Last week was another busy one in Washington DC, as President Donald Trump doubled down on his push to slash federal agencies, exact retribution against his political enemies, and grant Elon Musk sweeping authority to root out government waste. In this Q&A, Thomas Gift examines the political and constitutional issues that have come into focus.
What do you make of Trump revoking the security clearance of former President Joe Biden?
More than anything, it’s symbolic. Biden restricted Trump’s access to intelligence briefings following the January 6th, 2021 US Capitol insurrection. So, Trump is doing the same to Biden. And of course, Trump didn’t miss an opportunity to get in a dig at Biden. He wrote that “[t]he Hur Report revealed that Biden suffers from ‘poor memory’ and, even in his ‘prime’, could not be trusted with sensitive information.” This is political tit-for-tat which doesn’t have huge consequences for national security. But remember, Trump also revoked the security clearances of about 50 former government officials at the start of his term whom he alleged interfered in the 2020 election. So, this is part of a pattern.
How would you describe Trump’s approach to governance so far?
Trump is basically using the playbook of his former chief strategist Steve Bannon, who’s said that Republicans should “flood the zone with s*&$,” and do it at such velocity and scale, that no one can latch onto anything or any particular issue. That’s what we’re seeing here. Democrats don’t know whether to focus on the end of USAID., tariffs, Canada as the 51st state, the emergency declaration at the US-Mexico border, seizing Greenland, reclaiming the Panama Canal, or one of a million other stories. It’s all coming at Trump’s adversaries at a breakneck speed, and it seems like Democrats don’t know how to react.
What are the concerns surrounding Elon Musk’s access to federal data through the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE)?
DOGE raises so many questions. Elon Musk is officially a “special Government employee” at DOGE, but what is his real authority? What type of sensitive information does he access to? A federal judge declared in his ruling over the weekend that by handing over the Treasury Department’s payment and data systems to Musk’s team, there was the possibility to do “irreparable harm” to US citizens. That’s strong language. Practically, giving full access to federal data to anyone, not just young aides who work for Musk, has to raise alarm bells. Musk is running around Washington acting as though he has unilateral authority to poke around every federal agency.
Who’s going to win the political war over federal spending that Trump has provoked?
One of the challenges is that the side left defending government will always have a tougher political fight. It’s not hard to find examples of waste, fraud, and abuse in federal agencies. And even if that’s a fraction of a fraction of Washington’s budget, somebody can always hold up an instance of largesse, and say: “See, this is your tax dollars being squandered.” The reality is that the US federal debt is over $36 trillion. Trimming around the edges won’t save Uncle Sam from his spending addiction. That can only happen by slashing defense or entitlements like Medicare and social security—and those are all “third rails.”
Can Trump really eliminate the US Agency for International Development by himself?
Trump has claimed that the White House has the right to eliminate spending of any federal program or agency, without cause. That’s despite Article 1 of the Constitution clearly giving Congress the power of the purse. Trump is invoking what legal scholars call the “unitary theory of the executive”—that the president has essentially unfettered control over the entire executive branch and its officials. Critics insist that this eliminates important checks and balances that are, either explicitly or implicitly, enshrined in the Constitution. So, we could be careening toward a showdown that gets resolved by the Courts.
- This interview is based on comments Thomas Gift made on CNN’s “Newsroom” on 9 February 2025.
- Image credit: “2025.02.09 DC Street, Washington, DC USA” (CC BY-SA 2.0) by tedeytan
- Please read our comments policy before commenting.
- Note: This article gives the views of the author, and not the position of USAPP – American Politics and Policy, nor the London School of Economics.
- Shortened URL for this post: https://wp.me/p3I2YF-eWf
