In the past week or so, the courts have begun to try to set some boundaries on the Musk–Miller–Trump administration’s early blitz of recklessness.
One judge halted the administration’s ill-conceived freeze of federal funding.
Another
put a stop to the Musk team’s smash-and-grab acquisition of federal payment systems and personnel files.
Three more
issued injunctions against the president’s effort to scratch birthright citizenship out of the plain text of the Constitution.
Still another
pressed the pause button on the administration’s dubious “buyout” of federal employees.
This judicial review provides at least a small reprieve, hope that some of the administration’s most destructive impulses will be stopped. Or at least pared back. But even with the courts stepping up, and even with the reality of the administration’s ineptitude sinking in, this early Musk–Miller–Trump blitz remains very—maybe irreparably—damaging.
Of course, there are a
lot of moles to whack: the U.S. Agency for International Development and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau are being dismantled at an alarming rate, and the court system is not known for being nimble. The administration is betting, perhaps rightly, that at least some of its thoughtless, lawless efforts will slip through the cracks.
But even if the courts caught them all—and even if every court facing each lawless escapade said, “Nope, that’s not a thing”—
still the entire process would be doing serious damage to our institutions. Think of it as someone spoofing your identity and going on a shopping spree with your credit cards. Even if the goon gets caught, you still have to go store by store to argue that the fraudulent purchase wasn’t legitimate and hope the debt is forgiven. And all the while, perhaps long after all the debts are dealt with, the torrent of uncertainty kills your credit score.
This administration’s irresponsible spree has pummeled the credit—and credibility—of the federal government.
Most obviously, the hit is to the United States’ credit itself: its financial security and buying power. The headliner here is, of course, the way the administration treats international tariffs as a daily soap opera, a sad will-they-won’t-they plotline that serves no real purpose other than to drive tabloid speculation.
Never mind that that particular noise is hurting American industry, American families, and America’s international standing.
Following the administration’s sudden funding freeze, colleagues across the government are now facing contractors or sitting across the negotiating table from companies that do not trust that the U.S. will pay its bills on time, if ever. When Musk, Miller, and Trump thought it would be funny to own the liberals by stopping the flow of federal grants, the administration not only showed its ignorance of the federal funding apparatus but did so without reading any of the contracts it was unilaterally canceling. The nation’s business partners are aggrieved: Our payments are late, and we, as a client, are suddenly not as reliable as we’d seemed. And since
no thought went into the administration’s first federal funding freeze,
no lesson can be learned.
Government procurement officers cannot tell the people across the table from them, “Sure,
some contracts might get cut, but not
yours,” because the administration has already proved—very, very publicly—that it has no idea how to think before it acts. Instead, it has made clear that our checkbook is captured by partisan whim.
Worse, actually: when Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency squad pushed past security at the Treasury, it not only riffled through the drawers, but it granted some of its inexperienced team
unfettered read-and-write access to the national payment system’s code. Musk handed the keys to these kids, and the government
doesn’t know if they left the back door open to the Treasury’s system. So the nation’s checkbook may have been lifted—again, very, very publicly—by a 25-year-old who wears the banner of “
racist” with a pride that is not nearly as shocking as he hopes. When the country next reaches out for a line of credit, expect foreign banks to text us back the blinking-eyes GIF.
For now, civil servants in every corner of the government recognize that it is going to take a long time to clear our credit history and earn back lost credibility. But we haven’t even begun to climb out of the hole we’ve found ourselves in. Though, given every opportunity, this administration refuses to put down the shovel.
www.nytimes.com
