—said the following:
The obvious disruption to FBI operations cannot be overstated with the forced retirement of the Director, Deputy Director, and now all five Executive Assistant Directors. Add in the immediate removal of a number of SACs [Special Agents in Charge] and the requests for lists of investigative personnel assigned to specific investigations and you know from your experience that extreme disruption is occurring to the FBI—at a time when the terrorist threat around the world has never been greater.
Then on Sunday the top agent at the FBI’s New York field office, James Dennehy, wrote in an email to his staff: “Today, we find ourselves in the middle of a battle of our own, as good people are being walked out of the F.B.I. and others are being targeted because they did their jobs in accordance with the law and F.B.I. policy. . . . Time for me to dig in.”
It’s surely time for many others to dig in. Especially the United States Congress, which authorizes FBI activities, appropriates its funds, and before whom Kash Patel’s nomination is pending.
It’s pointless to ask President Trump to recall the oath he took two weeks ago, to “faithfully execute the Office of President of the United States” and to “preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.”
But members of Congress also take an oath to “support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic.” As it was fifty years ago, so it is today: The fact that the Constitution’s enemies now include the president of the United States does not relieve members of Congress of their responsibility to that oath.
True North, Strong and Free
by Martyn Wendell Jones
Etobicoke, Ontario—Within an hour of Donald Trump launching the first volley in what the Wall Street Journal editorial board called “the dumbest trade war in history” by imposing 25 percent tariffs on Canadian and Mexican goods, residents of the Greater Toronto Area were thronging the aisles of a suburban LCBO, the province-owned chain that, as the solitary wholesaler of all beer, wine, and spirits in Ontario, is among the largest purchasers of American alcohol in the world. Customers were expecting retaliatory Canadian tariffs to target American booze. And so they cleared out Jack Daniel’s and Jim Beam “by the case.”
That’s what a candid employee told me when I arrived yesterday afternoon to grab some Bulleit before it indefinitely disappears.
Ontario is joining six other provinces this week in banning the sale of American liquor, something our premier announced at a news conference where he fed a sign with the word “tariffs” on it into the claws of an excavator.
“One elderly lady asked for a case of J. Lohr, a California wine,” the LCBO employee said as we huddled in the chilly walk-in beer fridge. “She had me take it to her car for her, and when I did, I saw another case already in there from another store.”
“People have definitely been panic buying,” he said.
But for all that, a new mood has come over my adopted country—one of patriotic resolve.
In a speech Saturday evening, Trudeau announced initial 25 percent retaliatory tariffs on $30 billion worth of American goods; after a three-week delay intended to help Canadian supply chains adapt, that will scale up to touch another $125 billion of imports. Other measures remain on the table, including export restrictions and taxes for critical minerals and energy.
My neighbor Ira sent me a deadpan text when Trump’s plans became clear: “Yay,” he wrote, “another existential crisis.” But after watching Trudeau’s speech, he expressed both rage at the American backstab and “pride [that] when I heard JT speak [he] didn’t sound like Neville Chamberlain.” (If anything, he sounded Churchillian, invoking the world wars and “your darkest hours.”)
The anger is ubiquitous. “Bring it on. Fuck him,” said the adult daughter of another neighbor. Trump’s frequent trolling—if that’s what it is—about Canada becoming the “51st state” has infuriated even conservative Canadians. Hours before Trudeau spoke, Conservative Party leader Pierre Poilievre—likely to become the country’s next prime minister—proposed his own aggressive “dollar-for-dollar” retaliatory tariff plan. Never in recent memory have Canada’s political wings moved with comparable synchronicity.
And never in recent memory has anti-American feeling risen so high. My neighbor Sean, who recently retired from working in the public sector, told me Canadians have always had “ambivalent feelings” about the United States, but Trump’s most recent actions may have resolved the ambivalence: “I hope we learn our lesson about America this time.” He added, “nothing brings the country together like hating on the USA.”
Catherine, a journalist who works today in university communications, told me the country hasn’t felt this united since 1967, the year Canada celebrated its centenary. She relayed the first things she did when she heard about the tariffs: “I found one of my Canada Day paper flags and taped it to my front door. I then told my daughter in New York City that I can’t visit.” Ira told me he has already canceled “all but absolutely core American services” and will be boycotting American produce and other consumables. In anticipation of higher food prices, he’s planning to turn his front yard into an even larger vegetable garden this spring.
While anger towards America is palpable, there are disagreements on how best to act on it. Patrick, a neighbor who works in data for a national media company, argued that Trudeau, a widely disliked lame-duck prime minister who has prorogued Parliament, should not have put retaliatory tariffs in place but should have left that to his successor. Many are concerned about the potential for widespread job losses, a plunging exchange rate, and other potentially disastrous effects of this trade war with the United States.
There is fear of Canada moving towards more solid relations with China and growing chatter about the prospect of joining the European Union. But even more curious and interesting to people like Catherine is “the question of our relationship to the Crown. If we’re part of the Commonwealth, where is the king in all this?”
What’s certain is that when the next federal election takes place later this year, the central issues are going to be gigantic, fundamental ones. It’s going to be hard for any Canadian to muster interest in debates over the carbon tax when questions of “sovereignty, our sense of nationhood” are on the table.
Trump started this moronic trade war on the pretext of responding to a fentanyl crisis on the northern border, where a whopping total of 43 pounds of the stuff was seized in fiscal year 2024—an amount you could fit in a duffel bag. The hopeful eventuality is that Trump will cease economic hostilities quickly after seeing what happens to the markets.
The somewhat less hopeful eventuality is that the president really does have a different goal in mind: annexing Canada. Does he mean it—like, really mean it? Late last night, I consulted an online version of the Magic 8-Ball—as reliable a guide to Trump’s real intentions as any—but I do not wish to report what it said.
Quick Hits
CTRL-FING EVERYTHING UP: The Trump-Musk administration’s passion for removing words they find triggering apparently extends to all documents even remotely related to the government. The latest example, per Med Page Today:
The CDC has instructed its scientists to retract or pause the publication of any research manuscript being considered by any medical or scientific journal, not merely its own internal periodicals, Inside Medicine has learned. The move aims to ensure that no "forbidden terms" appear in the work. . . .
In the order, CDC researchers were instructed to remove references to or mentions of a list of forbidden terms: "Gender, transgender, pregnant person, pregnant people, LGBT, transsexual, non-binary, nonbinary, assigned male at birth, assigned female at birth, biologically male, biologically female," according to an email sent to CDC employees.
There aren’t good synonyms for a lot of these words, but it could be easy enough to replace the Latin root “trans” with the rough Greek equivalent “dia” for some useful neologisms. Similarly, scrambling the acronym LGBT into something like GTLB wouldn’t trip the DOGE search—but I’m sure people reading academic journals could figure out what it means.
YOU’VE GOTTA BE KIDDING ME: Obviously, if Elon Musk’s goal was to cut $2 trillion in federal spending and radically streamline the federal government, he wasn’t going to be able to do it by himself. So, according to Wired, he brought along help from people who appear even less qualified—and certainly less experienced—than he is.
Elon Musk’s takeover of federal government infrastructure is ongoing, and at the center of things is a coterie of engineers who are barely out of—and in at least one case, purportedly still in—college. Most have connections to Musk, and at least two have connections to Musk’s longtime associate Peter Thiel, a cofounder and chair of the analytics firm and government contractor Palantir who has long expressed opposition to democracy.
Wired has identified six young men—all apparently between the ages of 19 and 24, according to public databases, their online presences, and other records—who have little to no government experience and are now playing critical roles in Musk’s so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) project, tasked by executive order with “modernizing Federal technology and software to maximize governmental efficiency and productivity.” The engineers all hold nebulous job titles within DOGE, and at least one appears to be working as a volunteer.
The engineers are Akash Bobba, Edward Coristine, Luke Farritor, Gautier Cole Killian, Gavin Kliger, and Ethan Shaotran.
This morning, employees at USAID sent an email to D.C. staff telling them not to come into the office today as the agency appears to be shutting down. The email was written by gkliger@usaid.gov, according to information shared with The Bulwark. Rest assured though, Kliger did at least attend college as of 2020.
AND ANOTHER ONE: Our Tim Miller notes this morning that Rural.gov, the Department of Agriculture site that serves as a hub for funding announcements, information, and technical assistance for rural government programs, is down. Add it to the list of government functions and communications that have come apart since Elon Musk got appointed president. This one doesn’t involve people trying to curb famine globally or warn of the spread of deadly diseases at home or abroad. Just, ya know, farmers and such.
Cheap Shots
"Ira told me he has already canceled “all but absolutely core American services” and will be boycotting American produce and other consumables. In anticipation of higher food prices, he’s planning to turn his front yard into an even larger vegetable garden this spring."
I applaud our neighbors to the north. I see they are booing the US National Anthem at Canadian sports events. And they should, because Americans voted for this, so a "Fuck Americans" sentiment is very understandable. I'm right there with them. We could have voted for Kamala Harris. We voted for this instead.
And these changes Canadians are making to their lives to avoid American goods are durable. These are changes that can stick, long after the tariffs have been lifted, and they will not go back to American goods. Paths of trade will be rewired, and dependence on American goods will vanish as these are replaced with goods from other, less capricious trade partners.
Republicans in Congress, who spectate as the government undergoes essentially a venture capital takeover, lack any patriotism. Trump's entire two weeks has been a running Impeachable offense. He should be removed from office, but they have abandoned their oaths.
This is pretty distressing for Jack Daniels and Jim Beam what with Canada cutting them off and Pete Hegseth on the wagon because of his new job. 😉